Is Something Wrong?

[Slingah]

my guess would be the bait...or lack of it....

[rizzo]

Large bodies of fish are staying in NJ and NY. Taking longer to get up to RI. When a population drops the fish don't spread out as much. Modern electronics and poachers are doing a number. North Carolina has no sense of conservation, large scale commercial outfits have bigtime kills, pounding away at fish all winter. You pound the same schools year after year you will deplete them. Theres only so much out there, it is not an endless resourse.

[CANAL RAT]

the spring fishing was awsome and it seemed like everybody go in on the action but now the water is getting warmer ,the fish are going into there slow pattern of sulking in deep water and only feeding and coming inshore at night. during july you have to fish at night with bait inorder to catch the big bass.

[BigFish]

Well aware of the doldrums as I mentioned in my initial thread......there are other factors at play! The night fishing has been horrible for a couple years now!

[Finaddict]

Larry - Bait is a huge factor, not just that they are offshore but their main breeding grounds in the estuaries are being compromised more and more by coastal development and run-off both along our coasts and down in the major estuary systems up and down the coasts ...

... in fact, I remember reading an article in the AFTMA newsletter (American Fishing Tackle Manufacturers Association - the predecessor to today's American Sportfishing Association) in which Norville Processor - spelling? - reported on a study conducted in Chesapeake Bay where the young of the year were netted in the estuaries feeding the bay ... only one river system had young, but they were so plentiful in that one location that the study reported that the bay as a whole had a healthy population ... Mr. Prosser was trying to refute that claiming it was bogus ...

... the run-off down there includes a lot of agricultural run-off that has pesticides, etc., but also every day run-off from society getting closer to the water and getting more pollutants including raw sewage into the water than ever before ... and I feel it is starting to have an impact ...

... and on top of the coastal estuary degredation, commercial fishing for bait fish from eel elvers to smelt to pogies, herring ... the list goes on, but what's happening is that bait is depleted and not coming back. We can't point all of the fingers at the commercial group, as we all play our part in it ...

... and of course the same estuaries that the bait breeds in are the estuaries that stripers breed in and those are not as favorable to striper reproduction ...

... then throw in the recreational limit ... there was mention above of the stripers being kept in New Jersey ... it's the same up here, no different, there's just more down there now and more visible ... during the blitz of 25 years, one shop had something like 66 fish weighed in during a four-hour span and all fish were above the 30-pound mark. But who are we to tell someone who fishes hard that they can't take their legal limit? It would be nice if everyone practiced catch-and-release to a degree, but if they are within their limit ... they are doing nothing wrong ... no add in New York and CT and RI, Mass., NH and ME, Del, MD, VA, NC ... that's a lot of recreational harvesting ... on top of a large commercial harvest as well.

There's no one reason and no one solution, but there are a lot of factors contributing to the demise of our fishing ... and if commercials are staying within their legal limits, let them have their day ... let's just hope that everyone is having equal success ... which none of us are whether we are commercials or recreational anglers.

Boy that was a mouthful.

[Raider Ronnie]

For me,
Bass fishing has been so so, but i have not put much effort in the bass in a while.
But,
The Tuna fishing has been Red Hot for me for atleast 7 weeks !
And to be honest, the bass fishing has not been too appealing to me because of the tuna!

[irlnd32]

I agree about the Menhaden. They are around even in the bays in NY NJ. Why leave, plus the water has cooled off with the S winds.

[emgred]

I read this with great interest. As a Long Island surf caster a can attest to the change in the bait pattern. Over the last few years we have seen way more adult bunker that are holding in our area for the whole season. I have seen more and bigger Shad earlier this year then ever. As we all know, stripers are lazy. Large are lazier. Why should they leave where the food is. I don't know enough about the RI bunker/commercial fishing issues, but I do know that if they can't get to the bays and breed then you guys won't have the peanuts to hold the bass. Or even attract them in the first place.

Just my 2 cents

[In The Surf]

Simply put it's the BAIT. They're finding it and staying on it.
With Jersey's big pogie rebound the shore and boat guys have been doing well the last 2-3 years. The fish that would have come up this way are staying there on the pogies. I heard the same thing last year about LI sound, the bait was there so were the big bass. It's the same thing here in the bay the last 2-3 years, large schools of large pogies and the bass thick on them. We all thought they would drop out when the water warmed but it didn't play out like that, they just stayed on the bait till it was time to head south. The shore fishing on the open surf has been getting a little tougher on us up here because of it. Find the bait, find the fish.
And oh yeah fish away from the seals.

[Tagger]

If the bait is concentrated ,,the fish are concentrated .. Good for the fisher, not the fish .