Triple tail limit coming

[MathGeek]

Originally Posted by biggun

Guys I found this article from 2009..

Researchers Jim Franks and Read Hendon in the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Lab's Center for Fisheries Research and Development have made new findings about tripletail as part of ongoing biological studies of this unique species.
They include:

-- The species occurs seasonally in northern Gulf waters.
-- They can be found in offshore, marine waters or in brackish, estuarine waters throughout the summer.
-- They appear to use estuarine waters as feeding grounds.

From a Franks study of fish in Mississippi waters of the Mississippi Sound, they discovered:
-- They spawn from June through August with a peak in July in Mississippi waters.
-- It is assumed they migrate offshore to spawn. No females collected within the Mississippi Sound during the study were in imminent spawning condition, which means they would spawn within the next 24 hours from the time observed.
-- 50 percent of all female tripletail collected were sexually mature at 17cm HALF inches total length.

-- 100 percent of females were sexually mature at 19cm TQTR inches total length.


-- It has been difficult to adequately age tripletail due to difficulties in "reading" annular rings on otoliths (ear bones) — the standard measure by which all fish with such bones are aged.



My question is what percentage of fish caught ARE females?

I have NO PROBLEM with a 5 fish limit..

But I would like to see say; (5 over 12") to start then go from there..

Or why not a slot limit???

All I could find on this lead was:

http://www.al.com/outdoors/mobilereg...130.xml&coll=3

Unfortunately, a news article is not a citable source for sound scientific information, and the uncertainty in the length units for sexual maturity is a key issue.

I've searched both authors CVs and lists of publications. Unfortunately, there are no scientific publications listed that contain the same information as the new web site. Scholarly search engines also come up empty. Read Hendon is listed as completing his PhD this year. Maybe it is in his thesis.