Merry Fishmas! '19

Dear Santa,

All I want for Fishmas are keeper-sized Stripers that I can catch & release from the surf in 2020.  Like in olden days, those happy golden days of yore.  Let them gather near to us once more, if the fates allow.  Pretty please...

Yours Truly, 
A 2019 Schoolie-Catching Expert

v.2 (before Santa unhooks, of all tried-and-true Bomber color schemes, his trusty red & white Long-A)

Exposures - October & November 2019

Then it happened, again.  The celebration of a summer-season, softened of sun-worshiped languor and sultry lengths of leisure that stretch even further into the welcomed weeks of a locals-summer September, came to pass.  Surrendered some-day were sun-bleached Tommy Bahama backpack chairs and beach blankets, scented of saltwater and sunblock smear, the loose folds of which still exfoliated sand at their shaking, set aside save the faraway return of an equinox – the antipode, spring.  And again, at some nebulous point of passage amid this recession of season, it happened all over again.

The stillness of time shuffled before any apparent noticing.  Only in hindsight, did the animation of some growing promise come drawn to life, like motion perceived in a fingered flipbook, enabling this surfcaster’s months-long spell of déjà vu to endure at all.  The fall run was coming.  As with the turning of our calendars from the days balmy of September to the weeks windy of October and then someday advancing to the mornings frosty of November, so again began the turning-on of finned-life of all-forms all-throughout the reaching spill and rushing call of the surf.  Day-by-sun-setting-shorter-day, leaf-by-wind-driven-falling-yellowed-leaf, did the spirited avocation of a reciprocating coastal ritual of this beachgoer casually, if not one day quite suddenly, sprint forth to commence.  After all, the fall run had arrived.  Fin-ally.

The orchestration of its ethereal, counting-down-the-time-all-summer-long fanaticism ensures at inspiring of preparation and infesting of thought the churning mind of any devout wanderer of the surf.  Tide charts are highlighted of opportune dawn and twilight dates of flooding, and the moon’s various phases noted of appeared waxing and waning.  The weather is watched twice-daily, while ears are held closer to the running rail of rumor.  The elemental look and feel of Nature advance of washed color and bleak rawness.  The ticking clockwork of temperature, of water and air, trigger back-bays and tidal rivers to empty of anchovy, silverside, mullet, shad, and peanut bunker, kick-starting in earnest the grand prix of finned races southward.  Out back, larger linesiders, typically absent of summer’s shallow, bathwater-warm tides, suddenly reappear to stalk prey within the nighttime draws of tidally-risen ink.  Out front, with any luck of sighting, patrolling schools of False Albacore will shear with mouths agape through a shimmering skin of the morning tide’s surface, colliding with this egress of southern-swimming bait.  Cocktail Bluefish routinely blitz the shoreline, while Bonito, Spanish Mackerel, or even juvenile Crevalle Jack make for a surprise pelagic beaching.  Squawking gulls and terns fish-find from above in swirling flocks, dive-bombing into sightings of baitfish.  The backs to passing pods of dolphin and the occasional whale sneak open the inshore amphitheater’s rippled curtain with spraying blows of breath.  The long-light of sun-setting shadow sharpens and our quarry's life-blood of brine slowly sheds of temperature, as this web of migrating sea-life weaves together before our witnessing wonderment of participation as sand-straddling observers.     

The following images speak for those few occasions I "developed" in a digital darkroom exposing pixels pointed and focused of a salty-inspired experience.  Cataloged are select moments of my October and November outings.  Nights as the sole attendee of audience listening to the orchestrated bug-music of riverside field crickets.  Or to Orion rising radially over the eastern horizon amid the lure of a stargazing stare glinting higher.  At other times to the forceful hiss of surf racing over wader boots leaking and legs sodden as the stinging plea of numb fingertips implore just how much more of this madness?  Of footprints stippled below a wrack line's serrated shape of debris and shells, laid furthest from any reaching wash of incandescent light, at some place dissolving to the watery witness of a breathing tide's overlapping reclamation unseen under darkest of starless night.

Missing are the iridescent colors of silky-smooth, lunate-tailed visitors and striped, long-lengths of large, migrating matriarchal tribe members.  Yet the serial continuation of those engagements of experience, oft evidenced of expectation and exception, live reeling in the mind, cast of prior reward.  As the surfcaster's bounteous mainland tale of beached tail in having obeyed time and place and season and reason.  As a single participant fiddling before the unfolding of a fall run.  As a timekeeper of our quarry's whereabouts, armed with the trust and loyalty of a single graphite night-stick, possessed by a mild understanding of the very clockwork intrinsically and instinctively weaved of Nature herself.

With an appetite whetted in recent years by the unrivaled power professed of the False Albacore's drag-screaming escape or even the exhilaration incited of its sudden surface breaches, I ensured in readying the pouch of my September surf bag with a few select fluorocarbon leaders, in so far as tying one dropper-looped with a Scott Stryker Bay Anchovy fly.  I figured, you never may know.  This once-a-year treat of a fishery only lasts for a brief number of weeks, at best.  Alas, when stricken with consistently foul weekend weather, adverse winds, excessively rough or stained-colored surf, and lack of sightings or reports thereof, the white-knuckle, explosive strike of a 2019 Albie never (unfortunately) materialized in having afforded this particular surfcaster the opportunity of thrillingly sliding a hard-tailed greenback onto wet, bubbling sand.  Just when I grew spoiled by intercepting the predatory prowess of their clock-like feeding habits learned of the same sandy locale only seasons prior...   

Peanuts by the millions schooled the local river systems throughout the summer, staging for the tidal movements of October's new moon that would encourage the bait to begin the swim around to the oceanfront, instinctively migrating southward, and perhaps colliding with schools of Stripers pressing them upon the beach, between breaking wave sets that the surfcaster excitedly lunges lures within while on his chase from sand.  

Only five casts made into the night, yet four fish rushed to answer...

An uncommon October catch for me was this particular species: Bluefish

A cookie-cutter-sized October schoolie.

Midnight modeling

Sustained NNE winds during October 9th - 11th, days before the full Hunter's Moon, pushed the flood tides in the back 2.5 ft. higher, or more.  Waders were a necessity, as the bite was too good to miss..  

By the waters, all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.

With November, the bite out front became consistent (for schoolies).

The November full moon out front.  Many a windy night in the thirties had to be endured for a shot at (short) fish.

Sub-28" carcass.

A November Sand Eel bite in full-swing: these are the days to hold onto, cause April and May are very far off..

A page torn from the graduating Class of 2015 yearbook.

Very close to 28"

A schoolie stuffed with Sand Eels...

This fall, the schools of keeper bass swam under captained keels, while shorts were in abundance at every surfcaster's heels. 

When one rods bends, others quickly seek to mimic its shape.

A Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) cautiously considers the Dunkin' contents before clutching the bag "to go," sprinting over the sand dune and devouring the easy morning find all its own.

Her indented caudal tail of which can I only hope has many thousands of miles ahead of her in a life lived out-swimming predators and a heartbeat-stopping-hoist of man, such that it someday grows larger than a that of a broom, swaying her roe-laden belly slowly within the still tide of a moonlit spring estuary. 

Stippled back dots over lavender and brown stripes.

Double-headers beside double-headers down the beach from even more double-headers.  Da capo al fine (repeat from the beginning to the end).  Note: absent to all anglers were pulls of drag from fish longer than 28"

A Gamble On Playing Slots?

The ASMFC Striped Bass Board convened in VA on Oct. 30th, voting consensus for one out of the three primary options billed as proposed management scenarios tailored to reduce SB mortality/removals by a measure of 18% from 2017 harvest levels.  With primary option 2 voted for (equal % of reductions in BOTH the commercial and recreational sectors), the commission then had to choose a sub-option mandating daily bag and size limits for 2020.  Although the overwhelming majority of written comments, emails, and public hearings by state favored a conservative proposal of 1-fish per-day at 35" minimum length (sub-option 2-A1), the board instead approved implementation of a coast-wide slot fish of 1-fish per-day measuring between 28"-35" (sub-option 2-A2). 

While various young-of-the-year classes of SB are "under construction," the ASMFC has anted-up a big fishery management bet, pulling a lever of risk while rooting for triple-7's by way of corralling all recreational harvesting pressure into a single 7-inch range (28"-35").  They chose to gamble by playing slots - in order to reduce an overall recreational harvest removal rate.  While it's undoubtedly important to protect the breeding, fecund females larger than 35" for the beneficial propagation of the species, discard mortality rates could only increase upon classes of fish that exceed the "safe," upper-threshold of 35" (due to fighting fatigue, angler mishandling, unhooking/bleeding - BUT, just as fishing always been, really), however with the mandatory release of these fish, and hope of successful resuscitation and survival instead, breeds the logic of the added benefit of an increased SB breeding biomass.  Only Father Time will tell, but it remains the onus of fishermen to offer their best and most-conscientious practices supportive of healthy catch-and-release (crushed barbs, for one) with the hope of a reduced mortality rate among ALL size-classes of SB.  

