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TwoLightsKid

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  • Interests (Hobbies, favorite activities, etc.):
    Fishing
  • What I do for a living:
    Tax Accounting

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  1. Good choice on the boat! I’ve had a 23’ Maritime since 2006 and it’s been a great boat for fishing and family use in Casco Bay and offshore in good weather. From flats in 2’ of water all the way out to Platts for groundfish and sharks and everywhere in between.
  2. Still catching schoolies in Maine as of this morning. It’s not over yet.
  3. Still a few schoolies around the rocks this morning. I’m guessing the strong NE wind we are supposed to get this week will probably push most of what’s left on south. Get out today or tomorrow morning if you can!
  4. The problem I see here is the basic philosophy that says “in light of inevitable scientific uncertainty let’s err on the side of harvest rather than conservation.” Fisheries science is always uncertain and always will be, but leaning on that uncertainty to favor harvest rather than taking a more conservative approach is what keeps collapsing intensively managed fisheries. Look at stripers and cod - tens if not hundreds of thousands of hours and millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent over the past several decades trying to manage these fisheries, but cod has collapsed and stripers are heading that way in spite of all the effort to manage them. Why? Because the uncertainty in the science is consistently used as an excuse to harvest more, never a reason to be more carefully in case the error means that the situation is actually worse than it looks, not better. That combined with insanely low thresholds for likelihood of success in management plans (in what sane world is it acceptable to adopt a management plan with only a 50% chance of success?) is what has gotten us to where we are today. I don’t know enough about the Maine lobster/right whale issue to have an opinion on the details of this case, but until the mindset changes our fisheries management attempts will keep failing like they have been for decades.
  5. Out this morning. It was the first trip that really felt like October fishing. Cold east wind that cuts through all the layers you’re wearing. Fewer and smaller fish moving south fast. Still plenty of good fishing to be had over the next couple of weeks, but we’re on borrowed time.
  6. Honestly the best eating of the fish I caught were the mackerel. Filet, salt, pan sear about a minute on each side, then serve over Japanese rice with eel sauce.
  7. Story of my life this year…I think we established that I’m crazy a long time ago, but I’m okay with that!
  8. It’s been a strange year for me to say the least. On the one hand, I’ve caught more 40” plus fish than I ever have before. On the other hand, fish in the upper 20” to upper 30” range have been few and far between for me. My next best year for big fish was 2009, and in that year my ratio of 30”-40” fish compared to 40”+ was about 6:1. This year the ratio has been less than 1:1. I’m happy to be catching some bigger fish, but the future does not look good. I expect to be fishing for 3 or 4 more weeks, so we’ll see what the rest of the season brings.
  9. Weather hasn’t been cooperating for the most part, but I managed a quick trip out with my daughter on Saturday afternoon to a ledge about a mile and a half from shore. Two nice keeper cod and a bonus 19” pollock, biggest pollock I’ve ever seen so close to shore. Had a few mackerel on the jigs too. We used light spinning gear with 2500 size reels and 10 lb braid, so we got some good fights out of the fish. It was almost too rough for comfort with a kid on board, but she didn’t mind it a bit, said she was having fun on the roller coaster!
  10. All well here, I hope the same for you. Have kids of my own now (should probably update my screen name), so my fishing is all about efficiency and trying to pick out the best windows during the week where I can fish for a couple of hours with a good chance of success. Results so far this year have been a lot of skunks, but a bunch of nice fish too. Getting my kids into fishing now too, which offers a lot of challenges but also great opportunities to go back to basics and appreciate the overall experience and just catching whatever bites.
  11. Unagi! I’ve tried trapping eels a few times and got some good eating sized ones, but I was worried about eating them since they were caught in tidal river areas that formerly had heavy industrial activity. Anyone aware of any studies done on PCB or heavy metal content in eels in Maine rivers? I’d love to try eating some of they are safe.
  12. Pogies and mackerel are definitely better if you can find them. The big advantage of pollock is that you are pretty much guaranteed to find the anywhere there are rocks with deep open water nearby on the entire Maine coast. Great bait for shorebound fishermen. My fishing these days is mostly limited to nighttime with plugs and soft plastic baits, but when I was younger and had more time to fish during the day my usual strategy was to fish minnow plugs in the dark, poppers at first light, and then switch over to live pollock suspended 4-6’ under a baseball-sized balloon just off the rocks. Caught a lot of nice fish that way.
  13. I stick to within an hour of home. Wish I had time for longer range trips, but that’s not in the cards right now with work and family needs. 10-15 years ago I would fish the entire season in just one or two spots, but I’ve branched out a lot in recent years trying to find fish. My basic strategy used to be to set up in a good spot that I knew well and fish an entire tide waiting for the fish to come to me, but that doesn’t work very well for me anymore. These days I move around a lot more trying to find the fish. Rarely stay more than an hour in a spot if it’s not producing what I’m looking for.
  14. I’ve seen some recent video from a diver in very southern Maine showing tog, so there are at least a few around. Never caught any myself. Looking forward to our two week fall cod season, hoping I can get the whole family to come with me so we can each keep our one fish! I’ve hit my inshore cod spots a few times this year with my kids and nephews and it should take all of about 5 minutes to get a limit.
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