Hi All,

A smelly upturn???

Croakers have moved in off the coast. We had pretty fish on Friday and Saturday, up to 18 1/2 inches. I quit 'em and moved off to sea bass by 9:45 both days and had some fine limits of croaker on Saturday. The sea bass remain difficult but are showing signs of loosening up.

We saw a few fish floating dead on Friday as well as a few on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon we saw a lot more dead croakers drifting. I immediately wrote it off to trawl bycatch. I've seen it before. A few years back there was a Jersey boat that caught so many croakers they split his net. Folks that saw the dead bycatch described it as "millions" of fish. Whatever, it was a lot and it stings to have a recreational size and creel limit on a species that is commonly discarded (shoveled back overboard) dead when the price is too low.

I knew there were no OC boats working in the areas that the croakers were using and thought perhaps an out of state boat had overloaded again. Then reports started coming in of croakers swimming just beneath the surface and very lethargically at that...

Uh Oh. What's this; phisteria's wicked sister??? Red tide??? Thankfully, no. There has been ongoing work with the Army Corps and Mineral Management Service on fish habitat where they want to dredge beach sand. These biologists, working with underwater filming gear, have been seeing croakers dead on the bottom for about a week... (Thanks for telling us so soon!) The inshore temperature dropped sharply on the bottom to the low 40's and some of the croakers couldn't stand it. Temperature shock.

Which nicely takes us to the sea bass behavior this season. I've gotten all kinds of information from every angle I could think of. Federal landings data, tagging data and diver reports of bottom temps. Global warming***, eh? Not on the bottom! At first I thought, as did/do many long experienced commercial sea bass fishers, that the water got too warm too quickly. Then I thought the overwinter areas got pounded too hard.  I even thought there might have been a low oxygen event East and North of OC; hypoxia ~ a dead zone ~ like in the Gulf of Mexico each year. Now I think not, although it's not completely ruled out.

The fact is we had tog, true cod and pollock all season. Just yesterday we had a 25 1/2 inch cod. The fellow that caught it has tagged & released several very legal cod this year and decided to have this one for dinner. Anyway, they all prefer cooler water than sea bass. Diver reports were initially that the temps were warmer this year than in recent years then it chilled and is just now beginning to warm again.

So perhaps the most likely reason this years bass fishing has been a bear is that there was no weather to "mix" the layers of water. The cold water stayed low and the warm (up to 82 degrees) stayed high. Next spring when I'm whining about a Nor'Easter keeping me in remind me that fishing's a lot easier when there's been some warmer water driven deep by those types of blows...

I'll be fishing split days; 1/2 croaker and 1/2 sea bass. It's fishing, not grocery shopping. Some days will be banner - others will be pretty tough. I do not anticipate any limits on sea bass for some while yet. Maybe October!

Regards,

Monty

*** Global warming???***, Actually, that's exactly how global warming will work according to some models. As more ice melts the Labrador current becomes cooler and the NE and Mid-Atlantic will have cooler water... And, as a final jab, according to what seems to be present "management" of red hake, we should be having a great year on them. Not!