Will the proposed ASMFC slot limit consequently, if not detrimentally, increase sufficient removals of 28"-35" fish that first need to eventually reach 35", such that a class of 35"+ fish decline from current levels in future years to follow? (the bag limit being reduced to 1-fish per-day, great, but ASMFC statistics argue that 90% of all release mortality is attributed to recreational angling.  More so, overfishing is occurring and the SB fishery is overfished, which is why an 18% reduction in coast-wide removals/mortality was approved).  Will tape measures that often magically stretched to reach the (legal 28") length of pinched caudal tails now do their damnedest to substantiate a keeper measured of a splayed tail or fork-length instead, somewhere short of 35.001"?  No one answer can be so prescient or straightforward in offering assurance to so complex a scenario as a multi-billion-dollar fishery puppeteered by man.  That being said, hoping for the best..

The above-average 2011 and 2015 year classes are the fish that already fall within (2011 avg. length 31") or nearing (2015 avg. length 22") the 28"-35" slot range.  There doesn't seem to be an abundance of those fish as it is, as learned by time spent angling in/on the water.  Worse yet, years 2016 and 2019 offer a less than desired stock of young-of-the-year class fish that will eventually mature into the targeted slot range anglers may be restricted in harvesting from in future years, compounded by whatever regulations may be set to be then.

ASMFC Draft Addendum VI Approved For Public Comment

As hoped of the ASMFC meeting yesterday, public comment (Aug. 19 - Sept. 27) was approved for Draft Addendum VI (the addendum to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass).  With any measure of success, new management regulations for 2020 may curtail the overfishing of the SSB, with the addendum's specific objective being a quantitative reduction of fishing mortality by at least 18%.  Fingers crossed for sensible change....

Striped Bass Action Alert

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) convenes this Thursday, August 8^th at 8:30AM in Alexandria, VA, to discuss the three options outlined in Draft Addendum VI that will establish year 2020 management policies regulating the pressured Striped Bass fishery.  The American Saltwater Guides Association (ASGA) has prepared an action alert webpage detailing the agenda items which will undoubtedly motion the commission’s contentious vote of action, and additionally, the ASGA VP/Policy Director, Tony Friedrich, even addressed a letter to the board commissioners and staff yesterday that implores from scientifically-founded rationale (and a recreational angling perspective) a critical urgency for conservation of the spawning stock biomass (SSB) and species at-large by ending overfishing within one year, and through application of established ASMFC guidelines, a rebuilding of the stock to the current SSB within ten years.  I recommend bookmarking and referring to the informative ASGA blog for all ASMFC policy-making updates and matters applicable to the Striped Bass fishery.

The Striped Bass spawning stock biomass is at a pivotal crossroads of perpetuating future sustainability for all millions of economic parties involved.  Let’s only hope that the gravity of our collective voices may help benefit the outcome of sensible ASMFC policy over the coming months so these famed-fish get the fighting chance they now pointedly need - and deserve - as a resource we all devotedly depend upon as fishermen. 

Click here to email your Striped Bass Board commissioner

    

Does The Striped Bass Fishery Leave You Feeling Drained?

