captains charters and customers what are they saying

[rockhopper]

I thought things have been real slow in jbay this year. Been out there 8 times already and only got one small bass. read this the other day. Anyone else have thoughts about it?

"May 01, 2014
Jamaica Bay Report
by Capt. Vinnie Calabro
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that after this mini-monsoon,Jamaica Bay will get its *** in gear.

Seems like the only game in town is across the pond, so to speak, in New Jersey and Staten Island. Raritan Bay is continuing to produce for both the clammers and bunker boys alike, which is the norm for the early season.

Now, Jamaica Bay is a different story. All the cast is in place, bait, water temperature around 53 degrees (not bad), and winds coming from the west. All this, except any appreciable body of fish."

[rockhopper]

Capt Gene of Montauk Sportfishing-

"The fishing season seems to be getting shorter every year. Years ago we would aim to be fishing by April 1 when we’d head over to Block Island for cod and then in May maybe some flounders. Now that is over and this year the start of the season is closer to June 1. At the other end November has been a bit of a bust with the striped bass. It’s getting harder to make a living every year."

[buckethead]

This was posted by Capt John McMurray.
thought you and the folks here might appreciate reading this. Spot on imo.





Capt. John McMurray

Admitting this is without a doubt bad for business, but let me be frank: The striped bass fishing so far this spring just sucks. Yes, I’m still able to put guys on fish, and out of the eight trips I’ve done this season I’ve had a handful of “good” days, but it’s been ******* hard. A lot harder than it used to be. A lot harder than it ever should be.

We can try to blame it on this year’s weather and what appears to just be a “late start.” Yet given the steady downward spiral we’ve seen over the last several years, the later in May it gets the more it becomes apparent that this is pretty much the new “normal”. Even if we are a month behind, we still should be seeing lots more fish. Maybe it will get better, but I dunno man…

There are indeed some isolated bodies of fish around, but there is very little if any consistency anymore. You may find a few fish in a particular spot and be on them for a couple of days, but rarely more than that. Used to be, if you were on ’em, you were on ’em, usually for weeks.

I can already hear some people howling about the small body of fish in Raritan Bay, which everybody and their mothers have been knocking the **** out of. I can’t even bear to go over there anymore. But there simply is not the distribution of fish you would see with a “healthy” stock. Even just a few years ago, when you had good fishing in Raritan, you would also have good fishing from Jamaica Bay to Western Long Island. That’s just not the case anymore. It’s a huge bummer.

I used to hit the alarm clock every morning during the season and hop out of bed with a sense of anticipation because I knew there was a reasonable chance that we would have good action. Most of the time we did. It was an ego boost to effectively and consistently put anglers on fish. They thought I was good. I thought I was good.

Now, when that alarm clock starts buzzing at 3:30 a.m., I have to force myself out of bed. And the stress of putting anglers on fish, anglers who pay me a lot of money to do just that, starts even before I can get caffeine into my veins. It’s just not that fun anymore man. Over the weekend one of my best clients, who sensed the obvious anxiety, suggested I get a prescription for Xanax. I laughed out loud, but perhaps he wasn’t kidding.

I got into this business because, well, because I just loved striped bass fishing. I would have given up anything and everything to do it, and, as my sordid past indicates, a lot of times I did just that. Sounds kind of pathetic, but I built my life around striped bass. Now it’s disappearing before my very eyes… And it f’n hurts, man. All while a couple dozen jokers sit around a table in a stuffy room in Alexandria and make excuses to avoid taking action.

Getting the play by play at last week’s Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission striped bass board meeting via text while I was getting skunked on the water was disheartening. So, let’s talk a little bit about that meeting. While I’ve covered it in other posts, I should provide a just little background here without getting into too much detail.
David Bailey with a nice striper. Photo by Capt. John McMurray

David Bailey with a nice striper. Photo by Capt. John McMurray

Last year a new striped stock assessment, using up-to-date data and better science, was peer reviewed and released to the public. In short, it recommended new, lower fishing mortality “reference points.” In other words we should be killing fewer striped bass every year. I know, right? Duh! It also made clear that the “spawning stock biomass” is continuing to decline and that it will almost certainly fall below the threshold that defines an overfished stock – if not this year then certainly the next. (Note: striped bass has not been deemed “overfished” for more than two decades.)

