DNR volunteer survey results
 

http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries...009summary.pdf

:)

I have lots of thoughts on this but dont feel like typing.

I got a pretty good idea who the angler reporting 21 trips was:D. Any survey or attempt to monitor catch is better than none.........Gary

First Chart of the C/R season shows 53% jigging, 29% trolling and 11% bottom fishing.....Hmmmmmmmmmm

Second Chart shows guys releasing smaller fish to keep the big ones. No surprise but disappointing non the less. Hard to blame someone for keeping a big legal fish. I'd like to see a slot.

Third chart shows no surprise either, however we all know about water quality/temps vs survivability of hooked fish. Its time to increase the size limits to give these fish time to mature and become part of the breeding stock. Circle hooks are a good thing. How about the guy who kept the 11" striper:eek:


Love the last two sentences;
THANKS FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION!
YOUR DATA PLAYS A CRUCIAL ROLE IN FISHERIES MANAGEMENT
REALLY. Who knows what to make of DNR and Fisheries Mgmt. at this point. I started participating in the survey but stopped with all of the brew ha ha. Maybe Brandon was right, I'm getting paranoid. Think I'll keep to myself and shut up.

Be sure to post your Flats survey guys:rolleyes:

Wow, so more fish are caught jigging than trolling. To help the fish, they limit trolling- go figure.

Probably all of The Flats fish reported. If you look at the trophy season, 99% trolling.

I am sure it is a very small sampling of volunteer fisherman. The point I certainly would make is that it flies in the face of Maryland DNRs regulations that go beyond ensuring low mortality rates and after reducing effort of trollers. They obviously dont know or have any indication of what methods of fishing are yeilding the most fish per angler.

I hope this thread doesnt discourage anyone from participating in the survey as everything helps in accurate data collection so the fishery can be managed properly. I just wanted to share since it was recently posted by dnr

I'm not going to participate, or take any stock in any survey to give more ammo to the "my method is better than your method so they should restrict your method not my method and leave me alone" argument. With such a small sampling all it takes is a few people to make stuff up to skew the results. Really, 77 total fish during C&R? That doesn't tell you anything...155 fish during trophy season??? 93 anglers and 262 total trips? I fish nearly 100 days a year some years...so this would be 2.5 of me and less of a lot of fishermen I know on this board...No statistician worth a $hit would even publish that because it presents no real information...just gives statistically irrelevant information that can be skewed whatever way special interest groups of any affiliation can wants...

I'm in total agreement Mark....statistically insignificant.....heck we caught almost as many fish as the whole survey that day you, Paul and myself went out.....and kept what? 2 that were deep hooked and probably wouldn't have survived anyway.
As much as I dislike the whole idea (and the Big Brotherization), maybe the Natl Saltwater Angler registry will be able to supply better data.

Steve,
My point exactly!!! And i hope you are right about the registry. I also think that the people out fishing not catching any fish aren't putting their skunks up on that survey either...so many things wrong with it, too many to list!

I agree. It's good to withhold your data from the DNR. The more data you withhold, the more the DNR has to go with what special interest people present.

Love those special interest people.

Mark, I filled out the volunteer survey for 2008. At that time if you didn’t complete the fields for fish data entry it wouldn’t allow you to proceed to complete the entry. You are correct a skunk day could not be entered into the data base. That may have changed for 2009. I did complete the recreational crab survey last year all 2 days I crabbed.


With this data I am moving over to jigging the flats for C&R I should be able to eliminate all of those skunks on the boat.

Hey all - while you may not like the DNR's recent decisions (I know I don't), simply put, without data on catch they will only have their opinions to make decisions with. I'm pretty sure that is not what we want.

How about this perspective...

If no flats people participate, won't that be a reason to close the flats - no data, no idea of impact so some might assume the worst (goes along with the "play it safe" mentality we've seen recently). And trust me, the "studies" used to justify the flats season aren't strong at all and eventually someone will point that out. :rolleyes:

Why would the DNR do anything other than "play it safe" with recreational fishing regs if we aren't willing to cooperate. Do we really want to feed the fire used to restrict C&R trolling which stated rec's weren't about the best interest of the fish? I don't want to see recreational anglers be identified as the group unwilling to play the game.

