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Random Quote: Someone actually reads this crap? -Brad Woolard
It seems to me like there have been fewer and fewer tuna on the lump each year for at least the last five or so years. For those of you that fish the lump regularly, do you think this is just some naturally occurring condition and this was just a horrible year and is due to bounce back - or do you think it might be caused by overfishing a very localized breeding tuna population. Sounds to me like this year is going to end up being a bust for the tuna. They used to begin arriving mid-Dec, then around Christmas, then the middle of Jan and the last year or two Feb has been the best month and is seems this year as if they never arrived.
Kind of hard to say this year is going to be a bust for tuna. I personally think it is because there are so many floaters way offshore now that hold bait all year round that the tuna have figured out they don't have to keep coming all the way into the lump. They can just keep feeding out there all year long. Why leave?
I think it has to do with many factors with the biggest problem being the lack of bait in close. Between all the gill netters scooping up all the mullet and the purse seiners hammering on the pogies there just isn't anything to hold the tuna in close when they pass through. Add to that the growing number of offshore platforms and you find yourself in our present situation. I definitely wouldn't call this winter a bust though. The wahoo fishing has been outstanding and this past week showed one of the best runs of truly huge tuna I can remember for quite some time.
Back in the 90's we caught fish every trip out there. BIG YF, BIG BF and BIG wahoo. and you didn't even have to chum to catch tuna. all you had to do was troll and you'd catch boat loads of big tuna---guaranteed---every trip. The catch was consistant, year in, year out. Then the guides discovered it and advertsed it all over the internet. Before long it was normal to see 80-100 boats out there on a weekday. There are guides who move in to Venice for the winter from Alabama and who knows where else. I've seen trailered boats from as far away as NY out there. Boats from Al, MS, TX, FL and GA are normal. Not long after that started happening, catches started becoming inconsistant. One trip you might catch, the next no catch. That started gradually becoming no catch most trips until last year when it was almost all bust. I stopped going out there over 3 years ago because the catch had dropped to such low levels.
No bait in close? Maybe that has something to do with all the sharks and kings attracted by all the chumming? About all anyone catches out there anymore is kings, sharks and bottom feeders. With all that chum it's no wonder.
Floaters keeping the tuna out deep? There were floaters out there back in the 90's and it didn't seem to bother the tuna then. There were floaters out there 5 or 6 years ago when people were catching a pretty consistant level of tuna.
I think the place is just plain over-fished. Last year was a bust, this year seems like a bust, the year before last wasn't too hot either from all reports. Actually, the only thing that's been consistant out there over the last 5 years or so has been the consistant decline in catch from year to year. That says OVER-FISHED to me... no matter what all the guides that make their living down there will tell you. Now they're putting all that pressure on the floaters... watch and see what happens over the next few years out there.
Will the lump recover? I doubt it. At least not anytime soon. And if the pressure doesn't let up, maybe never.
I think the combination of gillnets decimating the mullet in Louisiana and the overfishing on menhaden are having an enormous effect on the inshore and offshore fisheries in Louisiana. I'm shocked that the CCA and other conservation groups haven't pursued legislation to outlaw mullet gill nets in Louisiana and I'm disappointed in the CCA for not pushing through stricter catch quotas for pogies or restricting the number of pogie boats that operate off our coast. Those boats catch everything and nothing survives those nets. We are definitely seeing the loss of the crucial mullet & pogie foodchain in our fishery and now everyone is feeling the effects.
Will the floaters have the same problem as the lump? No--first its too far out, there are too many floaters, and the bait fish there are pelagic. The lump has always been a migratory fishery thanks to the pogies and mullet and some pelagic baitfish. The lump will recover but we need to get the CCA off their ass and push for something done.
Everyone wants to blame the gill netters. Why can't it just be over fished by the tuna fisherman. Oh but that can't be, they are all conservationist. It is so easy to blame the other guy. No I have never been out their fishing, but I would like to go one day. And along the way I hope I run across a gill netter to buy my bait from.
I think we ought not jump to conclusions on the decline of the lump. As far as bait, that is aways a good place to start. Overfishing too. But all we have are theories or really just opinions. That we do know is that there have been less an less fish and most fish caught have been bigger or actually much bigger on average and I think last year the few caught were nearly all real big. A marine biologist would call that lack of recuitment. Now my opinion, is the catches dwindling and pretty much just big, no juveniles, does not bring to mind the classic over fishing picture when the stocks are beat down to where the fish caught get younger and younger till they aren't enough sexually mature fish. Someone mentioned the bad ole charter boats, well I think the lump started dying long before we realized it and before the charter boat expanded to their present fleet size. My case for that is, back in the early ninetys there were a lot of comercial boats that slowly disapeared till they were pretty much 100% gone by end of the ninteys. My guess is they left because their catches were becomming less consistant year by year. I am told that in the 80's it was all commercials there. When I first went we sport guys just trolled around the anchored commercial's and got yelled at and sometimes even shot at by them. The real expansion of the charter fleet began as Real Peace Charters grew and others followed. All that mostly happened after the comercial fleet moved on from the lump. Another observation is as Captwells pointed out, bait. Specifically the open water schools that we used to fish spotted by their huge flocks of birds, the frequent spotting and fishing on the whale sharks. Things have changed but I really don't have a clue or a universal theory that explains all the changes. Besides the before mentioned possible culprits, additional suspects could be: changes in the river ( sediment load, contaminates, flow), currents shifting, seatemps changes, dieases anywhere in the food chain, new non-native species of plankten, baitfish or preditors, oh yes- hurricanes and (well you get the picture). It could be that any of these or a combination have upset some balance for that one small little area , the lump. I think that nature it's self finds it hard to keep a tiny spot like the lump always just the same. Before anybody flames me for advocating any type of overfishing or spoiling of resources and blaming it all on mother nature, that's not what I am sying. I am just talking trying to look at a bigger picture than the lump. Just from anticdotal evidence I think today's sportfishing catches of tuna are as good or better as ever, I can remenber the ole day's when even many of our now famous charter captians didn't catch nearly what the average fisherman does today. I surely don't know what happened to the lump but hey there are plenty of fish around in other places. Question is can you overfish a pelgic species in a 2 square mile area?
Knotreel. I agree with some of what you said, and I doubt that anyone will ever actually know the whole truth. However, based on my own experiences fishing the lump for better than 14 years, the catch for us sport guys really didn't decline until after several years of the "100 boat a day" years. I fished out there before and during the astounding popularity of the spot. As I said in my earlier post, catches were very consistant for years and remained pretty good even at the start of the 100 boat a day thing. However, after a couple of years of the extreme pressure of close to 100 boats a day being out there, catches started falling off until finally, for the last 2 years, catches have been close to nothing. That fact tells me that fishing pressure is at least some part of the problem. Not blaming it on the guides alone though. What they did to accelerate the problem was to advertise and post pics all over the net. People all over the world saw those posts, pictures and ads and flew in to partake in the catch. Many, who live close enough and some who don't live so close came on 1 or 2 guided trips and then started dragging their own boats down there for vactaions as 1 day to 2 week trips. Even guides from other states started "migrating" to Venice and Grand Isle during winter like the "snowbirds" to Florida to take advantage of what is normally a pretty slow time in their industry. All of that attention focused on a spot that is roughly 1 mile in diameter going on for 3-4 months at a stretch is guaranteed to have some kind of consequence.
As far as the tuna being caught there being pelagic, well that's true too. BUT, answer this. Does being pelagic mean that these fish just wander all over the ocean and just happen to end up at spots like the lump during certain times of the year or do these fish have set migratory patterns that they repeat year after year. Reading some of the studies I seen done on BFT showing up in the Med during one part of the year and on the east coast of the U.S. during other parts of the year suggests that probably both cases are true. If the set migratory patterns are true, then catching all the fish that show up every year at the lump would certainly reduce catch due to too much fishing pressure. After all, how many tuna are just going to "happen" accrosss the lump every year. Almost for sure, some will, but not a s many as you would have that specifically migrate there each year. Also, by dumping all that chum in the water year after year, they have attracted something we never experienced there before..... sharks. BIG sharks. If I was a tuna, I doubt I'd want to be hanging out with 700-1,000 lb Makos. Would you?
It's overfished, very simply. All factors remained the same except the fishing pressure. For some reason people refuse to believe they can impact a fishery with a rod and reel. I agree with BNB---watch closely what happens at the floaters. It's hapening already really. All the Venice guys are having to run to Green Canyon for predictable catches. Mars, Ursa, Medusa, Elf, etc...don't produce like they use to, still plenty fish caught, but I'd bet it's close to half as easy as it was...
Hey BS
Just got back to FL from Guatemala, fishing was a little slow there too.
Miles of baitfish .... too much bait.
Red
That happens in Mexico too, especially around structure. Hard to leave fish on the fish finder, but moving off looking for birds and porpoise can be a lot more productive.
