Herring at the Canal. . . 20 years ago
 

Maybe things will change back to the way they were.
YouTube - Mike Alperin Fishing for Herring

I think thats the guy
 

It was his fault! It was great fishing there, before he did a show on a local channel about fishing the herring run. It turned into a zoo after that:fury:. Boy do I miss the good old days fishing the run:(

i miss those days

Where'd the pics go

Well, I'll tell ya what, and Rick Hern can back me up on this, but in the mid to late 1980s, we used to only have a handful of guys fishing herring at the mouth of the run. It was so uncrowded we could float herring under a balloon, and walk them all the way to the Cribbin if we wanted to. I can remember one night, the Saturday of Mother's Day weekend, when we hammered fish all tide, and it was just Rick, his cousin, and myself.

It turned into the zoo right around 1989.

Yup. . . .zoo in '89. I remember that. It was like someone turned on a switch or something.
The TV show about it didn't air till '92.
Moog

Funny I can remeber fishing the Canal ooohhh back around 74 the week before grauation and there were about 8 of us. We bounced around the Herring run and a few other nice old spots. Met a man named Gibbs . Didn't like the look of the old beat up plugs I was using so he gave me a couple of his. He even told me how to fish a few nice spots to include driftin herring with a small egg sinker to get to the big fish under the schools by the run.Worked some sweet and even got a nice 34 lber later on one of his swimmers. Weighed it in and got a slip for the Scheafer Tourn. saltwater sportsman and the fisherman had a few articles about the canal and the nice camping area right under the bridge that was good fishin. No one owned the canal back then and -SPOT BURNING -wasn't even part of the language back then. A shame so many people own spots now and are the only ones that can talk about them on their CELL PHONE spot burners association.Don't remember seeing a whole lot of them around back then.Nice when I hear all the brakes squeeling and then have plugs fly over my head cause someone on a bike with a cell saw me land or hook a fish and do just what I hear complained about here so often.The canal and most big public spots belong to all that can access them not just the abutters. Some of use need to remember that at times.Just my 2 cents.

No doubt Mike. A quick hop over the fence and a quick throw with the castnet and we were set for a tide. I always had a castnet and basket with me and was generally able to net pogies about half the time either in the run or running along the bank.(had to keep a spool of ande with me for net repair:))

many uses....
 

I use to bike over to carter Beale as a kid. I would catch herring and sell them on the spot to the Asian folks that came down from Boston looking to buy some......I always had to remember to save a few for my mother.First to be turned into the vegetable garden and secondly so she could pickle some for food. If I forgot to bring some home I would catch hell........Later on I found that the herring were great lobster bait and in a pinch the herring would catch an eel or two in my eel pots......Many people used the herring resource in a manner that had absolutely nothing to do with striper fishing.......

Not just at the canal, but my local river here in Ct. as well.

almost 30yrs
 

thats how long my love/hate has been going with the canal ...but the changes have been many. from live bait herrin-pogies in the basket to fresh iced dead herrin to chunkin pogies all fished on conv gear w/ mono......then the change first it was rubber shad, than sloggo type things ,than look alike wood/plastics plugs,but the big change was "braids" than reels made for distance casting..the rod were there already.. a balanced spinning combo makes everyone a distance caster .....imo.... in the late 80s it changed, why ??? the bass came back......and so did the fisherman ,plus 10 of his friends . w/ live tanks full of herrin poached from local runs.make room they said,plus a lot of other words .the push was on ,and it never stopped .....but dont blame no one but yourself. u can't stop progress . if u think about WE , the everyday fisherman are making the changes ..dave...writing about didn't help either.....

So many people now.....we were spoiled as kids......thinking it would be like this forever.......

Well if things keep going the way they are it will be back to just us hardcore cause it's getting to be too much time and effort for lots of the new crowd.Things are thinning out all over the place. As much as I move around and fish I don't see nearlly what I saw 3 yrs ago.Time and effort is something that is a learned skill. not just driving up and making a dozen cast for 6 fish.

I hope they do, more fish for me... I rarely saw anyone out last year, except for the habs tourney and ms tourney.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Overall I don't think there are than many people fishing compared to a few years ago, people just don't have the money or means to fish like the used to.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

LOL It's a rare night that I see anyone most times and during the day it's mostly the cell phone brigade running around.LOL Most that fish nights are pretty quiet about it. Stealth mode.I chuckle when someone calls me a googin when I've been fishing the spot they call theirs since before they were born LOL

True about that plus it's more work

Well they don't know what they're missing and it might be a ood thing to some extent.

I can remember a trip to EastHam in 78 when we had plans to stop at the herring run to get some to bring with us to Eastham. When we got there the line was long and the pickings slim so we opted to skip waiting in line and just drove down the cape.

Now I dopn't remember how many were fishing in front of the run but I do remember it was crowded to get some even in the late 70's to early eighties.

I would actually like to push for a compete stoppage of all fishing, not even C&R. No fishing for anything for about 5 years. No rec, no comm no nothing. Nation-wide. It would be painful but I think we (fishermen) might treat the resource with more respect.

I know that probably will not happen but if we shoot for that maybe they will pass the gamefish bill . Time to go extreme.

Bad part with that Jim is we couldn't take the economic hit on top of all that's happening right now. Untill the import tarriffs are put back in place to protect our jobs from the foreign slave labor market that we're competeing with.But some hard choices are needed. The action we took back in the 80's with the moratorium made a big difference.Ron

Ya.....lets buy all our seafood from china....you want extreme....how about your view is treasonous to our country.......Stick snother knife into the backs of working families of america........

See it got your attention!

Look, I don't think it would go that far, but nothing is getting done. What is it going to take...a letter? an email? doubtful these do much. I am tired of year after year reading how things are collapsing more and more and it all being ignored and dismissed. I want to see some real positive (measurable) change each year not sit on your ass and watch this go down the crapper. The status quo is not working. If the people in charge are not getting measurable improvement each year they need to go the following year. Gamefish bill would not be harmful and would probably only be a small step in the right direction...I just think we may need to go to start pushing the extreme draconian almost radical ideas in order to get the pendulum to move a little in the other direction. It got your blood boiling.

I would wager that Stiff is right, it was the increase in bass numbers that brought the increase in people.

It got easy so everyone wanted to do it.Up here in Maine there were only a few of us doing charters back then. Once it got easy the Maine Pram Operators association jumped on the band wagon looking for easy cash. About drove thwe Coast Guard nuts with all the little boats taking people striper fishing and getting into trouble. They seemed to not have any idea about tides and wind change and such LOL.10 ft out going tide with a 20 mph incoming wind MMMMMM not a good combo.They made those of us that were lisenced Capts get a supplimental Maine Guides lisence. Cause the pram operators didn't think it was fair to them now that they had to get a Capt lisence. All part of the big increase in the number of stripers-Due to the moratorium that we pushed for to save the fish.

As far as stripers go I would like to see a lower commercial limit but also a 1 fish rec. limit in mass.....I think the lower comm. limit would drive the price of a striped bass plate up a few pennies making up for the lowered limit.....rec. fishing a slot limit would be nice.......management wise we need to stop counting pounds and start counting fish harvest wise........

The real reason we have few herring is...
 

Obviously we have way too many ospreys and they are destroying all the runs up and down the coast. We need to start using DDT again, or just eliminate the fish hawks. :wall: There's also a slight possibility that pair trawling might be to blame. :uhuh: