For the second consecutive year, sportfish charter captains and crew members cannot catch or keep any fish while guiding anglers in saltwater this season.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game ban is aimed primarily at halibut charters. In the past, boats in that fleet sometimes brought to shore limits for the crew in addition to paying customers.
Often the crew would donate its share to clients, boosting the amount of halibut paying anglers can bring home.
The bag limit is two fish per day per angler.
The waters of Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound are covered by the order, which also limits the number of lines in the water to the number of paying clients on board.
Fish and Game is concerned because harvest levels set for charter boat anglers by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council were exceeded 2004-06.
Final harvest numbers for 2007 are not available, but Fish and Game estimates them to be lower because of an emergency order last year that did the same thing as this rule change this year.
Fish and Game biologist Matt Miller said the target for guided Southcentral anglers -- known as the Guideline Harvest Limit -- has been 3.65 million pounds of halibut the past several years. He said the actual harvests have been:
• 2004: 3.668 million pounds, 0.5 percent over.
• 2005: 3.689 million pounds, 1.1 percent over.
• 2006: 3.664 million pounds, 0.4 percent over.
• 2007: An estimated 3.404 million pounds, 6.7 percent under.
By contrast, the commercial harvest in 2007 was 25.957 million pounds, according to Miller, and the target for this year is 24.22 million pounds. That's a 6.7 percent reduction.
"Most of the locals assume ... that they can keep my fish as well," said Seward charter boat captain Mereidi Leibner. "But I'm more strict on my boat.
"I wish they had a size limit too that wouldn't allow taking breeding fish -- generally anything over 70 pounds."
Charlie Holland of Holland's Sportfishing out of Homer agrees -- to a point.
"I'm really against them taking away clients' fish," he said. "But a lot of people have abused that privilege in the past and taken their captain's fish and deck hands' fish," he said.
However, Holland says he calls the percentage of the total halibut harvest that goes to recreational sportfishing a joke compared to the commercial allocation.
The restriction on charter boat captains and crew is in effect from May 24 to Sept. 1. Fish and Game biologist Matt Miller said the rule was written to allow charter boat captains and crew to catch their halibut in the spring and fall shoulder seasons.
