Gerry Gallanosa with a
60 Mile Bank dorado
Warm summer waters bring lots of good fishing. And while we encourage catch and release, we also realize that people like to eat fish. Certainly, the fast-growing fish that we run into offshore can absorb harvesting a lot better than slow-growing fish like rockfish and kelp bass.
In the last few weeks, there's been a lot of radio chatter over what constitutes limits in both Mexico and California. We heard lots of different answers, so many that it felt like it would be a good idea to review the regs, make some calls, and make sure that we understood what the laws really said. California regs have changed for 2008, and Mexican regs have one particularly confusing point, so as it turns out, the review was a good thing. Our understanding was wrong on several points.
First, here is the Mexican regulation on bag limits, taken from the Mexican National Aquaculture and Fishing Commission (CONAPESCA) website:
"In ocean waters and estuaries the limit is a total of ten fish per person per day, with no more than 5 catches of a single specie, except of the species of Marlin, Sailfish, Swordfish and Shark, of which only one specimen from this group is allowed per day, and which counts a five toward the overall 10 fish limit, or Dorado, Roosterfish, Shad, or Tarpon, of which only two samples from this group are allowed, and which count as five toward the overall 10 fish limit."
OK....everything sounds pretty straightforward, except for that last point: "only two samples from this group are allowed, and which count as five toward the overall 10 fish limit".
Craig Smith with a nice albacore
Courtesy Craig Smith
Say what? Does this, as has been reported on other websites, mean that one dorado counts as 5 fish, and two fish means a limit of 10 fish? As it turns out, the answer is "NO". According to the San Diego CONAPESCA office, the answer is that 2 dorado count as 5 fish in the overall bag limit. That means if you catch two dorado, you can catch 5 additional fish (or 1 marlin/swordfish/sailfish/shark).
So what does one dorado equal? The CONAPESCA staffer we spoke to said "The law is not clear on that. I can not give you an answer, other than that it is not more than 5".
Keep in mind that the above applies to rod & reel fish. If you are spearfishing, the limit is 5 fish total (so if you spear two dorado, you have to stop).
Now what about California? The California regs are not as confusing, so we'll just point you to the California DFG website. The main thing that we wanted to point out is that the limits on most of the tunas have changed.
In general, the California bag limits are 20 fish total, no more than 10 of any one species. However, it used to be that albacore, skipjack and bluefin tuna had no limits. Now, the limit on albacore (south of Point Conception) and bluefin tuna are 10 fish, but these fish do not count against the overall bag limits. There is still no limit on skipjack, while all of the other tunas (yellowfin, bigeye) must be included in the species and overall bag limits.
