Sharing your catch

[cheebaweebie]

I posted a response to another thread and it gave me an idea for this one...
I have two seperate groups of friends I dive and fish with regularly... 1 group lives by the saying what is caught on the boat is split by the boat. We split gas, food, ice, bait and beer. The other group of friends I dive with take a totally opposite approach, what you catch is yours... I even had a friend through a complete hissy fit because out of the 5 guys that were on the boat (4 were diving and 1 sat on the boat for saftey) when I split the fish up we speared (after cleaning), everyone got an equal share of each type of fish we got (hog, mangrove, grouper, AJ, sheeps head) and the guy who threw the hissy (shot mostly hog fish) only got a small bag of hog because the rest was split amoung the 5. Even though the guy got a HUGE bag of Mangrove.. he still stormed off and drove away in a fit. No one else complained.
Now you know which group I like going out with more often.
Anyone wish to chime in on this one.

[No Misses]

As you saw in my post on the "What is Your Favorite fish to shoot and eat" thread, I believe in splitting the catch among everybody on the boat. Sometimes it is your day and you can't miss. Other days, you can't shoot a fish to save your life. There is skill involved in hunting. But, sometimes the fish/lobsters just are not there. Every time that we go out, there is always one person on the boat that just seems to be on fire that day. It is not always the same person. When you average out amongst the group, we carry a pretty good average. Everybody gets to share in the “boats” success.

My favorite scenario goes like this; we go diving and catch enough fish/lobsters so that everybody on the boat has enough for at least one meal. I call my neighbors on the way home and convince them to cook, either that night or the following day. We invite enough people so that all of the catch is consumed. If there is too much, I will vacuum pack and freeze it in dinner size portions. There is nothing better than sitting down to a meal with friends and knowing that your skill has provided it. I would much rather share my fish while it is fresh, than freeze it for later.

P.S. I do sometimes dive with people that do not share this same mindset. As long as I know what their deal is before we hit the water, I am OK with them keeping all of “their fish”. Of course, I reserve the right to not drop them on any of my honey holes. Do you know how to make sand angels?

[No Misses]

bump...

[mark44883]

i am in to shareing. hunt hard or go home!!

[Jipps]

I am definately for sharing when its with my group, but if im on a commercial boat I typically dont share it w/ the boat for obvious reasons. I do however throw a few fillets to the captain on a good day. I agree w/ no misses, the best time to eat it is fresh. Its alot of fun to get everyone together for a fish fry, especially when you shoot some big grouper. Some friends of mine shot two grouper one trip...of course they still got 27lbs of meat from them. The next two nights the entire dive club got together and ate fried grouper...and we still didnt get through the first fish, lol.

[mulefeathers]

We always split the catch. We split all of the expenses why would we not split the catch. Most of the time if we have a good day our entire families come together for a rather large fish fry. On those bad days were we only harvest enough to maybe feed one family we give it to whoever wants to clean the fish.

[Grin]

I dive with No Misses and some other buddies alot and we never even thought about taking what we catch for just ourselves. But then I started diving with these guys who have dove charter type cattle boats and they carried their cattle boat ways over onto my boat. I noticed they put all their catch in a bag on the boat and they kept all their catch for themselves individually. I really don't care much, and I feel they loose in the end. I am pretty good at my little passion here and most of them will end up with less in the end. And of course is on my boat i will now be a little more selective on where my drops are due to this. Meaning the supreme spots are reserevd for my dives now. They started it! On No Misses boat we are all about equal(huntingwise) and as Dave stated, any day can be yours to be the hero or yours to be the zero, and the catch split even without even thinking about it makes it kind of nice. I also like to drop my good dive buddies on good spots, to impress them, and it's a little easier to do this without knowing they might hit the motherload and take it all home with them and I may get skunked. Greedieness gets you nowhere!
If I'm on a cattle boat, I'm keeping everything I(or my group) catch though!

[mcc2318]

if your with buddies I'm all about sharing

[kyfriedchipper]

interesting - i would think most would go for the split method - but i'm sure there are lots of selfish fisherman out there too

[JFH]

Never been on a share trip although I am not opposed to it...been on many boats that do it the same way. On my boat I tell them it is keep your own catch, although nobody goes home empty handed as I tell them if someone has a bad day we will give them some fish. Personally if I have a bad day, I will rarely take fish from the others as I prefer to only keep what I catch...mental thing with some pride that I am eating what I catch. I feel share trips tend to promote shooting anything legal to meet the boat limit. If I am on that type of trip I will not be as selective as I normally would. If I get a couple big fish to start the day, I will pick and choose the large fish as I really don't want to clean a bunch of fish when I get home. I love to shoot fish but I have a great appreciation for our resources and personally prefer to only shoot what I feel like shooting...not have the pressure of killing just to feed everyone on the boat. I would actually make out better most of the time if it was a share trip as some of my buddies are shooting machines.
To each his own, main thing is be safe and have fun.
I would do a share trip if the crew wanted to but everyone I have on the boat really likes keeping their catch.