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| FishWire Coordinator: | Mark Cahill |
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| Bring In the Clowns...
Have you noticed this week that you're sharing your water with a lot more people? Tons of folks in small boats, dunking live bait and clubbing to death any fish unfortunate enough to make it over the gunnel of their Bayliner? Yup, you guessed it, it's commercial season again! Let's put this little charade into context: most of these guys are not the "traditional commercial striper fishermen" of yore that so many wax eloquently about during the winter rec vs. commercial To be clear here, I don't have a problem with true commercial fishermen. The guys that spend a ton of days on the water, or even just the summer months. I do, however, have a problem with my electrician or carpenter taking a couple weeks off to commercially fish stripers...and make a few boat payments (or pay off his bar tab). Before you fire off that nasty email you may be contemplating about your historical right to fish striped bass, let me ask you, how was your commercial deer season last year? How about your commercial duck season? Let's leave the commercial fishing to the true commercial fishermen... Don't forget to send me your own reports, and until next week...
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flame wars on the RT Forums. Nope, most of these guys are pure opportunists who figure that the selling striped bass is a good way to make a couple boat payments or ease the gas bill. It's got nothing to do with earning a living for many of them.
The Alaska Halibut fishery was closed to new licenses several years ago. It's worked there, and it could work here. Let the existing license holders fish, let them sell their licenses, etc. But for God's sake, let's stop letting every nitwit who bought a fiberglass money pit last winter enter our commercial fleet.Boston Metropolitan Regions
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| From the Washington Post - Management Blamed for Fisheries Depletion |
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Boston Harbor
Okay, so we've had a little rain and it's kept a lot of the guys off the water. I haven't been out in the Harbor this week, and the last report I got was from Capt. John Mendelson from last Saturday: Saturday Night--Boston Fished through the top of the incoming Saturday night in the inner harbor. Lots of boat traffic, all headed back to the dock, and we had a nice flat all to ourselves. Casting 6-8" dark colored herring patterns on sinking lines with 10Wts, we caught fish from 18"-38" for two straight hours. There was a little lull at slack tide but we still managed to take fish by dead drifting the flies. My experience this year has been that the fish are stacked up in certain areas and missing from places they usually hang out (Faun Bar is one example of where the aren't.) If you dont hook up right away, move around, and you will find them. Water temp was just at the 60 degree mark where I was and this was the end of the day. I think the fishing will hold up well for the next few weeks in the Boston area as long as the water doesnt get too warm. There is certainly plenty of bait around now--herring, silversides, and crustaceans. Capt. John
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South ShoreNo reports this week. Word is it's slow in Plymouth...summer is here.
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North Shore
Capt. Derek at First Light Anglers reports: Apparently the rivers have been relatively quiet. There has been an occasional small surface feed at the mouth of the Essex, but mostly all small fish eating small sand eels. A few fly and plug guys have been walking the front side of Crane’s Beach and seeing decent numbers of fish, including a few true slobs, but the fish have been awfully picky. The best bet has been a very sparse Ray’s fly or a Merkin style crab pattern. I even talked to a few of commercial guys who fish the Parker, Ipswich, and Rowley rivers and they were amazed at how few big fish were in the rivers. And these are guys fishing live large bunker!! The bluefish have also started to make a showing, mostly mixed in with the bass when fishing live baits or chunks. I have not seen any epic surface feeds as of yet but we should see some soon. Well, that’s all for right now. I hope you all find time to get out on the water and as always please call the shop for more details. Take care, Capt. Derek (978)948-7004 derek@firstlightanglers.com TellieDog had this: North Shore 7/14 AM - hangin' with the skunk In the category of "fishing when you can - not when you want to"... Out with a buddy on a beautiful morning for fishing Manchester from