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A picture of a picture I found that I had. It’s not a pike but could eat the poodle in question. Nice fish K.G. And some nice pike.
Being a halibut fisherman, I never understood why some people need to kill giant Hen Halibut and kill their abilities to produce the millions of eggs they do.
Hopefully, that is a thing of the past.
That pisses me off too....90% of the big ones are females, aka egg barges. Not to mention they taste like [bleep]
There is zero problem in the halibut population with recruitment (spawning) all of the studies prove they are prolific as can be. At the smaller sizes they do okay.
Far bigger issues include arrowtooth flounder competition for food. Arrowtooth are the the biggest biomass in the Gulf of Alaska and virtually unused commercially. They have an enzyme in the meat which turns the fish to mush when heated. After much money spent on research they found a way to make surimi with it. Problem is it competes with the front half of pollock in that market. Filleting machines take the back half of the pollock to make fish sticks and the fronts go into a huge pot to cook into a protein paste...
Temperature cycles in the Gulf are linked to population swings. Look up "Decadal Oscillation" for the long answer there.
In many areas the sea otter population explosion in the last 40 or so years has hammered the sea urchins. The urchins kept the kelp beds healthy by nibbling on the holdfasts. Without them the kelp beds are shrinking rapidly. This reduces nursery areas for many, many species and increases all kinds of predator issues. Net result is a decline in feed for halibut and others. Suddenly, "chalky" fish became an issue.
More halibut are known to be killed and wasted as bycatch than the entire subsistence, sport, personal use, and charter fleet combined. We are supposed to feel guilty about our 5%!
Pissed off because someone wants to keep and eat a probable "fish of a lifetime" sounds more like jealousy.