In case you didn’t get that, unless we reduce fishing mortality significantly – like right now – we will likely be “overfishing” and the stock will be “overfished” as soon as this year. Pretty damn clear what the right course of action is right? Not if you’re a commissioner …

Instead of accepting the assessment results and taking action the moment they were presented, ASMFC did its typical ******** and moved to further analyze (read, delay). It tasked technical folks to write two addenda. The first would simply propose accepting the newer/best available science and the new reference points (e.g., the lower fishing mortality target) presented in the assessment (why the hell they’d need an addendum to do that I don’t know). The second would propose management alternatives that would get us to the required reduction, which appears to be approximately 30 percent by the 2015 fishing year.

So, back to last week’s meeting. These two addenda were finally presented to the commissioners, and there was the usual BS about how such a reduction would be too drastic and would hurt the fishing industry too much. What about my/our industry? It’s unquestionable that the light-tackle industry is beginning to suffer due to a declining striped bass fishery. Not just guides, but also all those manufacturers of 8- and 9-weight flyrods, light spin gear, soft plastics and plugs, as well as those who sell them. I haven’t done the research, but I have to imagine that there are fewer Bass Assassins, Slug-Gos, etc. sold. I know that I’m certainly not making orders like I used to. And the plug manufacturing industry? Those guys really must be taking a hit, because the surf fishing has just sucked for the last couple of years. Surf fishermen are losing access to this fishery very quickly. Ask any surfcaster who made the annual pilgrimage to Montauk last year how it was. Expect a lot of expletives in their response.

Back to the meeting. There was talk about how the decline is just a “trend.” I should note here that it is quite true that the decline is not entirely due to fishing. We’ve had about a decade of average to well-below average spawns in the Chesapeake or, perhaps more accurately, bad conditions for recently spawned striped bass survival (with the exception of one good year class in 2011). From what I understand, it’s been pretty bad in the Hudson also. This is likely climate related. There was a comment at the meeting that reducing fishing mortality isn’t going to bring those poor year classes back. Well, of course it won’t! But it will help protect those weaker year classes by not exposing them to excessive fishing mortality. It just seems like common sense that when the stock is experiencing a downward trend, no matter what the ultimate cause is, you’d want to reduce pressure on it. But that ain’t the way a lot – I believe most – of ASMFC commissioners think.

It’s interesting that there wasn’t really all that much talk of the viable alternatives themselves save the “slot limit” option, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. Even then it seemed like the discussion was more about how to game such a limit to maximize harvest rather than making a real good-faith effort to seriously reduce fishing mortality to the point where it might actually make a difference.

What I found most irritating was the motion to achieve the fishing mortality reduction in three years vs. the originally intended one year – in other words, incrementally ratcheting down fishing mortality until the target was achieved in 2017. That is complete crap, man. Just more delay with a fishery that needs decisive action now, before we get into even deeper water and I end up having to sell my boats.

And, as an aside, the striped bass management plan requires managers to end overfishing in just one year. But the ASMFC commissioners apparently ignored that technicality.

We were assured at the last two meetings that they would achieve the fishing mortality reduction in 2015, and a lot of us felt like even this was an unreasonable delay given they could have taken action in time for the 2014 fishing year – before overfishing occurred and before we had an overfished stock.

Of course the motion to drag out the harvest reduction passed and will be considered as an option in the addendum when it goes out to the public (presumably after the August meeting). There were other options that will be added to the document before it goes out to the public, each one a seemingly new and creative way to delay or weaken any real effort to prevent the stock’s further decline. Most of it is difficult to understand stuff that will make your head spin, but trust me on the intent. Reading between the lines, it all looks like more analysis/more delay.