And yes, the data is small but I'd bet a buffalo nickle that decisions aren't being made with this single report in front of them. Some data is better than none, and more is better than a little. Even mediocre scientists/managers know how, when, and if to even use data of this type to make decisions.

I won't judge what you do...it's up to you. I've not participated so far (though I only fish a few days a year total lately). But from my perspective, contributing to this is a good thing, and I'm going to participate from now on.

Bug Guy; you have a point, however, it's this first sentence of your statement that I have trouble with. What totally drove me up the wall about the DNR decision on PSCR is that DNR did NOT use their own opinions to make restrictions on C/R. DNR used the opinions of the MCBA to impose restrictions. To impose restrictions on one user group based on the "concerns we have heard" from another user group is cowardly and incompetant.
5th (Marty)

The restrictions on trollers and only trollers is what gets me. How did this happen? The elitists who served up the trollers may be next, welcome aboard. There is no question rockfish are not as plentiful and more restrictions are coming regardless of whether your personal choice is to participate or not.

I wouldn't consider MCBA to be elitist

Barefoot; I'm not speaking for Rich, but I don't think his elitistist quote was directed at the MCBA.
I know in my mind; that quote went directly to a flyfisher/jigger who proposed not only these restrictions, but day restrictions as well. Perhaps, if you think hard enough, you can come up with the name of someone who flys all around the world fishing, yet wanted to confine us to three days a week during PSCR:D
5th (Marty)

Marty,
I will concede the impetus was external. I would also guess though, that the public statement by the DNR attributing it to other organizations was a public relations move. Having worked in the field, I've seen groups attribute their own opinions to other groups in order to deflect criticism (in this case, it didn't work so well). However, I admit I have no firsthand knowledge that this really was the issue.

While I have the floor, let me tell you a potentially hypothetical story...

Let's say PA's Dept. of Transportation (PennDOT) wanted to build a bypass around a back country town that was located on a road between major cities (Allentown-Philly) and northern attractions (Poconos). The road has to be built somewhere and land has to be taken. Option 1: build it along a stream, make 5 bridge crossings, and impact 2 endangered (one thought to be extirpated) minnow species. OR option 2) build it along a mountain side and displace 200 people living in a mobile home park. What do you do? Maybe the agency leaks it out that they are going to impact this stream and the poor minnow...maybe then the local watershed group run by a nice lady in her 50's who is a nature lover but not a scientist organizes and gets locals in an uproar...maybe then PennDOT decides to "graciously" allow the watershed group a seat at the table as a stakeholder...and then maybe PennDOT says, the lady is right and they'll have to go with the lesser discussed "plan B" and concedes the lady was the reason for their decision. In the end, 200 residents of a mobile home park are pissed at a 50 yo woman who runs a local watershed group and not so much at PennDOT, while PennDOT avoided the costs of 5 bridges and mitigation/conservation of 2 endangered species.

The point - gov't agencies are often better at deflecting blame than making sound scientific decisions.

Will DNR always make the right call - probably not. Was the C&R process BS - definitely. But without scientific info, what option would the DNR have other than to be biased and capricious?

Oh, and if you hadn't figured it out...Brandon is the 50yo woman in the more recent story. ;)

Any data that comes out of a voluntary survey such as this one is less than useless. There is no way that it can provide any sort of statistically relevant snapshot of fishing pressure/fishing success. If any one attempts to regulate using this type of information they don't deserve their job.

Scientific info it ain't. It is tough enough to get a valid sample even using robust statistical approaches. But this "feel good" approach doesn't even pass the laugh (or smell) test.

Bill H, I have to respectfully disagree - in my opinion, while the data is not very robust to say the least, it is data and it does have some use. It is biased and the low reporting limits the scope of inference (that is bad) - but some trends can be identified as long as the bias is understood and the conclusions made are limited. Those trends can be used not for decision making about regs, but for decisions about where to focus further studies and surveys. In otherwords, where to spend the limited money they have for more robust, focused studies since surveying the entire MD Chesapeake is out of the DNR's budget (and likely out of their ability).

