DIE-HARD anglers will be pleased to learn that there has been a bit of offshore fishing recently. The surprisingly good weather has allowed some boats, mostly commercial operators, to get offshore and to try their luck on the Edge and Banks. The upshot has been that there have been a few wahoo caught with some of these actually being of a respectable size. Many of these captures have come off the Banks although there are a handful of reports that suggest that the East End may not be a bad choice for a bit of a troll. The Edge is closer to shore so that the fuel bill is reduced somewhat and it is a quick run home if the weather decides to do an about face and turn nasty.

For the most part though, the effort has been directed at the bottom species with the Banks being the preferred venue. Although there are a number of species that will please drift fishermen, the target species seem to be red hind and coney. So-called "floating fish" like amberjack, bonita and gwelly will also take baited lines fished off the bottom but the market is really for the white-fleshed grouper species that include amongst their smaller relatives the red hind, coney and barber.

Actually, it is really pretty amazing that there are any grouper-like species left. First off, they have been the fish of choice for hundreds of years. Granted in the days of the early settlers, the pressure on the fish was pretty limited as the population was quite small and there simply weren't that many fishing boats.

In those days the fish were considerably more numerous than they are today and groupers of all sizes were accessible from the shoreline although most of the larger ones were able to make good their escape by breaking the line or bending the hook. Just think, the line was made out of linen or hemp and woven together. It was also subject to rot and the bottom line was a line thin enough for use in fishing was simply not going to be anywhere near as strong as the modern monofilament materials in use today. Hooks were pretty primitive too even though the basic design of a fish hook is unchanged over thousands of years. Again it is the material that the hooks were made of that changed. In the 1700's and thereabouts, hooks were fashioned out of iron but were unlikely to be of hardened carbon steel or some of the other strong alloys in use today.

As the population grew, fishing methods improved. More people meant greater demand and the fishermen were able to expand their effort to keep up with market pressures. The fish also seemed to be able to bear the increase in pressure although a few of the larger grouper species became less common in catches.

The advent of motor powered boats and the availability of refrigeration revolutionised the local commercial fishery with the result that fishing effort was virtually unlimited. At the same time, the population started to expand rapidly and demand started to exceed supply. It was then that the fish populations showed signs of having taken a serious hit.

This is where things get a bit tricky. Groupers are called such because they from aggregations or "groups" to spawn. They group up at certain places on an almost like clockwork regularity and because of this fishermen, here and elsewhere, have been able to take advantage of the concentration of target species and really put a hit on them.

It was bad enough that the fish were being caught while they were in spawning condition: there were countless eggs that never got laid. Things are even more complicated because groupers enjoy a rather weird sex life. They start off life as one sex and after a number of years reverse and become the opposite. It is generally understood that an increase in fishing pressure tends to take out the older fish and leave the younger, presumably more numerous fish. The problem with groupers is that once that happens and almost all of the fish are of the same size and age class, then they are also likely to be of the same sex. Not too good for successful reproduction. With reduced breeding, it is pretty inevitable that the population would start to dwindle and while, maybe not to the point of extinction, certainly to less numbers than in previous years.

Another problem stems from the fact that Bermuda boasts a really limited bottom or reef area. Although large when compared to our land mass, we really are just a speck in the ocean. Even though there are lots of reefs out there they are finite and, as such, there is a limit to the amount of habitat for the reef dwelling species like groupers. This can be further expanded to take into consideration the whole of the food web that goes into supporting predatory species. In fact, take a hard look at the numbers and start trying to quantify matters and it is a miracle that this limited area is as productive as it has been over the years.

Even inward migration is not really a consideration. Our isolation makes it unlikely that any groupers from elsewhere will move in. A few larvae may arrive here from points south but numbers are likely to be miniscule. We simply do not have the luxury of tens of thousands of square miles of reef area that abut other reef areas and allow for the movement of fish from one jurisdiction to another.

It is no secret that, prior to the 1990 fish pot ban, the numbers of groupers were vastly reduced and the market reflected this with a shift toward fillet products and the increasing frequency of other species. Most notable was the fact that wahoo and tuna which had largely been ignored previously started to come into their own and carve out a market niche.

Somehow, enough red hind and coney have survived to allow what appears to be a sustainable fishery for these species. Every year countless coney and hind come off the Banks and from reef areas and both anglers and commercial fishermen seem able to go back year after year and still catch more. It will remain to be seen if this can continue indefinitely. In the meantime, the best option for the winter angler is to do exactly that, get out over the deeper reefs and bottom bounce for some good to eat grouper even if they aren't much when it comes to providing Tight lines!!!