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Originally Posted by stiff tip
the pochin of herrin got way out of hand .live carts , full of bait ,swimming pools w/ 500 herrin ,the rivers blocked off ,the hole 9yds.but i saw the lite?insted of a herrin hussler i became a helper .the runs went crazy people fighting .it got out of hand...last yr only a tenth of the herrin came back. this is not good save what we can and hope they come back...
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I remember fishing herring at the Run in the early 80s, when bass were in the toilet, numbers-wise. You had the place all to yourself. I'd float herring under a balloon, and sometimes, I'd walk one all the way to the Cribbin, or even High Bank. You might cull one or two fish a night. Bass started slowly coming back, but the numbers of fishermen didn't go up right away. I remember fishing the Run with Ricky Hearn and one of his firends on the weekend between Mothers Day and Memorial Day--was either in 1987 or 1988--and wrecking bass all night. The limit was either 33" or 36" and we released all but one 26 pounder that Ricky took. I fished herring for the last time the following May--I went down at first light, and saw 20 guys lined up shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the mouth of the Run. I took a spot at the end of the west line, saw a school of pogies mixed in with the herring, snagged one, put it on, took a bass, left, and never fished herring again.
I saw all of the crap going on--guys stretching seines across the tunnel under Rte 6, guys cast netting in the Carter-Beall property. Made me sick. We have no one to blame but ourselves for what happened. I've been saying that the herring stocks in Great Herring Pond have been in trouble since the early 1990s. Hawg Hunter Brad used to live on the pond and watched fewer and fewer herring coming up every year, when he waded and fished for F/W bass from the shallows. No one wanted to listen then.
Once a run is fished out, it takes a long time to recover. Personally, I think the fishery is going to stay closed for a good long time.