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Localized blitzes tell us nothing about the overall health of the stocks. You have to look at the ends of a fish's range. How good has the fishing in Maine been the last few years?
The signs have been there for awhile, and perhaps I deluded myself into thinking that it was a bait issue--bait running offshore and the fish following them. But, the last two Octobers have sucked---there has been no fall run to speak of in the Canal. Scortons, dead. The fish that push through the Canal school up on Scortons before they move through. I went to school on that for years. There aren't any fish in CCB to speak of. The one or two decent days of fishing in the last 10 days, in the Canal, came on fish that followed schools of pogies in from Buzzards Bay.
I don't have to wait for ASMFC's stock assessment. The fishery is on the verge of crashing again. And we don't even have the same bluefishing that we had in the late 70s to mid 80s to occupy us.
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