Is this the begining of the end?

[Flaptail]

Originally Posted by steve

JF, I agree ! This is the 3 rd season in a row for me that has been lousy. What scares me the most is that there is not alot of small bass around. I can cite alot of example, but I won't bore anyone. All I can tell you is that surf fishing for stripers was much, much better in the 80's and 90's. The fishing has been steadily declining since 1998.

Maybe where you are. You want small fish? Come up here and I will get you sick of them, last year we caught fish in the surf in spots like Cape Cod Bay of all places right up to and including Thanksgiving eve ( course can't call the waves in CC Bay surf) but just like the last ten years or more more school bass than we can shake a stick at from mid April til December. I could go out any night I want almost and catch school bass til I get sick of them, which at this time of year is a lot sooner than I would than in April.

This year so far has been far and away the best year for 20 pound and over fish ( for me to the high 30's so far) than the last five. Last year I had 22 fish at the 30 mark or just better for the year, this year should easily eclipse that. Those fish came from hard work in locales most would not go near or nights on end in places where the majority of fisherman would leave, say, on the bottom of the tide thinking it was all over when in actuality it would just be about to begin.

The number of fisherman on the outercape beaches fishing for example in the dark wee hours is almost nil. Seems everyone is keyed in on dusk or dawn.

2nd Rip at the RACE is a perfect example. Be there at 4am til 7am standing room only trucks bumper to bumper. Be there on the right tide at 2am and you can hear an echo it's so vacant.

Christ we were catching high 20 pound to low 30 pound fish on six inch sluggos, needles and spooks on the flats in June, some days between a few of us in tin boats or wading the beaches and inlet openings we had six or seven apiece.

For years we watched you RI guys tong them, now for some reason they seem to have come our way on CC. Fish have tails and follow bait and as has been said, the best thing about Striped Bass fishing is that you can't just take straight aim at them, just when you think you have got them figured out they do something completely different. Expecting the same fishing to continue year after year is really stretching. What about your big fish bonanza on pogies this year and last? We have learned that up here on the cape. The good years always had lean years in between. The 60's then a six to 8 year gap then the Mid to late 70's then the drought of fish in the mid 80's then the boom of the early 90's on the outer cape then 2001 to 2003 we did okay.

So many factors that are not mentioned when the fishing goes bad, water quality is a big one that gets overlooked, so many oceanside trophy homes with ChemLawn treated lawns leaching into the water, water temps, bait abundance or scarcity, the ruts we get into year after year as in how we start at point a and end the season at point b like we always do putting the same footprints on the same rocks or sand at the same time each year. Bait off shore, winds predominate direction, moon phase in relation to the calender. The tides themselves, offshore storms affecting the surf conditions.Luck. Slumps. Hot streaks. etc etc.

So many things a lot of people don't even consider that they should.

I have been fishing bass for since I caught my first one at 6 years old that was 46 years ago. I put myself through college catching bass from the beach and with my skiff plus working days on a charter boat. There has never been a place that I can think of that has consistently produced bass in quantity year after year. It's always been a crap shoot as to how each year goes and where it was the best. Some places had strings of years then off years then on again.

Just gotta do a lot of detective work, be willing to put on miles and push on until it happens and then you know only one thing you can count on, it won't be the same tomorrow, next week or next year by any means 75% of the time.

[JFigliuolo]

Flap,

that's good news that the fish are on the cape... I'm not overly concerned that thery are not in my back yard, well hell, my back yard (and the hour and change between me and the ocean) is all forest anyway. Be kind of odd to find bass there.

I like hearing the bass are somewhere in numbers. Since I don't travel in your circles, nor do I drive out to the cape I wouldn't know.

Kind of the purpose of this thread, to get a feeling about "the big picture".

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by steve

JF, I agree ! This is the 3 rd season in a row for me that has been lousy. What scares me the most is that there is not alot of small bass around.

Originally Posted by JFigliuolo

By far my worst season, after 2 poor seasons. I'm still seeing small fish, but not alot in areas that used to hold quite a few.

Sounds exactly like my 2006, 2007, and 2008 seasons! 2005 was great - since then horrible...

