Our “new” normal

[ronaultmtd]

No one I know can say that 2019 has been a great year fishing (unless you are a cat fish fisherman)...Striped Bass have been over fished...killing the giant breeders in Trophy season is like a farmer eating their “seed corn”...79% of commercial catch comes out of the Chesapeake Bay. Regional cooperation to address the overfishing, not only of the Striped Bass but Omega Foods harvesting millions of pounds of menhaden for grinding into protein, is controlled by commercial “for profit” business interests. The Kill the last white buffalo, pollute the last clean stream mentality makes me believe these people believe there is another habitable planet prepared and ready to immigrate to...

Our new normal...what is it? Get used to Catfishing? Snakeheads? Carp? All can be fun and they are edible...like the West Coast and Alaska salmon fisheries dying out from warming oceans...our new normals are going to evolve over the next few years...so without meaningful environmental regulation and efforts to reverse climate change (not a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening) we will see monumental changes in our fishery. 2019 has kicked us in the stomach and most of us realize the “good old days” are memories...yeah, we can still catch a few memorial fish but not in the numbers or sizes we are accustomed to...watching NATGEO on TV remove millions of pounds of plastic from islands in the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles from anywhere...all Pacific Ocean fish testing positive (but we are assured it is totally safe to eat them) from radiation from the Japanese Fukushima Daichi nuclear powerplant melt-down caused by an earthquake tsunami...somehow we are all connected world-wide..the storms coming off the Horn of Africa turn into East Coast hurricanes...the currents of the ocean are weather makers, world-wide...and the oceans provide the majority of the oxygen we breathe...essential to all life...just some thoughts from an old salt sitting on the back porch with a cup of coffee and too much time to think about such things...I hope you catch the fish of a lifetime-tight lines...

[J.A. Veil]

Ron - I agree with your assessment that we are experiencing different conditions that have led to fewer fish in the locations where we have found them in the past. I find myself driving farther from home (long drives to go fishing are not part of my fishing comfort zone) to catch a few fish because the local spots I had fished for years don't hold the fish they used to. I am fortunate to have the free time and financial resources to travel often to Florida. Fishing there is also diminished from what it had been, but is typically more productive than our local waters. Plus there is a greater variety of colorful and hard-fighting game fish there.

I did not fish much as a child and did not have a family member who taught me fishing techniques. I started fishing in my 30s and have increased the level of effort considerably since retiring 8 years ago. When I talk about the "good old days", I am not looking back to childhood years -- rather I am think of 5 to 10 years ago. In our region, we had world-class light tackle striper fisheries at the CBBT and on the Susquehanna Flats. There are still some fish there, but not like they were a decade ago. In my own home Severn waters, I had good success at trolling for stripers for several weeks in the spring and again in the fall from 2012 to 2016 (not so long ago). Catching 20+ stripers from 16" to over 24" was not an uncommon day. I think that I have caught 3 or fewer fish of that size in the Severn so far in 2019 over many trips. The pickerel that I enjoyed targeting in Severn creeks during the winter months for a decade have all but disappeared.

For the past decade, I enjoyed fishing in a variety of Eastern Bay shallow water spots that had different types of structure. This year has been very weak there. After yesterday's disappointing outing, I decided to stop fishing there until the weather cools off. Maybe the fish will be where I expect them to be in the fall.

[brianisoutside]

The only constant is change.
I can’t remember Spanish mackerel ever being this far up the bay. Last year we were pounded with rain and we’ve had very little rainy days this year.
To me it’s all a cycle of change.
I agree we need to put some more conservation into the fishery but sometimes hitting an ever changing moving target can be difficult.


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[Mark]

I agree that we have experienced a "new normal" in the kinds of fishing most often discussed on this forum. The first warning shot of a change may have been in late 2016 when tidal pickerel vanished from the Severn’s tributaries.

I noticed a sharp decline in my kayak striper catches starting in 2018. This year, I have yet to catch a legal striper in my kayak. In fact, I have hooked only a handful of legal stripers this year courtesy of John Veil’s captaincy in his center console. But even those Eastern Bay trips with John have been disappointing. On one trip this year we were skunked – in the same areas where we used to jointly boat 50 to 100 fish per outing.

A couple of years of abnormal precipitation and rising temperatures in the primary nursey of Atlantic Coast stripers has not helped. There is also the very real likelihood that we seriously overfished them in the aftermath of our euphoria at rebuilding their stocks post the moratorium of the 1980s. Here we are again seeking answers to revive a fishery.

Striper regulation changes are coming. I listened on line to the 8 August debate of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) Striped Bass Management Board as they contemplated what to do. I gleaned from those discussions that the situation is not as dire as it was 35 years ago. However, I was not encouraged that aggressive action to rebuild the fishery will take place soon.

