Stop the Petition

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I came across an online petition by a Texas sportsman who believes this state should allow gigging and bowfishing for redfish.

No thanks.

I believe the man means well, but I don’t believe he thought through the potential damage—short- and long-term—that could come from reducing one of our greatest inshore gamefish to the status of carp and gar.

His change.org petition had nearly 300 electronic signatures at the time I saw it. It might or might not, have more by now. I don’t know because I haven’t looked. I haven’t looked, because I trust our Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to politely, but firmly, reject that idea should it ever reach Austin.

An avid bowhunter (like many of us), this fellow contends that everyone should be able to take redfish by some other means than rod and reel. Why? What statute, right or privilege gives sportsmen and women the option to choose how we take our share of redfish?

Why should TPWD grant special privileges to groups of people who opt out of currently allowable means and methods?

Even if all those questions were answered in favor of this plan, how would those who gigged or arrowed redfish distinguish the length of their fish prior to sticking them? They couldn’t, of course, and that would require TPWD to establish yet another exception to current rules.

The restrictions and limits now in place for the taking of redfish make good use of the species’ population, which is at its best in a while. It’s been worse.

I came into outdoor writing around the time that speckled trout and redfish were being gill-netted up and down the Texas coast with staggering efficiency. That efficiency increased, too, when nylon nets gave way to nearly invisible monofilament gill nets.

Eventually, as it had to for the sake of inshore resources, the law prohibited those nets. For years afterward, however, some gill-netters continued their toll on our fisheries under cover of darkness.

I remember trying to fish some seasonally productive shorelines, on numerous occasions. I had to idle through mazes of gill nets so as not to foul my prop and further ruin a day already tainted by the sight of so many fish hanging dead or nearly so in nets.

While that took place inshore, airplanes (drones weren’t a thing yet) and spotter boats were being used in the Gulf of Mexico to locate schools of spawning-class redfish. When those huge concentrations of fish were found, their locations were relayed to crews aboard huge purse-seining vessels that, in a single set, could wipe out thousands of 20- to 35-year old redfish.

In the years B.B. (Before Blackened), those super-sized fish had nearly no commercial value—except to the cat-food industry. Unbeknownst to most people outside commercial and recreational fishing circles, the spawning biomass of a highly important species was being sold for pennies a pound to feed house cats.

Every year, sportsmen saw fewer and fewer redfish.

My good friend, Capt. Scott Null, said he and his friends fished Texas bays almost daily through childhood summers that coincided with the worst of that netting activity. During too many of those summers, if anyone in his group caught even a single redfish, that event was cause for celebratory phone calls and confirming photos.

Maybe a couple of purse-seine seasons and one hard freeze from no return, it became clear that our redfish population stood on the brink. That’s when conservationists stepped up.

Thanks in great part to the efforts and donations of folks from Coastal Conservation Association and others who got involved, TPWD ultimately stocked millions upon millions of redfish fry and fingerlings into Texas bays. This essentially bridged the gap while nature worked to replenish itself.

Fast forward to today, long after redfish were granted “gamefish” status in Texas and spared entanglement in the net. We have emerged from that darkness into a time when enough redfish have grown into maturity to replenish themselves into the future.

We’ve done what we could, and we’ve done it quite well, leaving our bays and beachfronts with much improved numbers of reds. Not as many as there once were, perhaps, but enough that we can hook and string three in a day without threatening the stock’s ability to keep up.

Texas sportsmen have grown to appreciate having so many fish to catch, even if not to keep. When a proposal was floated not long ago to boost the daily bag limit on reds up from three fish to five, recreational fishermen showed little interest. Three’s enough for most, for now.

I recognize that our friends to the east, in Louisiana, allow bowfishing for redfish. That’s within their right, and I wouldn’t try to convince them otherwise. Their fishery is theirs to regulate, and they seem to be doing a fine job of that.

If Texans want to maintain a redfish population that continues to provide more and bigger reds into the future, we’ve got to do what’s best for our fish and the fishermen who chase them.

The gigging and bowfishing of reds, at least for now, doesn’t check that box.

 

Email Doug Pike at ContactUs@fishgame.com

 

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