The recreational groundfish fishery closed for the summer on August 15 with Northern Peninsula fishermen reporting a sharp drop in catch numbers, most blaming a season that opened too early.
“The cod just weren’t jigging — they don’t jig at this time of the year,” Goose Cove fisherman Des McDonald told the Pen last week.
“The season opened too early. In late July and early August the fish are sitting on the bottom glutted with capelin and they’re just not going for the jiggers. Why would they? Their bellies are full.
“It’s not a lack of fish, the fish are there, they’re just not hungry.”
Mr McDonald was out on the water a number of times but didn’t manage to fill his five-fish quota once — a huge difference from previous years.
“It would be better off if they started now and let us fish through to late September because the fish will be more active then, not full of capelin,” he said.
To add to the frustration, the recreational groundfish fishery in Nova Scotia runs from June 26 to September 6.
“If their fishery is open all that time, why isn’t ours?” asked Main Brook recreational fisherman Ward Samson.
“It’s supposed to be Atlantic-wide, we’re supposed to have the same thing as them, but obviously we’re not, are we?”
Mr Samson questioned why the fishery in NS was open for 10 weeks compared with Newfoundland’s three weeks in the summer and one in the fall.
“Newfoundland and Labrador is a very large province, but that’s all we get,” he said.
Mr McDonald said the government should stagger the season to allow for the migration of fish.
“When there are fish in St John’s or Conception Bay there’s nothing up here, just as over the other side of the Northern Peninsula they get fish at different times from over here,” he said.
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