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Bluefish population may be overfished

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CWitek

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I will be the first to admit it I was wrong, so wrong. As a kid in the late 70’s I would take rod, reel, gallon milk jug with a hand size hole cut out bungee cord wrapped around my waist and fish snappers to death. My Sicilian grandfather, dad were happy as clams and so were the tomato plants with all the guts we fed them. Never did they get wasted tails, inners went to the garden heads went to the crabs they ate the rest. Late August mornings were chilly and the ocean piss warm but I was happy to be catching them on every cast. Those days are long since past, the well ran dry and I can say I was guilty as sin. That won’t happen again, 1/4 kastmasters hit the water with one hook from that treble I cut off two hooks and release them all. My son asked me why I do that years ago and I told him if your lucky snappers maybe around for your kids. Hopefully they tighten the catch limits for the eastern sea board if not your next surf rod is gonna be called the Searobin Special. I’ve learned from my mistakes but there is not much we can do about grocery cart gang until all the fish are gone. Saving what we like to do starts with us and what we do. Good luck in the fall boys and enjoy what is left. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 8/9/2019 at 0:28 PM, zenman said:

When I was younger bluefish were common and not hard to catch from shore. That hasn’t been the case around Plymouth, Duxbury or Marshfield for quite awhile. Glad south side of cape still has them but they belong up here as well, and in good numbers. 

South side ain’t great 

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Bluefish are my favorite fish to target from the kayak, so whatever tightening of regulations needs to occur to preserve the fishery, I'm in favor of. I know MD's limit of blues is 10 per person and 8" minimum, I would be happy with even half that. We usually get a somewhat reliable summer fishery of 12-25" blues mixed in with the striper schools, and for a while that was the biggest size class I caught. Then I went up north to NY for a kayak tournament, caught my first blue over 25", and was ecstatic. Then, this past spring, I caught several blues over 30", including my PB of 34" which I submitted for a MD citation, and now they've firmly cemented their place in my heart. As long as I get the chance to target them for years to come, I'll move to C&R, a 5 fish creel, whatever it takes. 

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On 8/9/2019 at 9:56 PM, Mark L said:

I will be the first to admit it I was wrong, so wrong. As a kid in the late 70’s I would take rod, reel, gallon milk jug with a hand size hole cut out bungee cord wrapped around my waist and fish snappers to death. My Sicilian grandfather, dad were happy as clams and so were the tomato plants with all the guts we fed them. Never did they get wasted tails, inners went to the garden heads went to the crabs they ate the rest. Late August mornings were chilly and the ocean piss warm but I was happy to be catching them on every cast. Those days are long since past, the well ran dry and I can say I was guilty as sin. That won’t happen again, 1/4 kastmasters hit the water with one hook from that treble I cut off two hooks and release them all. My son asked me why I do that years ago and I told him if your lucky snappers maybe around for your kids. Hopefully they tighten the catch limits for the eastern sea board if not your next surf rod is gonna be called the Searobin Special. I’ve learned from my mistakes but there is not much we can do about grocery cart gang until all the fish are gone. Saving what we like to do starts with us and what we do. Good luck in the fall boys and enjoy what is left. 

My wife and I were sitting on Island Beach State Park last Sat. night looking at the Dead Sea.  I lamented, there was a time when you couldn't NOT catch blues the last week in August anywhere in the park.  Sea robins?  Haven't seen one in years down there.  Blue claws?  Clam shells on the beach?  Horse shoe crabs?  It's a barren wasteland under water out there.  Eel grass?  Barely any.  Barnegat Bay is a very sick pup.  

Edited by Jettyhound

"If you want to consider what 'social security' does for and to people, look at the American Indian." -Henry Ford

"If I could live my life over, I'd live it over Giglio's B&T." -Bud E. Brown

Four boxes keep us free: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

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On 8/9/2019 at 9:53 AM, EBHarvey said:

Honest question: when ASMFC determines a species is "overfished" is that the result of actual data saying too many were harvested, or is it a blanket term applied any time a stock assessment comes in under target biomass?  I'm only curious in this case because, as has been frequently noted, bluefish populations appear to show significant variability over long periods - i.e., do we know that over-fishing is the primary cause of this current scarcity?

ASMFC when i comes to bluefish don't make any determinations. The Operational assessment that Charles is speaking of was done by the feds, specifically the Northeast Fishery Science Center. Overfished, refers to the condition where the biomass is below the range of lower limit of the reference biomass, it is only tangentially related  to the amount of fish harvested. A fishery could be "overfished" because too many seals ate them.

====Mako Mike====
Makomania Sportfishing
Pt. Judith, RI
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Catching 20 lb blues over 40 inches lots of fun. Now I’m guilty of killing loads of snappers as a kid but I never waisted my grandma would have a fish fry. The bites have gone from two to three weeks to a couple of days now. I’d love to see much tighter regulations. I used to catch blues of good size for two months straight in spring time some seasons. Not so much anymore 

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The oceans are screwed they need to be left alone for at-least 5 years. I've been saying this as long as Ive been on this forum. I caught allot of crap from guys for it. Claiming year after you that you just need to know where to go. Well isn't that the issue,  its gotten so bad you need to know where to go to find the scraps.

 

I would have closed the fishery down over 10 years ago .. we would be eye ball deep in great fishing by now.

 

I went on 3 SeaBass trips this year caught one keeper. I saw way to many shorts enter peoples buckets. 

Edited by nfnDrum
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