This pain I harbor is real.  It's a rather dull feeling, more draining of spirit than anything else I suppose, but the lingering side effects are nonetheless persistently unsettling.  Of late, I'd be lying if I were to point a finger of blame on the influence on a sultry, summertime heat index searing above 100°F for days on end.  Nor can I attest a causality of guilt to some chronic deprivation of otherwise sound sleep.  Rather, it's fish and a multi-billion-dollar fishery that has solicited my concern.  Not coincidentally, these manifestations of my disturbance all point to sea, at the ensuing scarcity of a certain prized surf-fish - stripers.  Mind you, a certain class of rockfish, not the oft unavoidable classes of schoolies, but instead it's the relative absence of linesiders in the mid-30s” range to longer of length that have me increasingly concerned, especially after faithfully casting countless tides over the ebb and flow of annual migrations, both spring and fall.  Localized seasonality (essentially, the unknown that makes fishing, fishing) is generally an acceptable variable, the wildcard of the sport, and outright understandable most of the time, but grand-scale patterns of change are another ballgame.  When one waning season after successive season comes to be weighed on an aggregate scale (think coast-wide assessment), and is measured against one’s personal, historical index of health, I sometimes find myself asking, what does the future of an open-beach surfcaster look like?  What are to make of those charmed and coveted river tides that haven’t surfaced bass near 40” for a number of consecutive seasons now?  Is a 35” fish the seasonal exception?  Are 28s and under the new norm?  Is it simply due to the fact that my nearby, Army-Corps-replenished beaches are devoid of rocky structure and sandy slope for four years?  Did the bass “develop a new migration pattern?”  The boaters are catching – the Raritan Bay produced.  There’s that supposed body of fish beyond the 3-mile line, but where are the big girls that silently stalk and sway fin in the shallow tides of night?  Are they simply all distanced too far from the beaches, nearest to the large pods of Menhaden that school the surface in deep water?  Where have those few seasonal occasions vanished to that once chanced the surfcaster with a run-in of big bass?  

*SPOILER ALERT*  I fear that I quite obviously know the answers to my own questions.  I see the proof evidenced all too often as photographs and videos posted on the Internet’s choice platforms of voyeuristic discovery - fishing forums, social media groups, and as hashtag searches.  It could just be me, but a story-line and visualization of excessive abuse continues to replay its obnoxious script.  Admittedly, the fat lady isn't singing, but in some sort of opening act, I believe I hear the faint blaring of Bowie? “Pressure, pushing down on me, pressing down on you. It's the terror of knowing what the world is about. Turned away from it all like a blind man. Insanity laughs under pressure we're breaking. Can't we give ourselves one more chance? The people on the edge of the night. This is our last dance. This is ourselves under pressure. Under pressure. Pressure.”   

Am I jumping the gun?  Did I jump the shark?  I cannot know for certain and I don't wish to be correct anyway.  After all, what I've griped about is my own experience (something I flirted with in this blog two years ago, HERE).  Perhaps (to some), my own inexperience, or inadequacies of effort and knowledge.  Even so, what haunts my mind's eye of quintessential surfcasting memory is the all-to-recent nostalgia of big, busting bass blitzing and encircling corralled pods of bunker pinned between wave-slashing, mossy, flat-top jetties extended seaward from sharp-faced beaches.  Days of glory.  Nighttime's of triumph. 

But, perhaps I'm not so far off.  My parting question to you however, am I the only NJ surfcaster asking himself of these questions?   

           

A roadside storm drain in my hometown adorned with an embossed casting of the east coast's most popular gamefish.  Appropriately so, in that every other drain I've seen that empties to a saltwater watershed depicted castings of freshwater bass, trout, or salmon.  Ironically, it can be argued that the spawning stock of the Atlantic Striped Bass biomass (breeding females) is currently reeling from a cumulative pressure having been applied upon her, in enduring years of recreational and commercial fishing exploits, luring the proliferation of its reproductive-class fish, its only future, closer to the dangers of an open drain. 

... to get worse, mess up...

…consider the data projected in the following graphs:

On April 30th, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) accepted the findings of a Striped Bass stock assessment report, concluding that corrective measures in multi-state fisheries management are vitally warranted in order to remedy the trend of a declining biomass of spawning female breeders populating this heavily-pressured fishery.  (The above image is a screenshot captured from the homepage of StripersForever.org.  An online article of the organization’s findings can be read HERE).

The Striped Bass Spawning Stock Biomass (SSB) – total weight of spawning-age fish estimated in the population – has downtrended below the fishery’s threshold level for the previous five recorded consecutive years.  At their April 30^th meeting, the ASMFC requested the scientific Technical Committee to detail measures of enforcement and prevention (e.g. slot limits, closed seasons) that would purportedly reverse exploitations of overfishing and trend the fishery towards compliance with a 17.5% reduction in harvest that is believed to be a required countermeasure in successfully rebuilding the population of the SSB.  Supposedly, a 35” minimum size limit in the recreational fishery would achieve the required reductions, cutting recreational harvest dramatically (estimated by half), but as a result, induce a measurable rise in catch-and-release mortality.  

