Chain Pickerel Possession Limit

[BassMoore]

Why is that? Population? I've been hammering them on the Severn. I assumed the stocks were high. Where I'm from they're considered a nuisance fish.


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you are about the only one catching them ... lol the #s here have been TERRIBLEEEEEE the last 2 years as far as size goes

[BassMoore]

Although I am not trained as a fisheries biologist, I have worked with environmental issues, primarily water-related, for my entire career (over 37 years now). Some of that work got into ecology and fisheries populations and management. Pickerel are naturally freshwater fish. Their physiology evolved for freshwater environments. Pickerel seem to have the ability to move into brackish waters, like the Severn, Magothy, and South rivers. But they are not optimally suited for that environment. When a species or a local population lives in conditions that are somewhat marginal (in this case primarily fluctuating salinity), they are more susceptible to different sorts of perturbations, like a spill of oil or chemical, a prolonged hot spell that lowers dissolved oxygen, or stormwater runoff. Also human interventions such as excessive catch and keep, or catch and release in a careless manner, can also weaken or kill individual fish.

As Mark noted above, I believe that Severn pickerel remain more or less in place throughout the year and are not migratory. They are caught less often in the summer for various reasons. I don't know which of these is more important, but I suspect they both play some role: 1) during warm weather, thousands of perch are in the same shallow shoreline habitats. They often grab my lure before a pickerel gets there. As the perch move away from the shallows in mid October, pickerel catches go up immediately. 2) There is so much natural food available for the pickerel during the warmer months that they don't need to work as hard to find food and are less likely to hit a lure.

I have been fishing from my kayaks for pickerel in certain Severn creeks for about a decade. Given the poor public access on the Severn, I am limited to fishing in tributaries from half a mile upstream from Rt 50 to half a mile downstream from Rt 450. In the roughly ten tributaries within that range, I have caught pickerel in all of them, but have observed cyclical catch success. The creek where I first started winter pickerel fishing from the shoreline was good for the first two years then dropped to almost no catches for the next several years. Three years ago I did well there, then it dropped again for the next two years. During the same time that fishing went up and down in that creek, pickerel fishing in other creeks also fluctuated, but not on the same cycle as the first creek. I have never experienced a winter that had poor to nonexistent catches in up to ten of my tributaries at the same time. That is the evidence that leads me to believe the pickerel decline is a wider phenomenon than just the natural cyclical behavior.

John I seen Several Pickerel in the severn and magothy last year with very large red sores on them. Not sure what happened.

But i also have this theory about Salinity..

Like you said, they are a fresh water fish. Colder months the salinity goes down, and they become more active. What gets me is the amount of red fish, trout, and tropical fish, and dolphins finding their way into the bay the last year in a half. Making me think these pickerel are either moving... or going deeper for more oxygen or something.. It was pretty normal to hit my creek in the magothy and catch 50 fish in a few hours.. now im busting butt to catch 2-3 in 4-5 hours.

Something definitely changed