I have heard similar stories from the guys I grew up fishing around. Good thread.
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It is an accepted notion that there are natural up and down cycles in the population of various species of saltwater fish.
Fishing both boat and surf since the 1970's I have experienced the good times and bad times when pursuing various species of salt water fish.
I have seen the years of fantastic weakfishing in Delaware Bay, Raritan Bay and Barnegat Bay. Only to see a total collapse of that fishery in current times.
Overall the fish population in Raritan Bay seems to be on a steady decline.
Whiting and ling which were once available in the surf at Island Beach State Park are now ghosts of the past. The same goes for croakers which are now caught in diminished quantities.
The fall of 1998 was the best season of surf fishing for striped bass in my lifetime. Since that year the fishing has steadily declined. Even though a good number of big fish are being caught in the spring along the Jersey Coast due to the great number of large bunker available for food as these fish migrate north. Unfortunately these fish seem to get stupid with the abundance of bunker along the coast and make for easy pickings.
Also the bluefish in the 2 to 3 pound class which in the past were caught readily along the surf have seemed to disappear.
The following is an excerpt from an article which I believe we should all take into consideration.
CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY
APRIL 21, 1997
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FISHERIES, WILDLIFE AND OCEANS
(from Jersey Coast Anglers Association) May 1997 Newspaper
{Nature provides balance very well on its own. It keeps the predator/prey relationship in check, but man’s greed is the fly in the ointment. For example, look at the lemmings in Alaska. The lemmings go through a cycle that begins at a low number and stocks build through the years when the plants they feed on are in a cycle of abundance. As their stocks increase, the number of predators increase as well. When they become overabundant and overgraze their range, they march en masse into the ocean, drastically reducing their numbers. The following year, the predators, foxes, owls and others, produce fewer offspring. The stocks of both forage species and predators drop in unison and remain in harmony. It is easy to study lemmings because all the dramatic action takes place on land under the watchful eyes of scientists. As a key part of the food chain, changes in the lemming stock are dramatic and easy to observe. The reason I use this analogy is because menhaden, sea herring, mackerel, and butterfish do not reduce their numbers by committing mass suicide, however, humans have mass killing techniques such as purse seines, gill nets, and otter trawls that can accomplish the same results through overfishing, whether stocks are abundant or not. Our techniques have become so sophisticated that we have pushed many species to the brink of extinction.
In the ocean, the study of ecosystem management becomes much more complex. We cannot easily see the changes in stock in the same fashion that we observe changes in the number of lemmings, foxes and owls. For years, menhaden have been a major part of the striped bass and bluefish diet. There are studies to confirm this relationship. When we overharvest menhaden, other species like squid, sand eels and mackerel have historically made up the difference in the diets of striped bass and bluefish. The stocks of these species have now declined and have left few alternatives for supplementing the diet of striped bass and bluefish. For the last thirty years, NMFS has continued to declare some species, especially forage fish, as "underutilized." With the collapse of historical fisheries, many commercial fishermen have begun to harvest these "underutilized" species. There has been a dramatic increase in the harvest of bunker, herring, squid, ling and whiting. Some people do not consider ling and whiting as forage species, but bluefin tuna feed on them regularly. We are totally destroying the delicate ecological balance of nature by our unchecked overfishing and the result will be a dramatic shift in all predator/prey relationships in our oceans. We have seen what happens on land when we upset the balance of nature. Flooding, global warming, loss and contamination of potable water, extinction of species, and other man-made catastrophes all take place. When will we ever learn? It is my sincerest hope that the process will begin with this hearing today. }
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Originally Posted by yardvillejimmy
Yardville, I know you and the OFFC have decades of experience seeing the rise and fall of fishing, the good times and the bad. I was hoping that one of ya's would chime in here. Thanks for the post, very informative.
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