They were highly targeted by anglers in the 1980s, both for their fight and their value as table fare.įlorida made it illegal to keep Goliath grouper in 1990, and the species was listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as critically endangered in 1994. Goliath grouper are known for eating just about anything that swims near or by a reef. The goal of the FWC proposal is to allow a limited fishing season that won't impact the rate of recovery the species has enjoyed over the past 20 years. Westra remembers times when fishermen would carry Goliath grouper fillets in wheelbarrows and slice them up into tiny bits that would later be fried. 'The tendency back then was to take the big ones, but the problem got to be that they were taking a lot of the juveniles - the 30-, 40- and 50-pounders were being taken so you didn't get a spawn from those fish.' Westra fished the species back in the 1970s and '80s, when regulations were few and the grouper were plentiful. And since they're illegal to keep, not many people want to tug on a 500-pound fish for upward of an hour just to release it. In some places, anglers say, Goliath grouper are the most prominent gamefish. 'This timeline means that if any changes are proposed and accepted, they would, at the earliest, go into effect in 2018.' 'Staff was directed to gather public input on a potential limited harvest of Goliath grouper and bring those comments back before the commission in late 2017,' Amanda Nalley, with FWC, wrote in an email to The News-Press. FWC commissioners must still vote on whether or not to open any type of Goliath season.

The staff also recommended a slot of 47 to 67 inches, which means fish must measure between those two numbers in order to be kept legally.īut these are only recommendations at this point. Westra said he'd also like to see a $100 tag requirement and a limited Goliath season.įWC staff proposed a maximum $300 tag and no harvest of the species during the spawning season, which runs from July through September. A slot is a designated minimum and maximum size that's used to ensure that the larger breeding population is not overfished.

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