In the south Atlantic, the use of gill nets increased rapidly during the 1980's compared to the otter trawl. However, in the 1990's the otter trawl, in particular the flynet in North Carolina, has dominated the south Atlantic commercial catch. Behavioral observations suggest that weakfish forage along eel grass beds eating blue crabs and spot. Food habits appear to differ among estuarine areas. Even though the majority of recreationally caught weakfish were taken from boats, the catch from shore during the fall migration can be substantial.
All indications are that the species is over-fished and probably undergoing recruitment failure.
Boats can simply fish in the EEZ and land in a state that is open. The weakfish mortality rate is 3 times the normal mortality rate of a healthy fishery. Since weakfish mature at a small size and are very prolific spawners, it will not take very long to rebuild the stocks if we can bring ourselves to significantly lower the fishing mortality rate. In certain areas such as North Carolina, both small and large weakfish exist. The fact that North Carolina flynet operations and scrap fisheries have targeted these groups of fish exacerbates the problem of management for coastal states.