Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnnyD
You're joking right?
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What do you mean by that? From what I'm reading, and what I'm seeing, things are fine. The only thing I've heard (and I've yet to see it really backed up) is there may be a decline, possibly just due to normal cycles, of schoolie sized fish. The current year classes coming down south are massive, in a few years we'll be inundated with small fish again.
For sure there are plenty of large fish around, they just may not be where you are expecting them. Take a cruise through Stellwagen up in a tower during the summer. Huge schools of large striped bass just outside of state waters, some years for whatever reason it happens. When tuna fishing at times they've been practically as bad as dogfish.
My night bite sucked last season; lots of small fish 25 - 30 inches, the bruisers just didn't want to gather for our boats, and we spent a lot time running away from little fish and searching, although some guys were doing well. During the day though the bite in rips of the Merrimack was outstanding with plenty of large fish available. So, they were around, just not where we always wanted them to be. Bite in the rips was probably was similar at night, but I try and avoid fishing rips at night. Commercial season was more of an open water bite up my end. Anyway, plenty of fish, just some of the patterns changed, and it makes people think there's a problem.
Jon