And this rolled across the dock I launch at

There is more fish that size around than many people realize, they simple arent really targeted. For one many of them are too deep or too far offshore for sportfisherman to target, and 2 the commercail guys do not target them either because the areas where they are found have too much by-catch as the bigger ones are more solitary and too much by-catch equals an area getting shut down. It is a lot easier to fill a boat with juveniles than the bigger ones.
Not too sure that the fish was genetically successful or rather old, that thing has been swimming since the beginning of the fishery and has probably spawed for over 80-90 years and like I say there quite a few others where it came from, you dont see people fishing humps in the middle of the straits in 600ft of water.
Last year ('07) of the 65 millions pounds havested commercailly (educated guess) 70-80% of the fish were under 30 lbs, whats worse for a fishery.... leaving the pretty much done big females to reproduce and taking out the future spawners? or...........

Just dont see the difference of taking one breeding fish to get 180 lbs or meat or taking 16 chickens to get 180 lbs of meat, allthough I would rather the chickens too as they are much better eating but of those 16 fish I can tell ya 0% would make it to be that size :2cents: