the west coast of Florida). The amount of billfishing 

 occurring between Panama City. Florida, and the 

 southern tip of Florida is negligible (less than 5% of 

 the total in the eastern half of the Gulf of Mexico, 

 we believe). Billfishing other than from South Pass 

 and the three ports in northwest Florida (Pen- 

 sacola, Destin, and Panama City) in the northeast- 

 em gulf coast is also negligible (also less than 5% of 

 the total in the eastern half of the Gulf of Mexico). 



We do not have any measures of the reliability of 

 the data provided by the sportfishermen. We can 

 report that almost all the sportfishermen appeared 

 to be very sincere and genuinely interested in help- 

 ing and cooperating with us. Data that were obvi- 

 ously erroneous were discarded; data that were 

 questionable were disregarded. 



Further details of the method of analyses are pre- 

 sented in the following sections of this paper. 



CATCH, RAISE, AND EFFORT 

 STATISTICS 



The number of billfishes raised, hooked, and 

 boated by months for both the South Pass and 

 northwest Florida areas are presented in Tables 1 

 and 2. Although a few trips were taken as early as 

 April, the fishing season essentially lasts from May 

 through October. 



If the percentages at the bottom of Tables 1 and 2 

 may be considered as indices of the proficiency of 

 anglers, an obviously significant difference can be 



Table 1. — Billfishes raised (R), hooked (H), and boated 

 (B, includes releases) off South Pass, 1971. 



Table 2. — Billfishes raised (R). hooked (H), and boated 

 (B, includes releases) off northwest Florida, 1971. 



seen between the two areas for white marlin. In the 

 South Pass area, only 37.1% of the 167 raised white 

 marlin were hooked; of the 167. only 10.8% were 

 boated; and of the 62 hooked white marlin, 29.0% 

 were boated. Comparable percentages for white 

 marlin in the northwest Florida area were 61.0, 

 39.0. and 63.9. Little difference between areas is 

 seen for the other two species. 



Although we are unable to provide any factual 

 information to explain the greater percentages of 

 hooked and boated white marlin in the northwest 

 Florida area, we can provide some conjecture. One 

 is that many more boats from northwest Florida are 

 captained by professional fishermen (charter boat 

 captains), whereas most of the boats from South 

 Pass are captained by sportfishermen. Second, 

 white marlin are much more abundant in northwest 

 Florida, thus providing more experience with this 

 species to the fishermen from this area. 



A comparison of the catch, effort, and catch- 

 per-hour of billfishes in the two areas is presented in 

 Tables 3 and 4. Catch-per-hour is used here, as data 

 on raises were not available prior to 1971. 



For South Pass, the total number of billfishes (73) 

 caught in 1971 was the second lowest. Fewer white 

 marlin were caught in 1971 than any previous year 

 of record. The catch-per-hour indicated that 1971 

 was in general a below average year: about average 

 for blue marlin, lowest of any year for white marlin, 

 and below average for sailfish. 



More than twice as much effort was expended off 

 northwest Florida (7,890 h) than off South Pass 



273 



