Circle hooks versus J hooks

I know the issue of J versus circle hooks has been settled with numerous studies showing the high mortality. MVF funded a study back in 2003 with John Graves from VIMS showing that one third of all white marlin caught with J hooks died within 1 week. He employed pop-up psat tags to obtain this data. NMFS came out with a ruling earlier this year to ban J hooks from any billfish tournament on the East Coast. Unfortunately the reaction from the multi-million dollar tournaments forced NMFS to postpone the new rule until 2008. It is hard to change your fishing techniques after years of success. Circle hooks force captains and mates to learn to rig differently: no more flashy skirts, islanders or seawitches... makes rigging baits boring, to say the least.

I must be honest and say we use both circle and J hooks on the Makara and have resisted eliminating J hooks from use especially in the dolphin tagging study. The pictures posted in an earlier blog of the dead sailfish, and Billy digging the J hook out of his gut moved me. I hate change just like everybody else, but either we quit fishing or we change our ways. We cannot kid ourselves that our boat's fishing tactics do not make a difference. They do. We need to change how we fish to protect the fish.

The waters off Cancun and Isla Mujeres are full of fish. There is less fishing pressure now: no live bait allowed except by local captains and the use of circle hooks have ensured the highest survival rate of migratory billfish, and dolphin continue strong into the Gulf and up the East Coast. East Coast and Gulf fishermen need to wake up and do the right thing for the fish and themselves. Circle hooks.

Expedition completed, Makara back home

The crew brought the Makara back to its home port in North Palm Beach this week. The team fished 11 days off Isla Mujeres, had 237 fish events- tagged, released, missed or boxed. We tagged 134 dolphin plus one wahoo. We also caught a number of billfish. We went 7 for 10 on white marlin and 12 for 26 on sailfish. On a different measure, we traveled an average of 70 miles per day to fish. The fishing grounds were about 15 miles offshore so we averaged around 40 miles of trolling per day.

Our best tagging day was June 2, 2007 when we tagged 36 dophin. Our worse day was June 11, 2007 where we did not catch a single one. We knew there was a Spring migration off Isla. Our goal was to tag enough fish to find out where they go once they leave. We suspect they follow the current and head North in the Gulf or around Cuba up the Florida Straits. For now we are beginning our planning for the next tagging expedition and wait to see if any of our tagged fish are recaptured.

I want to say thanks to Captain Steve Unsell and Mate Billy Gerlach for great work during the trip. The got the Makara ready to go and kept it running smoothly the whole trip. Billy worked every night preparing 6-8 dozen baits for the next day. I also want to thank the Shelby Jihad - Jim, Carter, Mateo - for coming down and helping out in the cockpit. I'll have more to say about the rest of the crew in another blog...

Update: 130 dolphin tagged

We thought the small schoolie dolphin had all passed thru migrating North for the summer, but we were wrong. A school of dolphin hit the spread and we had 6 fish hooked up in less than a minute. We were able to tag 20 fish and increase our trip tag count to 131 tags deployed.

Our fishing effort has been well-defined along the edge of the shelf off the Yucatan Pennisula. We have worked a 30 mile section of the reef in depths ranging from 100 to 400 feet. The dolphin and sailfish bites have been evenly distributed throughout the area, but the white marlin bites have only happen in the northern portion of the reef. We are still analyzing our fishing effort tracks to understand more about this. As soon as we complete the analysis we will post the tracks and tag locations on our website.

One note about navigational charts for this area is that they have not been updated in some time. You will note in the map above the extensive size of the Aerosmith Bank location. We found the size and depths displayed for the bank were off as much as 3 miles in places and totally inaccurate. Part of this may stem from the fact that the pinnacle mount dates are from 1947.

Some of the future work of the Makara will be to accurately detail bottom topography along with our track and tag points in selected fisheries. This is the topic of future blog posts about the development of a fishing effort/catch GIS tool for use by recreational fishermen. Stay tuned.

Two Week Update

We have now been in Mexico for two weeks. In eleven days of fishing we have tagged 111 dolphin and one wahoo. Plus we placed a Microwave Telemetry pop-up satellite tag on a 58 inch male dolphin. This was only the 5th sat tag ever placed on a dolphin. 76 of the tags were deployed during our first three days when schools of small dolphin were still in the area. During the last 8 days of fishing we have caught much larger dolphin, but did not find any big schools.

We tried deep dropping on a few different spots south of the island and on Arrowsmith bank. We caught a wide variety of fish including a pink porgey, tilefish, button snapper, 2 black snapper, and 3 mystic groupers. The last drop of the day we pulled up this ugly brute pictured below. Its a large mystic which weighed close to 50 lbs.














After several straight days of fishing it was time for a short break. We spent today snorkeling on a few of the reefs surrounding the island and relaxed a bit by the pool. Tomorrow we are going out trolling again to tag additional dolphin. The fish are large and difficult to tag but these are the ones we were targeting on this trip. We are using circle hooks on dolphin today. In the past days we have been using J hooks knowing we could hook them fast without a drop back, get a simple mouth hook and release them without injury. One of the consequences of using J hooks is gut hooks and a 30 percent chance of mortality. We will explore how these circle hooks work today using drop back techniques and report back.

J hooks and dead billfish

We completed our 10th day of tagging dolphin yesterday. We have placed 110 tags on dolphin and one tag on a small wahoo. One of the unfortunate parts of fishing is the needless killing of billfish from the use of J hooks instead of circle hooks. We saw this dead sailfish in the water, brought in the boat and did a quick investigation of its mouth, gills and stomach. We discovered a size 3/0 J hook in its stomach. The fish still had color so it must have died just recently.
Marine Ventures funded a project in 2002 with John Graves at VIMS to investigate the mortality rates from both J and circle hooks on white marlin. The results were clear that post release death was around 30% for J hooks and less than 5% for circle hooks. While the US government is still struggling to implement a circle hook rule, anglers need to come to terms with their own choice of hooks. The more J hooks used, the fewer billfish. It is that simple. We each have to step up and assume responsibility for our fishing techniques. Regardless of the impact of longliners or other foreign fishing fleets, we each need to do our part to protect these awesome fish.Panel

Success

We placed a pop-up satellite tag on a dolphin yesterday. It is programmed to pop off in 30 days, float to the surface and then transmit the data collected by the Argos satellite system back to Don Hammond. The data will give critical insight into the daily movements and behavior. Don Hammond has tagged 4 other dolphin with these tags off the East Coast, deploying the first in 2005.

Securing the tag on a dolphin is a complicated procedure, and with a $4500 price tag, mistakes could be costly. Early yesterday we caught a bull dolphin which was 58" in length and hooked in the corner of the mouth, making it a perfect candidate for the tag. Bringing a fish of this size into the boat and safely controlling it was a major obstacle. Once we brought it through the tuna door, it took several people to subdue it with towels and oxygenate its gills with saltwater while Don Hammond manually inserted the tag into its back. Despite these difficulties, the operation went smoothly and the tagged dolphin was released safely after spending just over a minute in the boat.

Fishing has continued to be slow. We are still catching several larger dolphin each day, but we have not encountered the schools of small fish that we saw during the first couple of days. Waves today range from 8-10 feet and we have decided to take a break from fishing and explore the local culture.

Compared to our first three days fishing, the last two have been slow, particularly in terms of dolphin tagged. Weather conditions were ideal Sunday with little wind or waves. We tagged 7 dolphin and 4 were estimated to exceed 30". These fish were too big to bring into the boat and required us to use a longer tag stick while they were still in the water (as pictured above). Dolphin fishing was also cut short in the afternoon. We headed to deeper water in an attempt to catch a blue marlin and complete an elusive grand slam after catching 3 white marlin and a sailfish. We didn't find any blue marlin, but we almost hooked a very large bull dolphin which came into our spread just before we headed home.

Departure from port was delayed this morning due to a low pressure front moving through the area which brought heavy rain. Today was the first day biologist Don Hammond was on board, but unfortunately, after a late start, fishing was slow. We fished 5 hours and didn't get a single dolphin bite. Other boats in the area did not have much success either, and many did not land anything. The highlight of our day was releasing a nice white marlin. Tomorrow we hope conditions improve so we can find some big schools of dolphin and deploy a good number of tags.

One of the major objectives of this dolphin tagging expedition to Mexico has been to tag large fish greater than 36" and 20 lbs. When we conceived this expedition last September, it was Don Hammond's idea that tagging and tracking the these dolphin would give us deeper insight to migration patterns. We selected Isla Mujeres in June as the best location since it is known for the big dolphin run this time of year. So far we have not found many big fish. In the past three days of fishing, we have tagged 76 dolphin with 7 fish 35" long or better. The average tagged fish is 20".

Shown above is an estimated 40" bull dolphin we tagged yesterday. You can see the red tag placed on his shoulder. We are back to sea today in a few minutes, fishing the same general location as shown on previous gps/google earth maps. We will update our GIS/GPS dataset and post again later when we are back at the dock.

We were back on the water yesterday after tropical storm Barry moved North into the Gulf. The crew of the Makara tagged 11 dolphin and caught 3 sails and one large wahoo. We fished in deeper water yesterday; you can see the locations on the map above. The red tags are from June 1. The yellow tags are from May 30th. We will continue to explore the shelf and deeper ledges off the coast here. More later. Time to get back on the water.