shore on the fly. Light drizzle, but warm temps. Ended up hanging with the skunk. The four to five foot waves gave us a nice morning shower on Singing but we ducked and kept throwing the lines from the rocks anyhow, laughing the whole time. Poked around to a more sheltered spot but found love only from the skunk. Lots of weeds and stuff in the water. Nice quiet morning with no company - for obvious reasons. Anyone else having any luck in the area from shore? DGoorno reports: Essex Mouth Feedbag 7/10 Took a few friends out the mouth this afternoon (3:00-5:00 pm)and ran into birds busting bait on the Cranes side. Hooked up with a bunch of decent shorts 20-22" fish. Had my friends fishing plastic and I was fishing a sparse olive/white clouser. We ran into a few hungry schools, as soon as we laid our lines out we were hooked up....also fished over birds that were working hard but did not seem to be fish underneath us. At one point there were two other boats and we seemed to have the bait coralled only to have some jackass run right through the working birds...I guess that is what you get for fishing mid day Saturday. Anyway I was very pleased to see that type of action and wished I could of stayed a bit longer...I am on margarita duty tonight and just sneaked away from the party to post this report. I got a lot of thumbs up and positive feedback as I was putting out the Essex...anyone else get on them today? Keep those good vibes going and those lines tight!!!! |
July 15th- For the middle of July the fishing still remains good around Cape Ann. At this time of the year, it can very quickly become challenging to catch many fish on the fly or plug. This year, however, the water temps have stayed on the cooler side and the baitfish are still making a strong showing with herring, mackerel, Pollack and sand eels around the rocks, beaches and harbors in good numbers. My report from last week still seems to be holding true. We are finding the best action in the rocks off of Gloucester and Rockport. Straitsmouth Island has had good concentrations of both Pollack and mackerel and we have taken some very nice fish around the high tide. Nat and his client took a 39” bass out of Brace’s cove Sunday night on a 3/0 Mullet Puglisi. The boat traffic has gotten a bit heavier with commercial bass season open, but the weekdays are still not bad. Most of the commercial fleet is fishing off the Groaner off Eastern Point. I guess Sunday/Monday was insane fishing, but it seems to have tapered off a bit. We fished live baits there on Tuesday morning and caught one 40lb fish and one fish about 30” before the dogfish and bluefish ate all our baits.  |
The Merrimack River
Capt. Charlie Crue at Channel Edge Charters reports: Merrimack River Report #7 July 15, 2004 There was a school of fresh stripers in the Plum Island Basin a few days ago. Many were minimum keepers. Offshore the dogfish are creating problems for the “would be” tuna catchers. Some have resorted to trolling to avoid them. Some flounders are being caught outside the jetties. There are reports of some big halibut being caught offshore. The marina where I keep my boat has changed ownership. The new owners have renamed the marina as the Newburyport Harbor Marina and intend to make it the premier marina in Newburyport. They have installed a brand new dock system. It is first class. Those of you that charter with me will experience the difference. Wednesday the local weather turned sour and so did the fishing. It was very wet with a strong wind from the north and northeast. Some bluefish were found near the jetties. The high surf light was on to warn small boats to stay inside. We fished from the north of Plum Island moving up with the tide and wind with little success. It was one of those off days, although rare in this area, which does occur now and then. I think a change in the weather pattern is needed to get back to normal fishing activity. |
Sorry, I did not get a report out last week. The inshore fly and light spinning fishing has been good but with fewer of the big stripers being caught. Joppa Flats has continued to hold big stripers around the high tide but they are very shy of lures and flies. At times they will strike, but most often it seems to be an instinctive strike at something in their local vicinity. On Monday I saw a spin fisherman nail a striper of about 30-inches with a surface popper. Schoolies continue to inhabit the estuary feeding on sand eels and small bait fish.
The weather has been cool with reasonable winds to deal with. Some mornings it has been so beautiful that fishing has almost been secondary to just enjoying the morning. Weekends have been very difficult for drift fishing. Boat traffic and anchored bait fisherman limit the areas to fish.