CoffeeHangover

I'm no biologist but it stands to reason in my mind that with more food and habitat the population would expand until it reached an equilibrium wherein the food sources couldn't support a larger population or predators cull enough to control the numbers. In the 4,000 odd years that seals have been present it doesn't seem that striped bass, cod or flounder went extinct but in the time that humans have been here there's been a noticeable decline in all 3 species populations. We as humans are putting too great a load onto the ecosystem and it puts us at odds with other species which rely on those fish. "Seals have inhabited Cape Cod for some 4,000 years, but for the past century or so, they’ve been scarce in this part of the world. New England fishermen in the 19th century saw the animals as competition for their cod harvest and killed as many as 135,000 of them between 1888 and 1962." https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/cape-cods-gray-seal-and-white-shark-problem-anything-black-and-white#:~:text=Seals have inhabited Cape Cod,them between 1888 and 1962. The_Return_of_the_Seals_167464.pdf

The seals were here before us and with any luck they'll be here after us. They've been a constant variable in the equation of ecosystem health, except when they've been reduced by our actions. Maybe we should look at the variables that have changed which impact the fisheries health such as commercial and recreational harvests.

Can't go wrong with a fin-s for a small presentation.

I believe I saw some herring today, I was fishing a certain kettle pond on the cape and I frequently saw several silver fish with a deeply forked tail following in my paddletail. Have herring been known to follow larger artificials in? On the subject of the charles, I haven't seen anything except a school of very large creek chubs.

z-man snakelockz. this one in particular is a 3/8 4/0 on a 5" zman fluke

I'm a big fan of their zoom fluke style baits, their EWG hooks work well and as other users have said, superglue helps.

Superglue is your friend, but yeah they're difficult no question about it. Their EWG worm hooks work well but I prefer jigheads with wire keepers over ones with molded lead barbs.

I ordered a 500 sized JDM shimano a few years ago for my 5'-6" UL, ended up returning it. When I finally got my hands on it it was just so incredibly small I have no idea what practical application it could have. Been using a 1000 for a few years now with no complaints. Doesn't stop me from wanting to at least handle one of those vanford 500's though . Gear is a hell of a drug

triple post, my bad

triple post, my bad

if you can't do 22 under your own power you shoulf get off the road, anyways! make way, old man! Real talk, no one should be going that fast on the access road though.

While I'm sure there are excellent reasons why professional and tournament anglers prefer baitcasters (many of which have already been brought up), you don't need to worry as much as they do about losing the tiny percentage points from making fast optimal casts and ergonomics if you're already comfortable on spinning gear. Sure there are times like when you're punching grass on heavy braid where you'll be SOL without a baitcaster spooled with heavy braid but you probably also aren't riding around on a 20k bass boat with a sheath of 6+ rods rigged and ready to go (who knows, you might be!)

I agree with this. Blues are good fun on lighter rods but if there are bass around I want to be releasing them responsibly.

I'd like to see a lot more data on historical populations before I called for a cull. If seals really are above their pre-fur trade levels(I doubt it) then why is that? What factors are inhibiting the sharks from keeping them in check? I think that the issue is less that there are too many seals and more that we are competing with what seals there are over an increasingly scarce resource which we are mismanaging.

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