Given the conversation that took place last week, I’m gonna be damned surprised if they agree on anything constructive that will benefit the striped bass stock (not to mention businesses like mine who depend on it) by the 2015 fishing season. These guys couldn’t even agree to use the best available science (e.g., the reference points from the benchmark assessment) without doing a darn addendum and putting it out to public hearing first. By the way, they were supposed to do this back in February (see At ASMFC Last Week, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly) but then had some sort of convoluted conversation about how it should be put off until this meeting (last week). Yet they still didn’t agree to put it out to public comment! Seriously man… it would be funny if it wasn’t so F’n infuriating! Maybe they will put it out in August, but at this point, delay seems to be the best way to maintain the status quo and allow overfishing. Sad, but I’m afraid it’s true.

Of course, striped bass, or any species that the ASMFC manages, isn’t bound by the same sort of firm rebuilding goals and deadlines (specified in the Magnuson Stevens Act) that federally managed species have to comply with. If they were, the best available science (aka the new reference points) would have been accepted as such without question. Regulations that would achieve a 30 percent reduction and prevent overfishing and an overfished stock would have been promptly put in place, certainly by the 2014 fishing year.

But that’s obviously not happening now, precisely because the ASMFC has the “flexibility” to delay, delay, delay. And that’s exactly what they do. As a result, the great majority of stocks they manage are in pretty bad shape.

So why are parts of the recreational fishing community asking for that sort of flexibility in managing federal stocks!? Yeah, yeah… I’m not gonna harp on that again, as I’ve done it in post after post, but it really is ridiculous, especially since the recreational sector benefits from the sort of abundance that comes from rebuilt stocks. Instead there are people out there who are willing to **** it all away over stupid red snapper, which only a small fraction of anglers fish for anyway.

At any rate, striped bass continues to tank, and I’m pretty damn sure that all these substandard trips I’m running, along with the ever increasing skunkings, is gonna crush businesses like mine. Meanwhile the national “conservation” organizations that claim to represent recreational fishermen promote “flexibility,” which sells guys like you and me down the river so narrow special interests can benefit. It’s pretty ******* depressing. Maybe I should add Prozac to the Xanax prescription.

Yeah, I know this is somewhat of a rant (if you want a more rational description of what’s going on I suggest Reading Charlie Witek’s blog: ASMFC Shows Us Why Even Striped Bass Should Not “Be Managed Like Striped Bass”). But I’m tired and disappointed. At the fishing, at the managers, at ASMFC, which is supposed to represent the best interests of the public but which so obviously doesn’t, at those recreational fishing organizations that used to be the “good guys” who seem to now be dumb enough to promote just the sort of flexibility that is messing up my striped bass fishery. (Note: It’s kinda funny that they are using striped bass as an example of successful management, which should tell you that they just don’t know what the hell they are talking about.) I’m tired and disappointed at myself for not just canceling my charters and going down there last week to at least try and convince some of those people that this decline is real and that it’s affecting a lot of people, like me. Something must be done … soon. And it can’t be a half measure. I’m gonna do my best to make it to the August meeting. Stay tuned..

In the meantime, please call or email your commissioners. Insist that they stop dillydallying and making excuses for delay. You can find their contact info here: ASMFC commissioners.

[7deadlyplugs]

rockhopper I like Capt Gene. Read his reports all the time. He is one of the most honest captains out there. His latest Montauk report-

"Inshore the striped bass fishing still isn?t what it should be. Saturday morning I took a tour after the half day boats got in. One boat had 10 bass, another had 5 and one only had a single bass, and they were all were top line charterboats of equal talent. It seems if you can find the right spot you can do all right, and it?s not always structure. Often, it?s just a couple of birds picking away."
For more info about fishing in Montauk, check out www.montauksportfishing.com

[Monty]

I just read Capt John McMurray latest Reel-Time article:

http://www.reel-time.com/articles/co.../eat-bluefish/


Eat Bluefish!
Posted on June 17, 2014 by Capt. John McMurray Charter Captain
Keeper stripers showed in good numbers this week, so why the F are we killing them all!

Yes, we finally had some good striper fishing this week, which is a darn good thing, as at least for a few days I don’t feel like strangling everyone.

