Weakfish, bass- I've seen this before, its happening again

[storminsteve]

^^^^ yeah and all the club guys won't be able to come running down when they get the text "Get down here now its on!!!!!!!!!!"

[SharkHart]

and yes the Berkeley winner was 4 feet to my right when he caught that winning fish

[J Barbosa]

Weakfish 2014

I know this was started as a bass thread but the weakfish deserve a mention too. I know we have some great weakfish anglers in this thread who actively target and catch them.

Personally I don't target weakfish but I am very happy whenever I catch one as by catch. I do catch a few while bucktailing with gulp for fluke.

I've slowly watch the latest weakfish in this "cycle" start to grow up.

For the past three years I have noticed a trend...each year the predominant sized class seem to be a little bigger and there seems to be less of them.

So far this year I've only seen one caught and heard of a few in Northern NJ.

I am starting to get a little worried that I am not catching more of these as "bycatch".

Are too few of these being released back safely?

[ledhead36]

^^^^^^^^ I think whenever they begin to make a comeback netters like the belford pirates smash the population to smithereens by picking up all the stragglers. I forgot what the limit is maybe someone here knows. Go to the belford co op around the late fall and they have small spike weakfish for sale. When all the little ones that got born that year are streaming out of the bay those damn pirates net and intercept them. there might be other boats out there too. I do know the belford boats do it for a fact because I seen the weakfish in the glass case there.

[jigfreak]

Salty tours is the guy you want to look at who is raping them in ocean county. He's worse than a pirate. More like a scab or a carbuncle.

[buckethead]

There should be no commercial fishing at all for weakfish. I read here they have a 200lb per trip limit. No teeth in those regulations.