Anybody that ever fished the lump on an "aquairum" day can't say anything but how great that was, me too. But those days are long ago. Now let's do some math, say 25 commercial boats fishing 24 hours that equals 600 "boat" hours, now 120 sport boats times 10 hours fishing time that equals 1200 "boat" hours. Ok, that is full of holes cause you say the comercial boats don't fish 24 hours. Well the sport don't really all fish 10 hours either. So if you can say these factors are halfway reasonable you have 1200 hours vs. 600 hours to compare the pressure of the previous commercial fleet vs. the sport. Now you know that the commercial fleet stays out there in weather and seas even when no center console or cat would even think about it and I seem to remember that the fishing crews were bigger too. Long story short, they fished a lot more days with bigger crews which evens things out a lot. My point to all this, is this that fishing pressure is not new for this tiny little dot of a spot. There are resident populations of tuna that don't act pelagic ( the tagging study at Medusa proved this ) and if there were some tuna that were resident there they were probably killed a long time ago and the lump is a lot different FAD than a deep water floater anyway. The water gets downright nasty there at times of the year and tuna are not going be there consistanly in muddy conditions. So I believe that mostly the lump fish are or were pelagic in their patterns. Nobody really knows how fish get the word out to show here or there , genetic? smell? sound? or follow some thermocline at some depth. It is really a stretch to say all factors have remained the same and only the fishing pressure has increased, I think the only thing that has been the same IS the fishing pressure going 20 years that we know of, plenty other things have changed, we just don't know which matters . What BNB said is something to think about but is or was this small group of tuna, some sort of extented family that repetedly came to the lump each year before we caught them all. That could only be part of the story. It is the recuitment issue that I keep thinking about. When you overfish a species or a stupid example, say a pond or a river, the bigger fish seem to go first and you start getting smaller and smaller fish until there are not enought sexually mature fish to maintain the popualtion. Just the opossite seems to have happened at the lump. The juveniles seem to have gone first? and what about the black fin the lump was famous for, what about bonita so thick they would eat a beer can? All that is gone, the YFT the Blackfin, bonita greatly reduced. Just to say it is overfished does not square up with all these factors. I really would like to know what has happened and I'll not going to just go with saying overfishing and that's it, I think there is probably more to the story. Mankind has been catching tuna since recorded time and surely before that but still we know so little about them.
Talking with some of the captains in venice, the latest theory is that most of the coral has been destroyed by the fisherman. They used to pull up big chunks of coral with their anchors but not anymore...
Think about what 100-200 anchor rodes everyday with 30' of chain and a huge danforth will do to a coral reef. No more coral... no more fish?
Who knows exactly why it has "dried up" but the fishing has moved. They are still catching fish on nearby similar structure.
A female tuna spawns millions of eggs every few days in some cases all year round.
I do not believe that the lump was the breeding ground and we have killed all of those geneticly programed lump fish. These are not salmon....
Yellowfin tuna spawn mainly in the spring and summer, when water temperatures reach 78 F. But in many tropical waters they may spawn year round. They are prolific breeders, with large females able to deposit up to 8 million eggs and both sexes may spawn every few days over the spawning period.
I've fished out there a bunch and I've pulled my achor more times than I care to remember. I have pulled up other people's lost anchors, chains, ropes, various assorted trash and miles of monfilament line, but I've never seen a hint of coral and I doubt there was ever any coral down there. And I was anchoring out LONG before most of the guides that fish there now. Soft bottom in 200 feet of mostly muddy water? I'd want someone to prove that one to me.
I have pulled up coral on my anchor as have others I know or knew. It is a fact I have seen with my own eyes. I can't say for sure how much mud is on the lump or if that has changed but there was some hard bottom there not that long ago. I mentioned sediment load as one of my wild off the wall possible factors, so I was thinking that the bottom might have changed with mud deposited. However, the water depth decreased? Someone will have to tell me about it as I don't reckon I'll be rushing out there soon. About overfishing, I'll certainly agree on one thing, I don't know how the fish felt but it way too many boats for me. No thanks
I'm the Hell Diver that has been to the bottom of the Lump. I don't know of anyone else that has been down there.
Dive:
We let the boat drift with a 200' yellow line with a weight on it hanging down in an area we found the depth to be around 220'. Randomely picked.
The water was green on top and after 5' it broke cobalt blue. We kept swimming down the rope and at 80' there was a school of red snappers all in the 10-12lb. range. I kept dropping through the snappers and a nice gag grouper about 50lbs. came up to meet me at 150-160'. I shot the grouper in the head and broke the end of my shaft off in his head. The fish, sluggishly swam back down to the bottom with me chasing him and reloading what was left of my spear into my speargun.
When I got to about 20' off the bottom I chased the fish across a flat, concrete slab looking bottom till we got to a large coral head that came up off the bottom like and upside down J. The fish swam under the coral head and that's when he noticed I was still chasing him. He then bolted out of sight.
I looked across in the direction I had come from and saw the yellow rope, swam to it and went up, emptyhanded.
This dive took place about 10 years ago in the beginnign of June for the Hell Divers Rodeo. I'm sure with all the boats anchoring on the lumps for the past 10 years they would have completely decimated any coral still out there. That is probably why everyone is catching less fish out there than back in the "good ol' days."
Also, the boat drifted for about 15 minutes till the second team of 2 divers got in the water, they ran into the red snappers also shot 2 and came up.
Lump Tuna 
