AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums The Cayes Ambergris Caye Fishing with Cap'n Jeff and Pedro 22nd October

Thanks for the photos, looks like you guys had a great time. I am sure they did not waste the fish, lots of people like to eat it. We eat any kind of fresh fish down there, including barracuda in Belize!

We went out with the Captain and his crew last Saturday, just late putting it up here. Fantastic time, the captain has a great crew, everyone should use them I (hopefully) attached some pictures.
http://community.webshots.com/user/ksraptor1

The biggest barracuda in Chris' photos sure looked a lot like Pedro. Uhmmm

just for the record ,all fish are given away .free,,,,,to the people of san pedro or the folks in belize ..not all have money to buy food ,staples rice beans they can not buy fish ,as much as fresh fish ....>>>cost too much ,the capt jeff takes what people who need ..eat ...they love the fish any kind .even shark that was a black tip reef shark , we always donate the catch ..it is good to feed people ..any way it makes me feel good ,I like there happy faces when they get the free fish ....capt jeff fishing report to follow next week... fishing has been wonderful .

capt. jeff...

looking forward to a bit of fishing when we come in february...but i'm just curious...and surprised that reef fish...like parrot fish...are ok to catch.

are there any restrictions? endangered fish? i would have thought it wouldn't be good to catch reef fish ...just surprised...are they that plentiful? and are they really good to eat?

Just wondering - what kind of bait do you usually use? Any suggestions on lures. We will be coming down in Dec. Thanks

The fish you see in the pix are Queen Trigger, Ocean Trigger, Strawberry Grouper, Yellowtail snapper, Spanish Mackerel, Great Barracuda, Blacktip Reef Shark and Horseeye Jack. There were no parrotfish in our catch. We didn't have any sunflower seeds for bait.

Bait used that day was fresh sardines.

Wow, sounds like dinner to me. I didn't know there are mackrel in the Caribbean sea. One of our favorites. Can't wait to do some fishing next trip down with Capt. Bicho and hopefully Capt. Jeff.

Some of you people that come to Belize, or think about coming to Belize, and get on this board and make statements about people catching fish and keeping them are showing a huge lack of understanding of the country, it's people, the marine ecosystem and the fishery of Belize.

Before you bring your miss-guided and wrongly formed opinions about how this renewable resource called fish should be used, you need to take into consideration the larger picture. Before Belize, and especially Ambergris Caye, were “blessed” by the arrival of the all knowing tourists a lot of the country, and especially San Pedro, engaged in fishing as a means of supporting it's people's needs.

The fishermen of San Pedro would go to sea and bring back as much as the sea would give them to feed the people of the village. That is still being done today. The demand for the sea's bounty has astronomically increased due to all of the restaurants and the population increase. Because of the increased demand, fishing techniques like gill netting and fish traps are being used more as opposed to hook and line and spearing as the prevalent way of catching the fish. This is because more fish can be caught by those means. The downside of that is the gill net and fish trap cannot distinguish what it nets and traps and a lot of fish that are not considered valuable enough to keep are killed by their gills being damaged when caught by the gill net and die in the traps if not released in time.

The fisherman that dives and spears only the fish he wants and the hook and line fisherman that keeps the fish he hooks that he wants and releases the ones not consider edible, assuming they have only been hooked in the mouth and have not been hook deep enough for the fish to die later, harvest in ways far less damaging to the overall fish population.

If every fishing guide would keep all of the fish caught that could be used to supply the demand and therefore lessen the need to use gill nets and fish traps, the “larger picture” would be much better. That is assuming we cannot return to the days when the demand could be supplied by spearing and hook and line fishing. I make that assumption because I don't think all of you people coming to Belize with your infinite wisdom on what people should do with their catch of fish are going to stop coming or not order sea food when you do come.

This post was in reply not so much to what has been said here, but to what some have said in past posts about people keeping the fish they caught.

Hey Bywarren -I caught a six pound ocean trigger today and ate it at Portofino (delicious).
How is your army holding up -have you managed to repel the wild ducks/geese etc.-thoughts and prayers to the boys in the trenches etc.
Peter