Nice Flounder on the Inshore Wrecks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YURVwfWwk0o
It was a hot one out there today, but with no wind to speak of it was a nice day to be on the water.
Luke Wrye caught his first ever flounder limit fishing over ocean structure today and it was an impressive catch of fish up to 25.5" and 6.5 pounds.
Captain Tony Battista of Saltwater Adventures had another great day of ocean structure fishing with some stud sea bass up to 18".
Stephen Ewing, Tom Simmons and Al Schilling had some nice keeper flounder, and Steve Robinson had a 22" keeper, all while fishing on board the Miss Kathleen out of Bahia Marina.
Captain Marc Spagnola of Dusk to Dawn Bowfishing had a couple of great trips with southern rays for his shooters and keeper flounder for his anglers.
The crew of Boss Hogg with Captain Alex Beane had a great offshore trip today with a yellowfin tuna and a bunch of nice mahi.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had a nice day on the rip today.
Day sure started well enough. Had two long time fav anglers aboard, gorgeous sea conditions & a cool northerly breeze at just about 10 knots. Jackson and his Dad, Chris, made today's block and pyramid drop at Al Berger's Reef before we headed eastward.
Turned a big piece of ocean inside out for Jackson to find the day's only mini-mahi.
Reef builders karma certainly
..but Ouch.
Went into overtime looking for enough sea bass that some might enjoy delicious fish tonight.
Some..
Oyyyy..
At least sea bass did bite. After seeing 47.5 degrees on the bottom at the Great Eastern Reef and 48 at Jackspot during yesterday's scuba & ROV monitoring trip? Man, I thought the whole summer toast.
Found fairly clean water (for this era) and plenty warm too at 82.5 on the surface, but mahi continue to elude me.
Tomorrow!
See post on yesterday's reef monitoring - pretty cool images with iPhones shooting monitor screens (you can see people's reflection in some.) Better by far when we have edited versions!
I've been told face to face with the highest in fisheries that "Artificial reefs are just feel-good projects" - and that "Reef building only aggregates fish to make them easier to catch."
I suppose it does 'feel good' to catch fish - so true if in a different vein than intended.
But 'concentrate'?
Please...
At the Jackspot there was but one shipwreck when, working with OC's trawl community, we were permitted a half mile box around the historical wreck. That one wreck was good for a few stops a year. Back then a skipper's day would have a huge monkey wrench thrown in it if a dive boat was already there - long steam to any other spot. (Believe me, I remember well that pain!)
After building best we're able since 2007, nowadays you might have two partyboats and half a dozen private boats fishing with no consternation whatever - plenty of reef.
Yet somehow the old-school belief that reef building concentrates fish to simplify recreational extraction persists near the top. Current boss of bosses for NOAA's Fishery Science, Dr Jon Hare, is the very first in upper management to get it right - expanding habitat cannot 'concentrate' fish. It has to thin them out as new pieces are colonized.
Then a funny thing happens.
They spawn.
In a few years new reef is as (or more!) productive as any nearby natural reef. (see quote from 1961 CA study below)
If management would focus on spawning production instead of basing regulation on catch data no one believes - I believe sea bass could be made more numerous than anyone alive has ever witnessed.
Surely I do.
And if artificial reef building was taken seriously by the feds? Combined with a regulatory strategy that maximizes spawning production?
We could have a larger population of sea bass than has ever existed.
Seriously.
But for now management relies on "plug and play" recreational catch data such as Maryland Shore anglers catching 170,000 lbs of sea bass - that averaged a pound and a half(!) - in Sept/Oct 2017. (We found one fellow who'd caught a single keeper cbass. It was not 1.5 lbs. I probably have hundreds of similar examples from over the decades of fighting bad data. I started trying to help fix it in 1997. In that time recreational private boat and shore data has only grown incredibly worse.
Incredibly.
Party/charter data is fairly good. We so, after all, tell them what we caught after every trip.
Pretty unlikely to create sound regulation wading about in a cesspool of bad data.
But here we are..
See quote from California Fish Bulletin below. There was still active whaling in CA when this work was done.
Cheers,
Monty
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5QVF3k9csQ&t=1s[/embed]
The post Nice Flounder on the Inshore Wrecks appeared first on Fishing Reports & News Ocean City MD Tournaments.
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