The commission wants to restore the stock in 10 years by appropriately reducing the “harvest” along the way. But there was disagreement about how to do that. So, they did what all groups do when they cannot agree. They postponed the hard decisions until a later date. They’ll reconvene in the spring of 2020. They’ll eventually get to good place, I’m certain. But various interest groups are going to have to yield or the ASMFC will simply continue to kick the can down the road at the expense of the fish and our enjoyment.

That’s our tidal trouble. At this point, I do not know if there is a long-term freshwater problem. I’ve read that smallmouth stocks are down in the Upper Potomac and Susquehanna. The culprit is suspected to be abnormally high spring rain in 2018 and 2019 that disrupted their spawns.

I do know that MD/DE pond fishing was excellent from late last fall through the winter and into the spring of this year. In fact, I don’t want to wish away the summer but I recently told two of my fishing buddies that I am looking forward to cooler weather and trekking across the Bay Bridge to the many prolific ponds on the Eastern Shore. If stripers could be as well-managed as largemouth bass, we would not be having this discussion. Of course, we are talking apples and oranges in the fish world since largemouth are not targeted by commercials and few recreational anglers actually take them home to eat. Also, their home environments are vastly different than where stripers live. Pickerel, crappie and bluegills are also abundant in the ponds. I enjoy catching them all.

The main focus of Snaggedline has been tidal fishing which in good times is fast and furious – breaking stripers, one hookup after another. Or a school of aggressive white perch, each one in a shady overhang lining up to bite your spinner on consecutive casts. That can spoil folks who view fishing lakes and ponds as sedate by comparison. You often have to finesse freshwater fish to bite. That’s fine with me. But hardcore tidal anglers may not like it.

If the freshwater “normal” changes for the worse then I will indeed be disappointed. Frankly, there have been days in recent weeks when I have foregone a local tidal kayak trip because I figured the effort was not worth the anticipated result. That feeling was a “new normal” for me and I hope it passes. I'm not a person who needs to catch a lot of fish or the biggest fish to be satisfied with my effort. But this year's tidal fishing has tried my limits.

In the meantime, in search of a good bite I have planned three fishing trips to distant waters that are west, south and north of MD in the next month and a half. That is another reason why the ASMFC needs to do its job. I'm taking my dollars elsewhere to pursue my hobby. Recreational anglers inject lots of money into the economies where they fish. That's no secret to the commission either. They need to succeed in producing a plan that restores and sustains our stripers. There is much at stake.

[Memory Maker]

Gotta change with the times ......... snakehead population is exploding .......... more Spanish than I can remember........ bluefish seem to be coming back again. Can’t expect too much help with the watering down of the EPA, Endangered Species act, protected lands etc. You either have to adapt or fight like hell.

[ronaultmtd]

The only constant is change.
I can’t remember Spanish mackerel ever being this far up the bay. Last year we were pounded with rain and we’ve had very little rainy days this year.
To me it’s all a cycle of change.
I agree we need to put some more conservation into the fishery but sometimes hitting an ever changing moving target can be difficult.


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Actually this was the rainiest spring we have had...

[Slackdaddy]

I live in Calvert Co, surrounded by Tidal water, but for the last 10+ years 75% of my fishing has been kayak fishing for smallies on mountain rivers in VA, WV and PA.
Last year the rivers were constantly blown out, got out once on a high, tainted Doah (typ year is 5-10 over night trips),, This year the water has been slightly high but no were near 2018,, been 3 times and the fish are slim to none,, a did a few 1/2 day trips to the upper Potomac,, not a fish one.

My new normal is chasing SH in local waters,, what is not normal to me is fighting for elbow room on the water on a Sat/Sun,,,DSCN2349.jpgDSCN2348.jpg

[Mark]

I believe the smallmouth will recover faster than stripers if springtime river flows return to normal levels. They face far less fishing pressure than stripers. But if excessively wet springs are our new normal then they are in trouble. Let's hope 2018 and 2019 were anomalies when it comes to rain.

The good news is that fishing provides varied opportunities. They may require us to pursue new species in new areas and to learn new techniques but there will always some finned creature to catch with a hook and line in the foreseeable future.

[mike o]

I agree things are over fished. I had a very bad year last year with rock fish. This year the upper bay has been pretty good although I haven't been able to get out much. I am worried about all the fish caught by the fleet at the bay bridge and near by areas. Charter boat after charter boat with other boats all around had to have taken a huge number of fish. I recently went out with Walleye Pete hoping to catch a bull red down towards your neck of the woods. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be but we did get some Spanish maceral and lots of small blues and stripers. We also got a couple upper 20" fish that Pete said were the biggest rock he's seen this summer down there. he thinks they recently came down from points north. hopefully they are headed your way. Put up a pic of me at the bridge almost 2 months ago and a recent one of my nephew at Swan point. tried to get one up of a cooler full from my outing with Walleye Pete but for some reason can't get it from my phone to my computer..34 rock.jpgsyds fish.jpg