Posted by seahunt on July 16, 2004 at 13:08:00:
In Reply to: Re: Into the F&G grey area??? Not so grey. posted by Melvin Pasley on July 16, 2004 at 11:11:04:
Well, if you don't mind, I think I'll go with Mr. Sonke's opinion of the law.
>this method would practically guarantee a success full hunt
I'm not sure I agree. Making chum work is not always easy. I used to chum when there red urchins everywhere (before commercial harvesting started) and it sometimes worked well, sometimes not. Still, I've rarely done much better chumming than when just cruising and looking. Especially now that there are fewer big fish, there are just less to be attracted to something local like chum.
Up at Mendocino, the terrain will not likely allow me to chum much of an area. Vis just isn't good enough. Also, I no longer break up urchins for chum. I figure if I get lucky with the bag of chum I have, it might just coax a lingcod out that is attracted to the excitement of the other smaller fish eating. You can also do that by banging something on the bottom. I really doubt that the chum will help a lot... Then again, if we follow a line from the anchor, I could drop it at the beginning of the dive and come back to it at the end...... Hmmm... Collect trimmings from people preparing abs at the camp....
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>Imagine if all spear fishermen adopted this technique. How long would it be before the fish population severaly damaged?
Well, while it was a technique that was used, I'm afraid that it wasn't needed to clean out the Channel Islands. That was done without much chumming. Also considering that I really plan on only taking one fish this trip, I doubt it will be a big problem. ..... I dunno. I'll see how much dry ice I have and what other fishies get in my way. There is nothing like some breaded rockfish. I do love to spear rock fish and generally won't do it in So Cal cuz it's been done too much alreadry.
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Actually, I've wanted to buy one of those 10 pound boxes of squid they sell in the Asian markets for cheap, cut it into small pieces and put it all out on a reef at say Santa Barbara Island and see who shows up for my camera.
Enjoy the diving, seahunt