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Originally Posted by Ibseeker  Very informative post, thanks for the education. It would be interesting to learn where the albies are during each season. They spend a lot of time off Baja but when? I haven't heard any reports of albies caught very far down south. An SST map for each area and season might be very informative too. I've heard that albacore are very temperature sensitive and bait selective but is there a relationship between the bait, water temp and season? |
Pelagic predators have been designed by Evolution to favor certain water temps as their prey lives in those temps. Their migratory routes are to follow their prey species as that almost 40 miles a day that they travel is chasing food and that requires a lot of forage to fuel. As well, they must swim continually to supply their gills with oxygen and must feed continually to supply the energy to swim. They are in careful balance as they save energy moving gill plates by continually swimming to pass water over their gills instead...but the trade off is they have to continually eat.
The good news is that Pelagic species by following forage continuously are able to grow faster and have faster reproductive rates ( fewer years to sexual maturity) as compared to resident reef species that just move from deeper to shallower water with the seasons and are essentially dependent on bait fish to come to them. These comparatively sedentary "ambush" predators have very slow metabolisms to compensate for the relatively long time between meals they experience.
That's why only commercial Seiners/Green Stick Boats and Long Liners can impact Pelagic Species populations whereas us rod and reel guys can hammer reefs if we over fish them due to the relative difference in the rates of growth and reproduction.
@OP thx for the fine post.
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