Epic Fall Run?
Interesting read by John Skinner. I totally agree. LI surf fishing sucked this season.
December 07, 2011
Epic Fall Run!
by John Skinner
Wow, some fall run, huh? For many, it might as well have ended on the October 29th Nor'easter that brought snow to western Long Island and stinging sleet to the East End. To make matters worse, the fishing wasn't exactly red hot prior to the storm either.
October had its moments, but almost all of the good action took place in the dark near the inlets. The North Shore? It's incredible to be out on the North Fork in a strong onshore wind in October or early November and not see any gulls working.
Up until a few years ago there were clouds of birds in the sky, and some anglers complained that the plentiful bluefish made it hard to get at the bass. Two years ago I landed 74 albies from the beach on the North Shore. I thought 2010 was bad because I landed only 26. In 2011 I had a total of three hits and never landed a single one – and I tried hard. So what's going on? I don't claim to know, but I have some ideas. Let's start with the bass.
As the fall passed us by and the beaches remained quiet until the season's clock began running out, many began to sound alarms that the striper stocks are in serious trouble. "There's no fish. Something needs to be done!" Statements to that effect. How short our memories are. Last year we saw days when the fish schools stretched from the shore to miles out and as far as you could see east and west. There was an exceptionally calm late October 2010 day when I took my kayak out about a mile off the beach to play with the fish schools. There were times on that trip when I felt as though the ocean was filled with bass. Not only were there fish under the birds, my fishfinder kept lighting up in areas where nothing was showing. When I'd drop a diamond jig on these big blotches it couldn't even get to the bottom. When I mentioned this to a frustrated angler on the beach this fall the response was "The netters caught them all down south last winter." I doubt it.
If you fished the New Jersey beaches this November, it's doubtful you perceived any shortage of bass. What we had in the fall of 2010, they had in the fall of 2011. So did all of the fish just bypass us at the end of October? Certainly not from the perspective of Rhode Island surf anglers who enjoyed a phenomenal run of bass and blues feeding on herring in mid- to late-November.
It's all about perception. If you're where the fish are, they can seem to be in great abundance, if you're where they're not, they can seem extinct. The fish simply took a deep route past Long Island this fall resulting in about the most dismal fall run anyone can remember. I heard numerous stories of netters doing very well in about 90 feet of water while the anglers on the beaches starved. A friend who was fishing 180 feet of water more than 20 miles off the beach in early November reported catching numerous 5-pound blues on clams on the bottom. Those were the fish that should have been driving bait into the wash. Which brings up the next item – baitfish.
This fall, Jersey got the sandeels that Long Island had in 2009 and 2010, and those were the baitfish that fueled most of the November fishing all three years. Peanut bunker? The last time I saw decent schools on the North Shore was 2007, and even those didn't fuel the type of fall fishing they usually did because there just didn't seem to be enough bluefish around to drive them.
I've always felt that bluefish are important to beach fishing because the bass are often just not aggressive enough to drive the bait to the shore. Bass do fine without chasing bait schools because they eat just about everything and do a good job of staying fed on crabs, porgies, fluke, flounder, lizard fish, and so forth.
So there's no peanut bunker, the sandeels went south, the herring were north, and we were stuck in the middle out of casting range of the migration route. There's one other thing I want to throw out there – Hurricane Irene and her effect on water quality. As we all saw on the news, Irene caused flooding of historic proportions in upstate NY and Connecticut.
The Hudson River and rivers on the Connecticut side of the Sound dumped a tremendous amount of freshwater and silt into our coastal waters. The Sound was brown and full of debris for weeks after the storm, and the water never cleared completely until early November. I'm convinced this hurt the Sound's false albacore run, and suspect it had other negative impacts on our fishery as well.
Make no mistake; my impression is that stripers are nowhere near as abundant as they were 10 to 15 years ago. I found it much easier back then to put up good numbers every night as compared to the last several years.
What bothers me about this is that I know I've learned a few things since then that should have increased my numbers. I often think, "If I knew then what I know now…" My same impression applies to bluefish. There's no way that I think they're as plentiful now as 10 to 15 years ago. But now I'm falling into the trap that I alluded to earlier – judging the stock from my experience in a relatively limited area.
While some may debate its accuracy, the most comprehensive data we have comes from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) stock assessments. When I look at the abundance plots of both striped bass and bluefish my honest reaction is "I suck". I must be old, stupid, and/or lazy. For me, the very best years were between 1997 and 2001. When I look at the abundance plot for striped bass older than 8 years (around 15 pounds) it shows greater abundance these last few years than in the period around 2000.
Even more surprising for me is that it shows the bluefish abundance as about 40% higher than that earlier period. I'm not lazy. I have logs that show I'm not fishing any less. Of course I'm older, but smarter. The stock assessments simply don't correlate with my observations. In talking to other Long Island anglers, I don't know any who think there are more fish now than a decade ago.
How could this be? One possibility is that the assessments are or were inaccurate. There's no way for me to know that. The other possibility is simply distribution. Just like Jersey surfcasters had a banner November while Long Island surfcasters starved, quality stripers are being caught with ease in places other than where they were caught 10 to 15 years ago.
If you troll the fishing Internet message boards, you'll see occasional evidence of this from boat anglers up north who report unprecedented catches of big bass in waters where they never had them before. It leaves open the possibility that there are indeed a lot of fish, just not where most of us are fishing. Hopefully 2012 will bring us much improved fishing that will make us forget about the dismal fall run of 2011.
A 38-pounder that found my pencil popper during the late October Nor'easter.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by strikezone31
Cranky Old Bassturd.