What’s left of the last strong year class we had, the 2003s, seems to have finally stumbled across all those immense schools of bunker that have been loitering along the south shore of western Long Island. (The 2011s were strong also, but they have yet to recruit). It was actually pretty epic at times, with adult menhaden spraying out of the water as 25- to 35-pound bass boiled underneath them. They were taking surface plugs, even flies if you fished them right. Most people of course were live lining. … Pretty much everyone was killing fish. I mean a lot of them. Unfortunate that this exploded on Sunday, so there were a lot of boats out and a lot of guys on the beach. All of them killing fish.

I get it, man. Bass haven’t really been around in good numbers in the last few years, so when they did show, everyone felt they had the right. And I suppose they did. Still, it doesn’t make it right.

But before getting to that, lemme just talk about the lack of fish. Some of the unenlightened still blame it on the weather, confirming their armchair theories with the sudden onslaught of 2003s in June. But that ain’t it. There are simply less stripers around. We all see it on the water, and it’s been pretty well documented by the pointy-head science guys, also. But these infrequent slugs of fish moving though, while awesome even as they become more short-lived and infrequent, probably aren’t helping convince managers that there’s a real problem.

It’s not unusual for fish to be locally abundant, even when a stock is depleted overall, and such pockets of good fish stand out even more when they appear in an otherwise empty sea. They have become the new norm in the striped bass fishery, and it’s kinda a bummer. I pretty much built my business around the schoolie fishery. I really hate to be one of those old guys waxing about “how it used to be,” but we used to consistently catch a dozen, maybe two dozen fish in the 18- to 24-inch range, with the occasional good fish (in the 30- to 40-inch range) mixed in. Even if we didn’t catch a good fish, there was always the expectation that we could, and that always brought people back.

Now what we have are scenarios like the one I described above, where we have brief but extraordinary showings of fish, all of which are generally large. A couple of years ago, right around July 4th , we actually stuck more 40 and 50s in the space of a just few days than I had ever seen in my life. On the third day, I ran out of Breezy Point after telling my clients how awesome it had been the prior two days to find the same sort of bait concentrations, identical conditions, but zero fish. The small but concentrated body of fish had simply moved on. There wasn’t much before them, and nothing came in their wake.

I’m all for extraordinary fishing, but it’s tough to handle the huge highs and then the low lows. I imagine it’s like coming down from a good crack buzz or something. Leaves you empty and just wanting more. For sure I’d rather just have the sort of consistency we used to have, which comes with a healthy fishery and a good distribution of age classes, so I don’t feel like I want to punch everyone during three-quarters of the fishing season.

But I’ve talked about all this stuff before, and I’m getting off track. The point is that when these fish do show up, why do we all feel compelled to kill them? I mean, come on man. Don’t we realize that these are the last of a great year class and it would benefit us all to just let them go so that maybe we can catch them again next year? For Christ’s sake, the big ones don’t even taste good! If you’ve ever eaten a fish over 40 inches I’m guessing you know what I mean. They have those thin purple veins throughout the fillet. I imagine it’s very similar to eating a ribeye from an 80-year-old steer. Yuck!

While we’re on the subject, striped bass in general doesn’t really taste like anything. Sure it’s “white” and “flakey,” which for some reason is what the magazines say we should want from our fish, but seriously, it’s relatively tasteless. Sure, it’s good when you fry it, but anything is good fried. I suppose all the chefs like it because it’s, well, bland and serves as a good medium for various sauces they’ve concocted, and I get that also. But I dunno man. When I eat fish, I kinda want it to taste like fish.

So … brass tacks. I’m sure there are some who may disagree with me here, but as a food fish, striped bass generally sucks. And as we all pretty much know at this point, the stock is in trouble. If all of you guys really give a **** about the stock as much as you say you do, then stop killing them! I know, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the hunt. Hell, if you don’t get all fired up when it goes off, then you shouldn’t be fishing! But take a step back next time you get into them good. And think to yourself all the reasons you should just snap a quick photo and throw that big beautiful fish back in the water, so it can spawn again, so that another angler can encounter it one day, when it’s even bigger!

Listen, there are plenty of bluefish around right now. In fact, I’ve been having some epic fishing in just a couple feet of water, fishing poppers for some monster bluefish. If you are turning your nose up right now, you are gonna have a really tough seven or eight years before the striped bass resource gets back to where it should be. And that’s assuming Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission does the right thing, and we all know it may not.

