"Absolutely Not for Sale!

Don't Ask."

    That's what the sign advised on a house that Senior Editor Vic Dunaway and I eyeballed in a quiet Central Florida neighborhood.

    I suggest we borrow that sign and put it right square on the nearest cobia's back.

    Let's take the price tag off cobia.

    This fish is just too valuable to sell as a slab of meat.

    It'll soon be 14 years since sportfishing conservationists managed to get red drum removed from the commercial market after a spirited battle that culminated in an overflow hearing before the Florida Cabinet.

    Those were heady times for conservation. Cabinet approval of gamefish (no-sale) status for redfish triggered an ongoing protection ethic highlighted by the gillnet ban amendment of '95 and including a long series of tighter limits on recreational as well as commercial takings.

    One action that caused little furor cut the sportsmen's bag limit on cobia to one per day. Commercials get two, with a boat limit of six.

    The reported commercial catch of about a quarter million pounds per year seems to support the position that cobia are an inconsequential factor on the market. Unfortunately, there are persistent reports that cobia are being sold in large quantities outside the system, some of them speared by the dozen.

    With that dollar sign waving in front of them, too many fishermen can't resist cashing in on the cobia temptation (every fish looks like a hundred-dollar bill to some). Boats drop off their six and go for more, or off-load extras to other vessels.

    One commercial fisherman maintains that today's limits make it a "non-issue" as to whether cobia should still be marketed.

    If that's so, the market shouldn't mind this fish disappearing from the freezers, as a non-issue, you understand.

    Certainly it should take no warfare of redfish magnitude to de-commercialize the cobia.

    When a bag limit drops as it has to the lowest number possible, one, it's more than a little silly to allow others to take double that amount and to see this great sportfish on the market.

    One interesting factor to remember is that those cobia that are caught and kept while sportfishing are eaten basically by Floridians, just as those that are sold are eaten by others (they love 'em blackened in Atlanta). At any rate, the fish become "seafood" either way.

    A difference is that the sportcatch represents far more expenditures for the benefit of the economy. Some anglers even buy and rig boats specially for their cobia hunts. And, obviously, the one-fish bag spreads the resource evenly among the most folks on the water.

    Pompano is another species that would benefit from no-sale status, though that move would be a tougher nut to crack at this point because of the established pompano market where they're sold in big quantities, many of them believed to be netted illegally but many also taken by hook and line.

    Better, for now perhaps, to put tighter limits on all pompano catches and follow them closely, with better law enforcement.

    But for cobia, let's post that no sale sign.

    What's the cobia worth?

    Try Priceless.

--Karl Wickstrom