   

The current SSB is estimated to be at approximately the same level as it was in 1992.  Worse yet, spawning success in the Chesapeake Bay (where approximately 80% to 90% of the total Atlantic stock of migratory stripers originate) during the last 15-years has slumped to about one-half of what it was during the fecund and abundant years of the 1990s.  

Additionally, fishing mortality of fully-recruited Striped Bass (the percentage of the reproducing population inadvertently killed by fishing), has over this same 15-year-period up-trended and risen to levels well-above those deemed sustainable for the future reproductive resiliency of a healthy SSB.  

“Striped Bass cannot be everything to everyone. We cannot, simultaneously, fish for them commercially, make them the target of head boats, hold up the dead bodies of the big breeders, gut hook them with bait in lukewarm water, have unlimited season-long possession limits, and expect to have an abundant resource and the great fishing opportunities that provides. Stripers Forever will be advocating for a new day in Striped Bass management that stewards these fish for their greatest socio-economic value to the public.”

-           StripersForever.org – 05/10/2019     -  

ACTION

The ASMFC is scheduled to meet on August 8th to advance discussions regarding forthcoming addendum guidelines (year 2020) that may (with greatest hopes) hinder the current overfishing of Striped Bass and initiate the rebuilding of stocks over ensuing years.  The elemental well-being of the prized fish we all love, and its fishery we all love to participate within, is undeniably entangled in a perilous trial of future sustainability.  The fishery will regrettably continue to crash unless change is implemented and conservation prevails.  While the power of commerce, politics, industry, and influence presides, consider clicking HERE to contact your appointed state ASMFC commissioner.  The American Saltwater Guides Association bids the suggestion of seven bulleted comments that each address the subject straight to the point.  Make your voice heard before the next guideline meeting.

Release A Breeder – Our future as tomorrow’s fishermen teeters upon the fulcrum of today’s choices and actions.  Be one who casts to restore balance with each release.  

Instagram user account "callofthesurf" (Catch & Release Crew).  "Leading others to good habits that will make a good fishery for all.  Fish with honor."

Instagram's "callofthesurf" (Catch & Release Crew) also believes that "the times they are a changin'."  The group quoted "until new regulations are voted on, agreed, and implemented, this fishery requires us to 'fish with honor' and lead by example.  Catch & release, follow the code, represent your water, and continue to spread the good word.  If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less."  The group's Code of Honor are littoral-ly axioms to fish by and may as well be likened to a surfcaster's guiding Ten Commandments.

Instagram's "callofthesurf" (Catch & Release Crew) logo.  "By representing this badge, you are part of a crew that lives the ethics of C&R.  A brotherhood that respects the Code of Honor for Striped Bass." 

As an aside, but in an analogous effort of consideration and conservation...

Bill H.R.2040, the "Striped Bass American Heritage Act," was introduced in the House of Representatives to the 114th Congress on April 28, 2015 by (former) Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) with objective of designating Atlantic Striped Bass (Morone saxatilis) as the National Fish of the United States.  MacArthur quoted, "New Jersey has always appreciated the importance of the Striped Bass, as it is our distinguished state saltwater fish.  I am honored to introduce this bill to finally recognize the Striped Bass as our national fish and enshrine its place in our nation's cultural heritage."  Historically, stripers suffered from various forms of pollution that ultimately brought about the Clean Water Act, and after the passage of the Striped Bass Conservation Act of 1984, the biomass began its recovery, growing as the healthy spawning stock we came to appreciate for decades after.  Rep. MacArthur's bill was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, with no further legislative action(s) taken to present date, four-years later. (Illustration by Savio Mizzi)

Has the larger picture now sharpened and come closer into view?  I hope so.  I also hope that we are not watching our splendid swimmer in her troubled fishery go down the drain of mismanagement before our eyes.

Lurching closer to the drain, of the embossed SB casting.  Pressure from all angles of all anglers and everything between hovers above this species of fish at all times.  To reiterate a few:  Atlantic Menhaden mismanagement and depletion, forage base depletion, habitat destruction and pollution of spawning grounds (run-off of nutrient waste-loads of nitrogen and phosphorus into estuaries, whether agricultural or urban/suburban), algal blooms, mycobacteriosis, hypoxia, man's fishing pressures throughout the migratory and resident class ranges, overfishing, ASMFC fishery management regulations, poachers, Internet boasters...  The breed, and the female SSB especially, need a break!