While, it can easily be misinterpreted or misused on accident or on purpose, data is data, even if small and biased, it is still data. But I think everyone has a legitimate concern about how this data is being used...who knows.

Bug Guy,
I guess we will have to disagree on this. I am a great believer in the principle of GIGO. And that is exactly what I see here. What we have is a set of data with absolutely no controls on it, and no real way to determine the direction of bias or whether there is bias. I have many problems with the data set, and size is not the only or the greatest one.

Whether you have no data or poor data, you are only at the level of a WAG, and don't even begin to approach even a SWAG. And even though a blind pig can sometimes find an acorn, I don't think we should base natural resource management on that philosophy.

The words may have come out of the flyfisher's mouth, but they were the MCBA's words...

Rich, I don't consider jiggers to be elitists? It is just another way of fishing. This is my point all along, as Recs we need to stick together and support everyone's type of fishing. Personally I troll, jig, liveline, bottom fish, flounder fish, just fish...but when we start attacking other means of fishing because trolling was singled out, then you further divide the recs. Then who wins? The people who originally proposed this issue. There are MCBA members at the forefront of this fight (at least on TF who have posted on it) who run Pre Season C&R trips...those are the guys we need to be "attacking" not other recs and their form of fishing. When you say "the elitists who served up trolling" that can be taken a lot of ways...I would rather jig year round than do anything else, don't consider myself an elitist in the least, but I also didnt serve up trollers. Trollers make up (as a conservative estimate) 95% of the trophy season anglers, hence why they were targeted. Is it fair, no, is any of this fair when there is no science behind it, no...but again, recs need to stick together or this fight will be uglier and uglier...

Bill H, I agree with you..."less than useless" what kind of idiot would admit to keeping an 11 inch rockfish, let alone the other undersized rockfish claimed to have been kept in the data? This could easily be infiltrated by people looking to shut down the fishery and they could post inaccurate data, especially with such a small sample size that is not representative of 1/100th of a percent of yearly trips that occur on the bay

No doubt nobody can make the kinds of conclusions that can from a replicated study with controls, experimental variables, dependent variables, etc. And making decisions about "effect" from this study would be wrong.

I guess from the data I see pattern. Really, it is a small and poorly done creel survey. This links to a page that I found on a quick google search that does a decent job describing a good survey: http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7...7829--,00.html

For example, the bias comes from the people polled - an unbiased survey would randomize where people fished, what days fished, etc. and take into account other things. In addition, the data would include skunks (as stated previously in this thread). So, this data should take into account these biases and limit any conclusions about pattern to the types of fisherman, location of fisherman, and other variables that describe the respondents. Conclusions on pattern should not be applied to the entire bay. No conclusions on effect to the fish should be made. But, properly done creel surveys (which is what I think the registry will do a better job of) has successfully helped to manage fisheries in other places.

But I will admit - I don't have the greatest confidence that this data is use in the limited form that it should be. So I'm not necessarily disagreeing with everyone here.

I think we are in agreement far more than any disagreement. I do think that the national registry can serve as an integral part of a pretty good system for estimating fishing effort/success if it is combined with a properly constructed creel survey (which I believe will be a separate "dockside" survey).

The missing randomization is my biggest problem with the voluntary survey. We just don't know whether the respondents fish more or less than the average angler or whether they have more or less success. And there is no way to relate their effort/success to the average effort/success.

I see the voluntary survey is a way for concerned anglers to feel good about providing information on their participation in the sport, but that the information is of extremely limited value beyond the "feel good" aspect.

I believe this cat is sufficiently flat, and I will not run over it again.:D

I can agree on that....

& one last thing - oh how nice it was to have a civil discussion without 100 A-holes chiming in to do nothing other than stir the pot and muddle the conversation. Thanks.

Uh Oh, you may have opened the floodgates.

I agree, a civil discussion can be a rarity, nowadays.