Macaluso: Trout needs a plan, but what plan?

There was no way our state’s speckled trout management issue was going to be easy.

Now that our Senate and House Natural Resources committees rejected the proposed 15-a-day limit and 13½-inch minimum size — the Wildlife and Fisheries’ trout management plan — this state agency’s marine biologists and the Wildlife and Fisheries Commission will have to come up with an alternative.

There’s little debate the current status of this species needs to be addressed, and lowering the current, liberal 25-per-day limit is a necessary first step.

The fly in this curative ointment is that 13½-inch minimum size. It’s something the agency’s biologists appear to want to defend to the max, and the one thing that sparked the pushback from our Legislature’s committees — and fishermen — along with some equally qualified marine biologists.

Earlier this month, the LDWF’s biologists said their data found trout were being overfished, and the trout population-recovery chart had passed peer review from other marine biology-based groups.

And, as stated by the LDWF staff, they are charged with managing what’s in their purview, and factors like coastal habitat loss, high rivers, rainfall and hurricanes aren’t something they can control.

All true. But, the problem here isn’t the science. It’s the application.

Our state has an economy built around speckled trout, everything from fishing tackle to boats, motels, restaurants, baitshops and marinas.

Now, with the commission ready to convene an advisory panel to hammer out a workable speckled trout management plan that pass muster with the Natural Resources committees, the first working item must be to boost trout populations both in numbers and age classes.

Then, the panel will have to decide the level of pain our tens of thousands of trout fishermen will have to endure to reach a goal of a sustainable trout fishery.

Do we want to recover the population quickly with severe restrictions like a 10-fish-a-day, 14-inch minimum size, or take longer with a 15-fish daily creel and continue a 12-inch minimum?