Cobia fishery in danger of crashing

You may have noticed that I have barely said anything about cobia this year. With all my rantings and ravings over the past few years and the resulting blowback, I decided to step back and see if the new regulations have changed the way local anglers regard these great fish.

For the most part, it appears folks have finally seen the writing on the wall and have accepted that this is not an inexhaustible resource. Even though I was disappointed that the National Marine Fisheries didn’t make what I believe to be the most obvious change — changing the limit on how many fish an angler or boat can take — at least deciding to close the season June 20 was a step in the right direction.

The problem with their approach is that May and the first couple of weeks in June is one of a cobia’s main breeding periods and, almost without exception, every big female caught right now is loaded with millions of eggs just ready to be fertilized.

A lot of you think I am totally against taking a cobia for the table, and nothing is further from the truth. It’s which cobia you decide to take. Thankfully, many of my friends have adopted their own policy of keeping a smaller male while releasing the bigger females. Others have imposed their own boat limit, which is admirable, because every fish they release helps replenish the overfished stocks that is now indisputable scientific fact.

Keeping my yapper shut, I have been quietly observing social media and listening to reports from other anglers about this boat or that boat. It’s from these sources that I see problems that make me suspect that unless attitudes change, cobia fishing is going to follow the same path as red snapper.

In the case of snapper, the feds waited until things became critical before making changes — and what a change that was. Instead of implementing new regulations that would have kept snapper fishing open but manageable, they waited too long and it’s been three years now that the snapper fishery has been closed altogether in our area. In this case, I spread the blame between the feds and commercial fisherman and their lobbying groups. Not wanting to stand up to commercial fisherman, the feds allowed overfishing until the fishery crashed.

Just a short time ago, I saw a National Geographic show filmed in the Gulf of Mexico where a commercial fisherman disguised himself as a recreational fisherman so he could catch a recreational angler keeping one snapper over his two-fish-per-angler-per-day limit. The kicker was that same commercial fisherman went out the next day and in two days and killed 15,000 pounds of red snapper. It made me sick.

Getting back to cobia, on the social media side I cannot tell you how many posts I see where that person is showing off three or four cobia caught on a particular day, and half of them are big females. With all the talk about the poor condition of our cobia populations, two small males can provide enough meat to feed a small army.

A common comment is: “But I only get to cobia fish two or three times a season.” If that is the case and you repeat that catch each trip, that equates to six pregnant females capable of producing over 6 million cobia fry. Especially now, releasing these females may prevent the complete closure of cobia fishing that will happen if our attitudes toward these fish don’t change.

There are so many examples of how important females are to the management of a species, so why should cobia be exempted from this train of thought? We have come to accept this theory with redfish, salmon and a long list of other species, and most of us don’t think twice about releasing females so that the future of that species is assured.

I understand how exciting it is to hook into a big cobia that might be the largest fish you have ever caught, but think twice before you stick a gaff in her. If you were able to get her to bite, then you can just as easily get a smaller male to take the bait.

Until our cobia are out of trouble, make your own boat rules on which cobia to take or not to take, because if left up to the feds, history has proven that they will wait until the fishery crashes and then you won’t be able to harvest one at all. Especially now, let the big girls go. Once you do it, then you’ll really have something to brag about.

This story was originally published May 21, 2016 at 5:45 PM with the headline "Cobia fishery in danger of crashing."