And I know others (not fishing the bunker schools in boats) saying the same thing.

I am definitely concerned.

[Mike P]

Look at it this way--as late as 2005, you had a spawn that would have been in the top 5 prior to anything before 1989. And last year was a solid, above average spawn. In the 60s it would have rated as a great spawn.

All of those fish couldn't have died in some cataclysmic tragedy without someone seeing the evidence of it, and they are still too small to have been legally harvested anywhere--even in MD with its 18" limit.

That YOY chart, also, is just for Chesapeake fish. It doesn't take Hudson and the minor river systems into account, and the Hudson has had some very good spawns of late.

[RIJIMMY]

Originally Posted by JoeP

Sounds exactly like my 2006, 2007, and 2008 seasons! 2005 was great - since then horrible...

And I know others (not fishing the bunker schools in boats) saying the same thing.

I am definitely concerned.

I'm confused...isnt the success of the boats using bunker indcaitive of plenty of fish? To the points made earlier, just because people are not catching fish doesnt mean there were no fish. The fish were in RI in large numbers from May through the first week of July.

Its seems that ever since the bunker showed up in RI, the surf fishing slowed down, its been the same discussion out here for over 3 years. I think that is a different discussion than the health of the striper population.

[JoeP]

Jim. Without typing too much here - combine all that was said above with all the large fish being killed and what Steve is saying - as well as problems here & there all over (i.e. Maine this year): and I think there is an overall over-fishing problem brewing. Just my opinion.

Many more anglers the past several years; less restrictive size regulations (i.e. 2 fish @ 28" here in RI); gradual increase in commercial quotas; etc., etc. = the concern.

[steve]

RIJimmy- I think the bunker in Gansett bay has alot to do with the surf fishing or lack there of along the narraganstt shoreline. Oh, and if you want some doom and gloom reports on striper fishing, talk to surf guys who fish Rhody's south shore, bass fishing stinks down there and has been for the last couple of years. It is not even a consideration for my surf trips anymore, not even in the fabulous fall. Also, I talk to a fishing writer every week so as to give a surf report for my area for a prominent weekly saltwater magazine. He tells me that most of the surf reports from Ct. to Maine have generally been poor for the past 6 weeks. He believes there is a real problem.

[Rockport24]

ya know it would be nice if there were fish everywhere (both on and off shore, up and down the coast) but was it ever really like that? Even in the so called "Glory Days" (I'm not being flip at all here, I'm a relative newbie just wondering)

[steve]

It was much more consistent then, then it is now, believe me. Case in point- Looking and comparing logs for 1998/2008 seasons - month of april- 212 bass. 2008- so far- 143 fish.. 1998- June- 14 trips- 62 bass-- 2008- 15 trips- 13 bass. Biggest bass in June 1998- 41 pounds. Biggest bass this jUNE,'08- 18 pounds. and so on.....

[Brian L]

Originally Posted by steve

RIJimmy- I think the bunker in Gansett bay has alot to do with the surf fishing or lack there of along the narraganstt shoreline. Oh, and if you want some doom and gloom reports on striper fishing, talk to surf guys who fish Rhody's south shore, bass fishing stinks down there and has been for the last couple of years. It is not even a consideration for my surf trips anymore, not even in the fabulous fall. Also, I talk to a fishing writer every week so as to give a surf report for my area for a prominent weekly saltwater magazine. He tells me that most of the surf reports from Ct. to Maine have generally been poor for the past 6 weeks. He believes there is a real problem.

I believe boat guys on the south shore would tell you something completely different. It's been a very consistantly good season out there for us, Steve. I'd say it's been good for the last three years, too, with this year being the best of the three. I've not seen fishing like 2000 and 2001, but I think it's more because I'm not out there nearly as much as I was in those years. Fall is always tougher out there by boat(at least during the day), as the blues show up and are hard to fish through, and I can't always get out there on windy days in my 18 ft'er, so I can't comment on the fall fishing as much. I do prefer Jun-July over the fall out there by boat, but most beach guys say they like the fall there better.