The point is that if you want to bring something home for the table, kill a bluefish.

Don’t give me that ******** about how you simply “don’t like” bluefish. And yeah, I’ve heard the one about placing a bluefish on plank. Placing the plank and the fish on a grill. Cooking for 30 minutes, then throwing away the fish and eating the plank.

The truth is the stigma comes from all those jackasses eating bluefish that are either too large (and have been eating bunker their whole lives) or aren’t fresh. Dollars to doughnuts, if you don’t like bluefish, that’s because you haven’t prepared them right. So I’m gonna do you a huge favor and give you my double-secret bluefish recipe, even though I’ve been hoarding it for myself and my family for the last 20 years.

Trust me. If you like fish at all, you will like this!

First, cut the throat of the fish when you catch it and let it bleed out on the ice. Then,

Take a “small” bluefish (5 pounds and under), fillet and skin.
Pre-heat oven to 500 degrees or as hot as that MF will go
Put a generous slab of butter on a 12 inch by 12 inch piece of aluminum foil
Put the fillet on top of it
Generously salt then cover it with lemon pepper (if you don’t have, then just use lemon juice and cracked pepper)
Put two more generous tabs of butter on top
Slice up some onions and place across the fillet
Wrap up the fillet
Place it on a cookie sheet
Note: if you do more than one fillet, wrap each fillet individually
Cook for 8 to 10 minutes
Put on plate, open the foil and eat right from the foil (note: there is no reason to remove it from the foil. If you do that you will totally F it up).
Note: Asparagus goes really good with this, and so does a baked potato … and, um, so does an ice cold Budweiser out of a can. You fancy beer snobs can drink whatever trendy IPA you might have in the fridge. And, um, the wife says pinot grigio goes well with it also.

Yes, bluefish is a “fishy” tasting fish, and yes, the big ones can be “oily.” But the ones under five pounds, if fresh, are really F’n good if you just give them a chance – especially when they are prepared in the way described above, where you are basically steaming the fillet in butter. I mean really, what could be better? There are a lot of other ways to prepare them. Capt. Paul Eidman makes ceviche, which I haven’t yet tried, but I’m told is awesome. (Hook us up with a recipe, Paul!)

The point of all this drivel about killing/cooking/eating bluefish is so you knuckleheads might think twice about killing bass in the increasingly rare instances they do show these days. Seriously, just because they haven’t been around, should we knock the **** out of them when they do show? Is that bland striped bass fillet with the gnarly veins running though it worth the spawning potential you just destroyed? The answer is no! All the talk means nothing if you choose not to walk the walk. Take home a couple of bluefish instead. Try that recipe, then thank me in the morning.

Peace…

[nitestrikes]

There is a small trend developing among some of the Montauk Captains.
Just read this report. Dark hope it's ok to give some publicity to this Capt. Capt Tom of the Mystique. Here is his report.

"Charlie, Allison and Bill went fishing on the Mystique Monday July 7. We left the dock at about 11:00. The bass fishing was lights out red hot with big fish between 25 and 38 pounds. Several captains at my dock and I have been encouraging people to take only one of these large fish per person. We kept one fish per person and released several. We were back at the dock by 3:00. The amount of fillet on these fish are plentiful and it was nice to release a few. The water is still pretty cold and the released fish swam away strong and happy."

[J Barbosa]

Thats a great start

I wish more of the NJ charter boats would encourage their fares to keep only one fish.

[DarkSkies]

There is a small trend developing among some of the Montauk Captains.
Just read this report. Dark hope it's ok to give some publicity to this Capt. Capt Tom of the Mystique. Here is his report.

Nitestrikes, that's encouraging. The honest Captains out there with decades under their belts know we're in trouble. I mentioned earlier that Montauk Captains have developed the hybrid bottom fish/bass trips because the quantity of bass available at Montauk, even for those fishing the Rips, has dropped off significantly in the last few years. These people are self-aware and doing their best to save the fishery.

to them and others. Feel free to post links or quotes when you people come across info like this. I would be glad to give them some free publicity.