captains charters and customers what are they saying

[surfstix1963]

All I can say is stay tight to the bottom no more then 5ft. off sandeel presentation and any piece of beach structure should not be overlooked this is some of the toughest fishing we have seen in a very long time.

[rockhopper]

Thanks for sharing SS. This was a report from Capt Gene at Montauk. Looks like the bite that Montauk had is really dying out.


"The gannets are here. Most years the boats would be getting out the Sabiki rigs to start jigging up some herring for live baits, but not this year. The birds all down on the south side eating small weakfish, snappers and such. And, the herring might be too big for the stripers that are around anyway. Every day is a little different, with one day just about everything being too small and the next day enough keepers around to make the trip worthwhile.

But, they are a long way from the harbor – Ditch Plains and west, and seemingly moving farther away each day. Charter boats are bringing back a half dozen or so fish per day, a long way from what it should be. With the fall being so mild, you would expect the bass to stay around until Thanksgiving or so."

[seamonkey]

Thanks for the honesty Capt!

[seamonkey]

a barnegat report for today pretty bad


11/9 outa BI

In short...no fish. Started outa BI at sunrise and made our way north. Birds and bait everywhere as I'm sure everyone knows by now, but the striped ones are hiding somewhere....

Stopped to jig a few areas off ibsp in the morning where we had good marks but nothing but dogfish. Trolled of the bathing beach and the mansion but no love. We ended up off of seaside in a fleet where we heard there were some blues being caught but I guess we for there after the bite died.

I got a Bad taste in my mouth so far with this season but we still have time

[surferman]

From a guy whos brother went on the Miss Barnegat Light

"Very frustrating to say the least. My brother went out on the Miss Barnaget lite approx. 80 people, there were less than 30 fish caught only 3 bass that were keeper and some blues. This has been a little frustrating for me as the conditions are great for fishing ,but the fish are spotty , not like in the past years."

[captnemo]

"The great fishing that the boats have been experiencing over the past week was totally non-existent today. The only boats seeming to have any success were the ones trolling. The area between the channels where the best fishing has been was a virtual parking lot filled with party boats, charter boats, and a multitude of smaller private boats. I caught the boat's first bass of the day, albeit a short, on our second drift and that would be all she wrote for me. The forty plus fares on board tallied a total of 2 keeper bass, 4 short bass, & a couple of bluefish. Do the math as most fares caught the skunk. "


This was a report from yesterday. Sea hunter. Today in the same area some fish were caught until the fleet arrived and put them down. When the bass have been there in the past and they weren't feeding with all the sandeels its usually because they are not as thick as Capts are claiming. Sandeels are great for consistency when jigging or trolling. It is easy fishing until the traffic shuts it down. I read on another post here about folks arriving late to the party and jigging in the middle of feeding fish. This happens every year. I wish there was some way in the boating safety classes to teach these newbies proper fishing etiquette.

[DarkSkies]

The following quote came from someone who has family in the Charter Industry. They were talking about the NNJ 2013 Striped Bass season:

"I know the fish I was catching are the end of the year fish. 17-24inch fish is the beginning of the end. I hope the warm front this week breaths some life into this uneventful fall.
Yea, there have been some good days, but not like it should be. Simply not enough fish around. I do not know the reason because there is still alot of bait, but there is not a big body of fish in our area. Just sucks!"

[basshunter]

I saw this in another thread "why the decline in stripers" by surfstix. Quote from Capt John McMurray. very chilling to read:

Great read by Capt. John McMurray
Here is the text of the article.
Extremely frustrating


But the point is, striped bass, which are becoming more and more contracted/concentrated as they decline, and more and more susceptible, have literally no sanctuary anymore.

But I will note again that because of the bouts of good fishing I described above, it?s hard to convince managers that this is indeed a serious situation that requires management action now, rather than when they finally figure out that overfishing is occurring and/or that the stock is overfished. As I?ve mentioned before, managers don?t have the perspective we have, and most just don?t spend the time on the water we do.

So yes, I?ve had some of the best days of striped bass fishing in my life in the last three years. Days where I?ve seen more 40s and 50s in the space of a day or two than I?ve ever seen in my entire life. The above described fishing is a good example of that. But while such concentrations of fish are intense, they are restricted to very specific areas, and they are generally short lived. And that makes sense given all the good year-classes we had in the nineties and even early two-thousands and the poor to average ones we?ve had during the last 8 years (with the anomalous exception of 2011 of course). As we fish on these larger older fish, they get fewer and fewer, and show up in fewer places along the coast, but when they show up, boy do they show up. And herein lies the problem, and why we will likely see an accelerated slide.

Years ago, when such bait concentrations occurred and stripers got on them, it was generally an island-wide event. In the ?good-old-days? in Oct we?d have solid fishing from Montauk to Sandy Hook, NJ. In other words there was a wide distribution of fish, like there should be when you have a healthy population.

Now, because the stock has contracted (note, this is not anecdotal, a peer-reviewed stock assessment has confirmed a sharp decline since 2006), what we have are exactly these sorts of short but intense slugs of fish showing at very specific areas. And here?s what really sucks about that. Because of the internet, smart-phones etc., when such good fishing does occur, the word gets out so quick that every freak?n boat in the region is on them the very next day, if not that afternoon. And they are all ?limiting-out? (I hate that phrase!) every single day, especially the party boats, who often take in excess of 100 fares and run more than one trip a day. Because we?ve had 8 years of average to below average young-of-the-year indices, we really just don?t have much in the way of schoolies anymore. So when these bodies of fish do show, they are pretty much all keepers, and most people feel entitled to keep their two per person.

Unfortunately, those of us who thrive on releasing most of the stripers we catch are without-a-doubt a minority. For a long time the catch-and-release thing seemed like it was catching on/growing. But it stalled once stripers got a bit more difficult to find. I?d even argue that the catch and release crowd has shrunk during the last few years, for reasons of which I?m not quite sure. What?s really irritating is that there are plenty of boneheads out there who refer to such anglers as ?elitists? for not wanting to kill every darn keeper they catch. You tell me how having some foresight, or simply wanting these fish to be around so that our kids might be able to catch a few is ?elitist?!?

The striped bass situation will likely get considerably worse before it gets any better. History has been pretty clear that ASMFC doesn?t take significant action until the situation is quite dire, and there?s no reason to believe it will be any different here. What?s really unfortunate is that managers are probably looking at such fishing reports off of Fire Island and thinking ?there are plenty of fish around, the stock is fine?.