jason colby

1. At a meeting I had with Mike Armstrong on 07/25/2022 (that Dan McKiernon was "supposed to be at" but he didn't show) I asked him what percentage of State Draggers have observers aboard for what percentage of trips. He said "Very close to ZERO percent, BUT they must take one any time we ask". I wanted to know why and he said it would do no good anyway because with an observer aboard so rarely, they simply throw that trip away and fish as clean an area as they can, thus skewing the data.... 2. A state biologist I had aboard over the summer told me that there "was" a requirement to check all dragger loads of fish BEFORE they were offloaded. The industry, in general (the draggers, owners and processors) fought that so hard they won! I wonder why they don't want observers and accountability???? 3. A former federal fishery observer who fishes on my boat quite regularly told me "horror stories" about what he has seen. Worse, they (dragger captains and Carlos Rafael himself) say that "the fishing would be a lot better if the observer was not on the boat". Basically flaunting how they would cheat when not being watched.

The "final nail in the coffin" for Boston Harbor flounder was Dan McKiernon getting into office two years, 8 months and almost 3 weeks ago (not that I'm keeping track). One of his first actions as DMF Director of Massachusetts was he gave the draggers "unlimited haddock" in state waters. Well, by now most of you know what the state of the once numerous haddock populations are like in just a few seasons of THAT. What many don't realize is that with all that bottom scraping, very few of the remaining flounder were able to survive as well. Thank you DAN! You made the draggers very happy...

BTW- The "fall spots" are the same as the "spring spots", DIF, Hosp Shoals, Portagee Cove, etc...

All this "crazy talk" by managers and regulators about how many stripers the rec anglers are killing would not be worthy of a mention if they didn't throw everything out of balance with their insane policies towards the commercial sector. Rec anglers fishing Boston Harbor and many other areas can't reasonably fish for anything but stripers as the cod, the haddock, the fluke, the weakfish and the (you name it) , in other words "all/almost all the other alternatives" have been commercially depleted. They are very quick to enact a one fish or no fish policy on rec anglers but they allow the nets to keep working. The latest example was just last month they shut down cod fishing for rec anglers south of The Cape when it had just opened on August 1st. I had been fishing out on Coxes Ledge and the area where the cod are is covered in gill nets and surrounded by draggers. During that shutdown for the recs, the netters just kept fishing! What "conservation measures" were they hoping to accomplish there?

When the flounder population was healthy, there was a fall run. Back in the late 80's the population fell off to a point when by 1993 there was no point in fishing for them any more mostly due to the CHLORINE BLEACH that the state poured into the harbor to sterilize it before bringing the Deer Island Treatment Plant online. That all went well and in the late 1990's the flounder started coming back. The water was clean and the natural forage was rebuilding (sea worms and clams). For the next 15 years the flounder fishing was getting better and better each year while the draggers took little interest as they were very busy wiping the cod off the map. Then, in 2012 there was a Gulf of Maine stock assessment that showed that the cod biomass was "4% of healthy". So, for 2013 they gave the draggers a 77% decrease in cod quota and the state of Massachusetts doubled the flounder quota (Thank you Paul Diodoti!). One state fishery panel member (Chuck Casella, not that I would mentioned names) said he would vote on that increase "no matter what" because the poor draggers needed something to work on"! From there it was downhill all the way with the flounder populations in the bays, harbors and estuaries of eastern Massachusetts. In the few years just before the commercial increase, we were starting to see a fall run but that instantly evaporated in 2013... Captain Jason Colby Little Sister Charters

Some pics from this past spring. Flounder limits were "the norm"....

So it seems Dean and Seadogface are both out. Is there anyone that is still "in"?

Would all of you guys please send me a pm if you are still in or out for October 8th. There I will ask you each to send me an email or just cut to the chase and send me an email with your actual name/phone #. We should be in communication the day before to cover details and I'd like to send directions to the boat. Thank you! *

I'm sure you are correct about me confusing VMS signals with AIS. I did in fact see draggers (likely state boats) towing east to west across the line and hauling back in state waters after most of the tow going through federal waters. I took pics of boats and my GPS coordinates. One EPO that I sent the pics to told me that "it is probably a scalloper". I said it isn't (I saw the nets) but even if it was, that is illegal too! There is a whole lot of cheating going on and that is for sure. Perhaps you are also correct that they want to get rid of a bunch of boats but they won't get rid of them, they will just sell out to the big guys that are buying all the shares. Every one of those corporations is another Carlos Rafael that just hasn't been caught yet.

The haddock fishing was going great. Then, Dan McKiernon took over as director of the Ma. DMF in January of 2020. One of his first acts was to give the draggers "unlimited haddock" in state waters. THAT was the green light for most of the federal boats to turn off their VMS Transponders. They commenced cleaning up all pockets of haddock everywhere in both state and federal waters and said they were fishing in state waters. No one was checking and I'm sure that is by design (on purpose). I complained, I took pictures and yet I did not see one EPO boat or fed fishery boat checking. The better ones were towing east to west and hauling back in state waters after towing two hours in federal waters (very highly illegal) so they can say they landed the fish in state waters. The rest were well away (east) of the demarcation line and with their VMS off and no one out there they all got away with wiping the haddock out. They seemed to know they were immune. I have two machines on my boat that read that signal and out of 50 draggers one day I saw that two boats were transmitting. Ya wanna know where the haddock went?

And for draggers the release mortality is minus 63%!=... That's right, more fish actually die then they take out of the water!

"They" make it up as needed to justify their evil.... If you kill one you go to jail but "big business" (with government contracts/green energy money) can do just about anything. Moral, ethical or OTHERWISE. Captain Jason Colby Little Sister Charters

I have lost (greedy) customers who did not want to stop catching stripers even after they caught their limit. I tell them the options are "we go in early" or "we fish for something else". One group (the one guy who thought he was in charge) told me that "I work for them, it is their charter and they decide what we fish for"! I said "so we go in early"! They were from Ohio and they didn't even have cooking facilities in their hotel. They said they wanted to give the fillets to the maids which is their right to do but I was not going to keep them catching bass after bass once they had their keepers. Not all charter boats are the way you think they are.

I had one jump in the boat at Coxes Ledge a few years back and we saw a couple last week west of Noman's Island...