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Originally Posted by markb  The G&P looks closely at the success percentage. . |
The Game and Parks doesn't have a clue how many fish are taken and NOT even reported! Do you honestly think some of these heroes bother to drive to the drop off points with their snouts,...or fill out and mail the card in? The NGPC looks at unreported fish as unfilled tags. I also believe the Game and Parks doesn't have an accurate idea of how many fish, (of several different species) they even have in that section of river. The majority of people they send out to do anything in an official capacity are college kids working towards a degree,... or they are fresh college graduates. I see many USGS teams on the river,...but not much NGPC activity. I also seem to hear the word "sturgeon" from them more than anything.This I know from asking the people who are there doing it,...not from so much hearsay.. If you can show me of an actual "approximate species count", ( especially one by the state) I'd like to see it just to look at the numbers. In the trips I've made to that section of river in the last few years, both daylight and dark, I haven't seen "much" scientific data being collected. The people I've talked to at the G&P, and the USGS offices that have collected data, admit it is "rough" estimates at best. The only way they can average fish counts is by netting and calculating averages per square mile. They're harvesting eggs, breeding, and raising many young paddlefish for release right across the river. I would make an uneducated guess that way more young fish are released,...and survive the youth mortality rate,...than are taken by the archery paddlefish "shooters". I have been on that small piece of the river at the right time when you can view a small percentage of the population, and there are a LOT of paddlefish out there.
(From what I've seen of some of the people who draw archery tags,and the way they "hunt", they could send them out there when the fish are asleep, and the percentage rates still wouldn't raise to over acceptable harvest levels.)
There are many rules in different areas of Nebraska's outdoor sporting regulations currently in place that need to be rethought and rewritten by the guys that sit around the big "round table" table,...this "legislature" and decide the "laws". By personal contact I have been told by the actual hands on employees of the NGPC that manydifferent laws are outdated, & need to be revamped....but their hands are tied when it comes to certain regulation changes. Not to say paddlefish regulations are wrong as they stand, I just have my opinions as does everyone else.
I myself can be called and will admit to being a rookie on the river. I know of people that have many, many years on that river under their belt. I'm just stating my point of view from a couple years of my first hand observations, along with "a few" contacts I've made that handle these things "professionally".
Like I said,...we'll see how it pans out next year. I think the sudden 2008 changes made some people balk at the new system along with the gas prices and the $21 tag. I "hope" there are plenty of tags again next year,...we'll see tho', when the preferance system is in effect. If things pan out the way I'm predicting them, (again an "uneducated" guess) you will be able to walk across the boats to the other bank opening week. Without arguing further, again the point I was making is that it was overcrowded this year with only half the people out the first week, and having heard negative reports from people who started late, (and from hearing through Eric's years on the river that the paddlefish actually do start disappearing in late July/early August),....I would expect a real shin dig the first week of next year. A weeks earlier start would fill some tags, get that crowd off the river, and allow for a second week while their are still fish to be had. Just my uneducated opinion.