Fishpart - Last year the crabbing and shrimping was pathetic, but the speckled fishing was pretty good. I talked to the wife of a crabber who owns a seafood store down there. She said that her husband had to put out twice as many pots to get almost as many crabs as usual, and was still only breaking even cause of the extra cost of bait and gas. I was told that the runoff from the rivers on the west side of the sound caused by hurricaine Dennis and one other one in 1999 had caused a alot of crabs and shrimp to die, and that's why crabbing and shrimping was so bad. It had improved somewhat this year, as I did much better on the crabbing than last year. But shrimp and crab prices were still relatively high.
As far as the speckled trout missing, it is possible that it is the same cause with a delayed effect. I will try to find out from some contacts I have down there. However, I hear that the weakfishing in NJ (speckled trout are cousins of weakfish) has not been up to par with last year either, so it may be some other cause.
Canalrat -
New album within a few months, I hear, and back to rock and role (Edit # 2 - Try roll, Steve, not "role". Geez!), not that the other stuff (Brodsky and Bacherach) wasn't great as well.