Commercial bass closing tmr?
 

I was just told that commercial bass closes tmr? Is this true?

yup.

Its open all day tomorrow.
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Just excellent..... Havent had a good year by any means, just dumped a pile of $ in the boat and got it going today and now.....

why don't you get a real job :rotf2: - professional student is not a career. go get me some pogies

Hey, hey, hey I'll have gradumacated in 3 years! Just getting smaaat... Yes I have the pogies :grins:

Only 17 days this season (4 of which were 5 fish Sundays).

$4 gas and lower prices than last year kept many guys home, yet the quota was caught faster than ever.

Check the numbers, as of 5 this morning the quota was only at 65%! Could be that they want to get an accurate count???

Bingo
Quota not close to full and behind schedule compared to most years.

Just asking, what percent of the fish taken so far do people estimate came from Chatham?

100% I know that's an exaggeration but I would bet 75%. I know not much came from areas 13 and 14!

it would seem the chatham fishery did a tune on "small" fish

Figures, was fishing 3 days nxt. week. Seems the plug has been pulled very early given the current quota percentage.

This was most likely stopped to get an accurate number due to some delay in dealer reporting. Would say it is much more than 65% right now, again due to report delays. As is years past you may see it open for a day or 2 in a couple weeks.

At least that biomass of fish off Chatham can take their helmets off now. Can you imagine how hard it was to forage with 5,000 diamond jigs raining down from above?

I thought Chatham was seal and great white territory now? :huh:

R-24

Kelly Clarkson has been V E R Y quiet lately ????:confused:

When I was on vacation last week, I went in to a fish market on the Cape to pick up some stuffies and steamers. I ended up speaking with the owner about the bass coming in from Chatham. He took me in the back room and showed me a few totes overflowing with 34 to 36" fish, all from Chatham. He said that was the only place anyone was getting them, but by last Thursday it had slowed way down.

Nothing but 34 to 36" fish

sounnds exactly like the Providence River in early JUne in2007,08, 09 &&&&&&&&&& then there were none ><>><><:wall:

definatly a lag in reporting somewhere... it's up to 86.9% now...

Fishing at Chatum has taken its toll on more then small fish and not only diamond jigs have been working, but Sabiles,tube and worm and jigs dragged along the ocean bottom.

In order to sucessful out on the water one needs to be able to adapt to what is occurring beneath the surface.

Dan and I were just talking about this last nite.
Chatham has always been the land of the 33 3/4 inch bass.
But based upon Dan's work visits to the empty New Bedford fish houses and here, we estimate about 75% of the quota came from Chatham.
Do the math.
That means about 750,000 lbs. With the average fish there about 15# (though there were a lot more bigger than normal fish mixed in), that's approx 50,000 bass from one mass....Sick.
That's why it slowed down. they were decimated.
The other 25% prob from Block..........
Worst comm season I can remember having from shore in the 17 yrs I've had a comm license........

One would be correct in regards to the average weight of the fish out of Chatham, but as been stated many fish were also in the higher 20 pound range.

When one considers that all of the bait is grouped in one area, it only stands to reason the fish will remain , especially if the water temperature is condusive to the species like striped bass like to swim in.

Sand eels have been the main food for bass in this area of the cape for a long time, but when you add in mackerel that are leaving there nursery areas in the protected estuarys you have a food chain they will not leave.

We have not seen any problematic changes to the numbers of bass in this area, as long as you have a boat the bite is on all day long.

The question should be, why did so many bass find Chatham inviting overall and can the resource handle it? That is the number of fish being removed from one area in the State?

It will be interesting to see how the DOMF handle this next year from a species in trouble allready.

I was told by an employee of the guy I use they weighed in over 20,000 lbs on one day from there. Don't feel bad Mike I only made it out for one trip and didn't even pay for my license. They really weren't in my neck of the woods this year, unlike last year. Every year is different.
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That it will, because the ASMFC is floating talk about a 40% across the board reduction in bass mortality after these much ballyhooed "stock assessments" coming up, and if that doesn't come to pass, I predict that we'll see a huge groundswell of support for gamefish status.

Yep. My sources say they ripped it up down there. Many many guys limiting out, every day. Flattened out the market price here, then sold to NY and flattened the prices there too.

Let me see if I understand this, you are saying that75% of the qouta came from Chatham and the rest of the million pounds came from Block Island area. Is this correct.

That's a lot of fish.

The last time I checked, Block Island wasn't anywhere close to Massachusetts territorial waters. :confused:

The fish that came out of Chatham averaged about 18-19lbs. I havent seen that healthy of a fish stock for a long time. 33" inch fish were 17 pounds. Buttrer balls. If the bait is there they will come. I was pulling in 20 lb pollock on almost every trip. Looking at a fish when it came out of the water with the top of its head all beat up from pounding sand for sand eels. All the fish from Ptown to Nantuck have come there to feast on all the bait. Dont want to forget to say loaded with macs out there to. A buddy of mine who flies his plane out there told me that he saw a 15 mile stretch of bass out there. Cool water temps and bait === fish. The highlite of the season for me is that i see lots of people have put the gaff away and adopted the net.:buds: If we want to see fishing like this in our neck of the woods we need to fix the bait isue.

On my way in from the canyons we stopped at handkerchief shoals off Monomoy. The biomass of big bass is staggering there. It's no wonder they were limiting out every day.

I'm only going by redlites statement of where the other 25% came from on the commercial market. If Chatham sold 75% of the quoter and Block sold illegally the other 25% that means north of Chatham did not cotribute to the commercial catch.

I'm also :confused: