The Oblivious Surfcaster

Reading report threads on other sights and how many skunks are reported.
The poster seems genuinely surprised they are putting in so many hours and catching nothing or very few fish.

They have a passion for catching striped bass.
Sure they do. :huh:
How absolutely stupid/ignorant they must be to not see the amount of pressure put on the Striped Bass the last few years by the increased amount of fisherman and regulations that are far to generous. It should not be surprising that good fishing is very spotty. Anyone see a trend the last few years on the catching?

Hope the Oblivious Surfcaster enjoys fishing, cause there is going to be a lot less catching.

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Originally Posted by Monty

. Anyone see a trend the last few years on the catching?

Hope the Oblivious Surfcaster enjoys fishing, cause there is going to be a lot less catching.

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Monty, I have been seeing this trend, for the last 5-8 years, a gradual decline in my catches in any one area...This spurred me on to fish and learn other places..
My point: If fishing was consistently good in NJ, I would not have had to take to the road to find fish when there are significant gaps in our NJ bass fishing.........



The bright side....
I'm trying to lecture on this site about it less...As I feel some may get tired of seeing the same rants from me at times...:boring:
However, each time out, I'm meeting more folks of all ages, who are now ranting to me...how bad the fishing is, and what their reasons and solutions could be.....

I do agree with your points...Apathy Re: Fishermen activism is at al all time high...but I am refreshed by meeting a few people, all ages and backgrounds, who now seem to care and feel we must get involved before it's too late....

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Originally Posted by Monty

How absolutely stupid/ignorant they must be to not see the amount of pressure put on the Striped Bass the last few years by the increased amount of fisherman and regulations that are far to generous. It should not be surprising that good fishing is very spotty. Anyone see a trend the last few years on the catching?

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The trend I see is fish a lot and you will catch fish. It has become like throwing darts at a dartboard. Does anyone remember catching 50 fish a night off the jetties in the 90's? Where are those fish now they're all dead is the short answer. When you have capt Ron saying its the best fishing he's seen in years what do you expect guys to believe. This morning there were not any shorts on the beach. Small fish you can get in the back bays.They haven't even beenn thick in the rivers this year. It's all about keepers for a lot of folks who just started. Its hard to expect them to care when many of them have never had a 50 fish night.

Monty I can see by your posts that you care about the stripers. Many of the new anglers can not be faulted because they do not have a frame of reference like hookset said. Education is the key. They need to see how valuable these fish are to the economy and what happened when they were not here. Many tackle shops suffered during that time. Education = Awareness.

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Originally Posted by clamchucker

Monty I can see by your posts that you care about the stripers. Many of the new anglers can not be faulted because they do not have a frame of reference like hookset said. Education is the key. They need to see how valuable these fish are to the economy and what happened when they were not here. Many tackle shops suffered during that time. Education = Awareness.

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:clapping: clamchucker.
You have to consider that many of the frequent posters are new. They post a lot and are learning. For a big part of the NJ fishers the best fishing they ever had was island beach in the fall of 2011. A new class of surf fishermen was born back then. Many guys tried their hand at it when John from Betty and Nicks posted up the reports saying that was the most epic fall of all time. Although that was total hype it brought a lot of newbies out to the suds. They came and caught. You take a guy who has never caught. bring him to the sandy beaches of ibsp. He catches 20 fish every time he goes there for 3 times in a row and he is hooked. He starts to think that is the norm. When the fishing got hard as it is now they were not prepared to deal with it. Thats their frame of reference like clamchuck said. Of course they will be sad when they cant catch 20 fish each time. and they will gripe about it on the internet.

The definition of epic should be clearly defined in some surf fishing manual for the newbies.
A dude catches 4 keepers and it's epic. Epic should be banned from the reports section unless numbers of over 20 or 30 bass are involved.

At least 20 or 30 Basshunter they have never seen blitzes that lasted for days, bait so thick the wash was brown down the entire beach hooking a fish was hard because you snagged bait working your plug blues and bass bouncing off your waders.The last time I saw Epic was about 10 years ago.

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Originally Posted by basshunter

The definition of epic should be clearly defined in some surf fishing manual for the newbies.
A dude catches 4 keepers and it's epic. Epic should be banned from the reports section unless numbers of over 20 or 30 bass are involved.

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Originally Posted by surfstix1963

At least 20 or 30 Basshunter they have never seen blitzes that lasted for days, bait so thick the wash was brown down the entire beach hooking a fish was hard because you snagged bait working your plug blues and bass bouncing off your waders.The last time I saw Epic was about 10 years ago.

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I haven't been around to witness anything as EPIC as described above. I don't think we will see that any time soon either.

Probably not J I believe those days are over with, the pressure these fish are under with so many people fishing they just cannot reproduce and grow fast enough.

You will find a lot of them now at island beach. 3 and 4 deep by the weekend.

Amazing how things change over the years.