Red Fish Blitz in Coonassland

[CaptPatrick]

Thanks for passing this along Tommy!

A little slow on the upload for those that haven't got DSL or cable, but some incredible footage. Best part starts around the 6 1/2 minute mark...

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[Capt.Frank]

I thought that I have seen a big school of drum on a shoal before that is unreal. AWSOME.

[Capt. DQ]

Goes to show how over populated the reds are now if you can believe that. A school like that can wipe-out a bunch of bait fish, crabs you name it. They need to loosen up on the restrictions and let people catch more of them to reduce there numbers down some.

DQ

[Ironman]

That was great.. a real Foamer
heres a spot o bluefin we slid in on,kinda foamin.six guys castin at the same time lol. we got 8 or so,in mins..
Wayne

[Carl]

Anybody besides me stop breathing for a few seconds when you took a peak at that shot.

Nice Ironman...last thing I'd be grabbing is a camera...kudo's t you!

Carl

[In Memory of Vicroy]

We always had huge schools of mature, spawning redfish around the mouth of the Mississippi River and the delta in late August and September. No one paid a lot of attention to them as they were considered 'trash fish' by us Coonasses....the only ones really good to eat were the babies, under about 14".

Then along came Chef Paul Prudomme who figured out if you blackened the big ones no one would taste them, and if you put enough red pepper in the mix, the tourists would go wild....and they did. So to meet the demand for large redfish for the blackening market, a bunch of enterprising trawl boats out of the Florida panhandle and Bayou la Batre, Alabama invaded the shallow sounds on the east side of the Mississippi River delta and began to use purse seines to scoop up hundreds of tons of the spawning stock on one pass. One Pensacola boat had so many in one set that after calling all his buddies to come share, they dumped thousands of dead redfish in Breton Sound. I personally saw the dead, rotting fish. This caused a huge uproar in Coonassland, resulting in redfish being removed from the commercial fishery and a limit of 5 per day imposed, and a mininum size limit. This happened in the late 80s or early 90s as I recall, and it has taken many years for the redfish to recover, but they have. The huge schools are back. The blackened redfish craze is gone, replaced by blackened goldfish (talaphia)......a history lesson in fishery mis-management.

Speaking of misguided government, I see the FDA abandoned their proposed ban on Gulf raw oysters yesterday afternoon....obviously out of fear for their lives. I will celebrate the victory by slurping down at least three dozen raws at Rockefeller's in Ponchatoula, La. this very night.

UV

[Skipper Dick]

Damn Vic,

I'm with you and wish I were there. There is nothing like slurping down a few dozen oysters with your favorite brewski. I think I'll slip over to my favorite watering hole at Matlacha tomorrow and have a few.

Dick