I'm tending to agree that bait is more offshore, since I've seen tons of fish nearly everytime I've been out in the boat this year. It was slow early in the year, but I believe that was water temp related more than anything. Water was cool until June. Unless I've been very lucky, SoCo's been very good by boat since early June, Steve.

I agree with Backbeach and think overall that we could be getting a bit Chicken Little here. The fisheries management is different, as is the management of the spawning grounds vs. the last decline. From reading here, it just seems as if the fish are in different areas than usual.

[steve]

JF- Flaptail is lucky. He's one of the only surf guys that is having agood year so far. I work in a tackle shop and hear alot. Most I've spoken to have not done well in RI since May which was very good by the way. April was good also for schoolies in RI but they have disappeared. I guess they are on the Cape.

[Crafty Angler]

Originally Posted by Flaptail

So many factors that are not mentioned when the fishing goes bad, water quality is a big one that gets overlooked, so many oceanside trophy homes with ChemLawn treated lawns leaching into the water....

Bingo! That's dead-on-the-nuts accurate, Flap.

Three years ago I helped my wife work on a documentary on the history of the Newport waterfront for the annual meeting of Friends of the Waterfront, an organization here in Newport that fights to ensure that ROW's are maintained to continue the public's right to access the bay as guaranteed by the constitution of the State of Rhode Island. It's a great organization whose basis in law is predicated on the concept fisherman's rights dating back to the 1600's. It's amazing to me that ROW's get co-opted by developers and private landowners and then long and expensive court battles are necessary to open the access points up again. Anyway, my bride is on the board of directors and I'm proud of her efforts.

The documentary was her first effort and very well-received, a Ken Burns sort of thing that included lots of old Newport photographs and illustrations from my collection. We also interviewed and videotaped a number of older Newporters on their recollections, some of which dated back to pre-WW I. Sadly, half of those we interviewed and filmed are now dead.

Among the people we interviewed was George Mendonca now in his late eighties who formerly owned the Tallman and Mack Fish Trap Company a block from my family home. If you don't know George's company, you may know the famous 'Kissing Sailor' photo taken in Times Square that has become an iconic image of the end of the Second World War. The sailor is George and he gave my wife and I an autographed copy of that photo. But I digress -

George is also well known for having gotten into an enormous battle with recreational fishermen back in the '60's over an old comm vs. rec issue on bass. Although I am a firm believer in the comms equal rights to to our common resources, I didn't want George to know I was a rec guy in sheep's clothing right off the bat. I even asked Johanna not to reveal that to him during the interview because I didn't want to taint it. I've known him for over 50 years and still have vivid memories of George chasing us kids off his docks because we just wanted to see what came up in the traps just off Ocean Drive and Cliff Walk. Even at his age now he's still an imposing figure and I remember all to well how he intimidated us as kids.

On his own, without prompting, the man who had spent his entire life fishing the waters off Newport started to talk about the reasons for the decline in fish stocks. His parents lived on 'Portagee Island' in the Prices Neck area of Ocean Drive in the summer to be closer to the traps they worked. In the winter the family moved back to town and for several winters lived here in my family home that I still own that my Portuguese grandmother ran as a boarding house. George's mother lit the shack they lived in with oil lamps and food and casks of water had to be rowed back and forth across the cove. As a young boy he and his brother were given the task of manning the oars and ferrying the supplies over to the island. George said, " You know, the eel grass was so thick there, we could barely row through it. You couldn't have gotten an outboard through it. Today you couldn't gather enough to fill a bushel basket. And you know who the real culprit is? I'm sorry" he said to Johanna, "but it's the housewife with her detergent."

If you're looking for a culprit, as Flap said, it's the green grass on the waterfront homes, the housewife and her cleaning products, the detergents we use for our vehicles, the pesticides we use on our gardens. Oil run-off from the roads and finally, the raw sewerage from our tourist industry that flows into Newport Harbor every time it rains by the hundreds of thousands of gallons, overwhelming a system that was inadequate years ago.

If you've made it this far, God bless you. THe point is, if you want to save striped bass start with they water they live in. Water is important. After all, like WC Fields said, fish f**k in it. Let's try to see to it that they continue to do so.

Okay, time for my second pot of coffee