captains charters and customers what are they saying

[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!"

[jigfreak]

Sorry ds that dude is absolutely not in the loop. Didn't you know there is a big body of fish still coming down from MA? Yessir, they are all staging in MA and will be here next week according to what the latest internet genius said. I can't believe the lack of intelligence of some of these posters.
check it out - hot off the presses

A friend of mine on the southeast side of Long Island has tired arms from reeling in all of this bass. He said one day they were virtually beaching themselves. We are also not hearing negatives from CT or MA either. Nonstop action.

[nitestrikes]

check it out - hot off the presses


A friend of mine on the southeast side of Long Island has tired arms from reeling in all of this bass. He said one day they were virtually beaching themselves.

This is why you can't trust the internet or 3rd party reports. When you say southeast side of Long Island you are usually referring to mecca. I was at montauk this past weekend and got one rat. A few others were caught on bucktails they were about 20". The action was slow at best. As for the other beaches the south shore has been dead for almost 2 weeks now. Fish beaching themselves? I think someone is smoking too much crack.

[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?.

[seamonkey]

"Without question there has been a big decline in bass numbers since the late 90's and earlier 2000's. The spring of 2013 was a case study in the state of the Delaware Bay spawning stock. There were essentially no bass in numbers at any of the usual spots in April, and there wasn't an appreciable number of bass in the lower bay until early May where you felt that you had a chance at a good catch. We did have some good catches in April, but mostly WAY up the bay in areas that we've only HAD to fish in the last couple years. A few good catches of fish in an isolated location doesn't redeem the state of the entire fishery.

If you don't think the bass numbers were lower this spring and the spring prior, I wish we could travel back in time to the late 90's and early 2000's when there were acres of bass spread from the upper reaches of the bay to the rips. I rarely even fished the bay in the late 90's through 2003 because the spring bass bite was OUTSTANDING in the rips. The reason for the fishing being so good in the rips during that period was that there wasn't room in the bay for all the fish so they had to stage throughout the bay from upper reaches to its mouth. You could pick your poison...bunker, clams, bucktails, or PLUGS and always feel you had a certifiable shot to smash them...not just catch a couple.

All that said, something needs to be done. This is particularly important in the spring when fish are making their yearly spawning run. Unfortunately, short term pain for long term gain may be NECESSARY. A moratorium would be devastating for a lot of business. Boats, tackle shops, gillnetters, marinas along with a host of other businesses would feel painful effects. A possible solution would be going to 1 slot fish in the spring. I know, I know...many will balk and rightfully so at cutting the bag limit in half. However, the house is on fire and if we don't call the fire department, we'll be calling the contractors to rebuild from the foundation. At that point, a moratorium would be inevitable, but it wouldn't make a difference. You can't take them if there is a moratorium, and you can't take them if there aren't any to be taken.

I hope that everyone can come to a solution that puts us all on common ground and allows boat owners to take home fish for dinner, charter and party boats to run trips and catch people fish, bait shops to sell bait, and keep everyone happy. To do all that...we need the stripers to still be here."






The above was posted by Capt Adam of the AdamBomb out of cape may. He is a local capt here and knows the area well. I agree with what he said.

[jigfreak]

Get a load of this. Posted on the internet today. The guy who posted it is an IGFA certified Capt. What a total idiot. Dark I sent you a pm you might want to take a look at the thread.

Once again, the striper biomass doesn't need saving. It's as strong as ever. SAVE THE WEAKFISH!

IGFA Certified Captain