At its November 1998 meeting, the Council recommended that DEC approach the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) to establish a separate open season in New York on weakfish for commercial hook & line harvesters. Mr. Colvin of DEC stated, in order to establish a separate commercial season for this gear type, the Department would have to do two things, neither of which are presently provided for in the ASFMC Weakfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP). First, special approval to have separate seasons for different gears would have to be secured. Second, different baseline catch years would have to be used to establish the commercial season for hook & line than were used in establishing the present all-gear type season. Mr. Colvin indicated that developing such a proposal would require a major DEC effort. He questioned the wisdom of moving ahead on this issue for three reasons: technical difficulties in establishing what time period would be used as the baseline period for establishing the historic pattern of commercial hook & line weakfish catches; preparing the proposal would divert staff resources from other priorities; and, in his judgment, ASMFC is unlikely to approve such a proposal.

Councilor Tom Knobel agreed that the likelihood of payoff was very slim if the DEC had an equivocal attitude towards raising the issue. He noted that DEC had not been opposed to instituting different open seasons for winter flounder based on gear-type and saw the present reluctance of the Department to do so in the case of weakfish as inconsistent.

Several representatives from the New York Commercial Hook and Line Association urged the DEC to prepare and submit such a proposal. They noted that the present summer closed season for weakfish effectively prevented them from harvesting this species, as this was its season of peak availability to hook & line gear, especially on the eastern end of Long Island. During the summer, weakfish are one of the few species available to inshore commercial hook & line fishermen. These individuals observed that, when the current commercial seasons on weakfish were established (in the mid-1990’s), the weakfish stock was seriously depressed and there was little commercial hook and line activity for this species, although there were significant hook & line weakfish catches in earlier times. Thus, they had not been consulted in the establishment of the present seasons. Now that weakfish stocks are rebounding and the fish are once again available, the summer closed season is a significant burden.

Alice Weber of DEC stated that the episodic nature of commercial hook & line fishing for weakfish over the past several decades and the lack of mandatory catch reporting requirements rendered the data on historic commercial catches of weakfish by hook & line of questionable accuracy and value. This made it difficult to establish the historic pattern of weakfish landings by month that would be necessary to assess the relative fishing mortality reductions that would be achieved by various open/closed seasons applied to commercial hook & line gear, only. This deficiency would seriously hamper any proposal DEC might make to ASMFC. She stated that weakfish are beginning to recover because the current approach, a clear restrictive season closure, is working. However, the resource is not yet fully restored.

Chairman Wise reiterated that it was the Council’s recommendation that the DEC pursue a separate commercial closed season on weakfish for handline gear. He asked the Department to advise the Council of any further action on this recommendation.