Fish Report 6/15/12

Fish Report 6/15/12

Cbass & An Odd Fluke

June?

A Whale Tale

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Fishing 7 to 3 Almost Everyday - Longer on Saturdays & Keeping Most Sundays Open In Summer For Research - Do Have Openings For This Sunday, The 17th - Long Cbass 6:30 to 4 - $125.00 - Reservations Required On All Trips @ 410 520 2076 - We Obey All Regulations Whether We Agree With Them Or Not: If You Do Not Measure Your Fish The State Will Provide A Man With A Gun To Help You - Bring Food & Beverage Plus A Cooler & Ice For Your Party's Fish - Dramamine The Night Before Is Cheap Insurance - Be Early. We Like To Leave Early, Rarely In On Time..

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All-RIGHT Now, That's Enough!

Such a nice start to June; Two tropical depressions, a screaming westerly & now 5 days of dry NE winds.

Hard to tell a fish story when I can't get out.

Fishing before Tuesday's wind was very good. Bite consistent, throwback ratio high but acceptable -- sending groups home with a fish fry's worth, plus a dinner or two in the freezer..

Had one angler with 25 keepers but, I'm sorry to report, in with Cubby's fish was a cod so no cbass limits in the period. Dern sure he didn't mind!

Have seen dedicated anglers target summer flounder/fluke with success. Takes commitment to bounce a 4 to 6 ounce spro bucktail while doubles of sea bass are coming up all around.

Had a day off Sunday past, took a few friends deep for tiles. We hand-crank, No electrics. Visualize the Empire State Building, that's how deep "wind 'em up boys, we're making a move" would be. You don't even notice with a fish on.. it's brutal when there's not.

MD allows 7 tiles in aggregate. I think 7 golden tiles per-person far too much pressure & 7 bluelines too conservative..

I gave the fish a break when we had 2 goldens each, then finished our MD limits with bluelines. Our youngest angler, Trevor, also caught a MD limit of snowy grouper - one. A small fish south of here, it was the biggest I've ever had aboard.

Calmest of calms, I'd do it more often if we didn't have to leave at 2 AM.

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Golden tiles live in clay cliffs - excavated pueblos really - and also in bowl shaped depressions in some places.

Blueline tiles shallower, goldens deeper - we often find cbass with bluelines but not always. Caught blueline tiles on the sparsest bottom I've ever seen, just a few sea pens here and there in 350 feet; Caught 'em on steep cliffs too deep for Capt. Rick Younger's camera gear--might be rocky or not; And have caught bluelines on robust natural rock reefs..

Not likely we'll ever create artificial cliffs of clay or rock. However, I'll guarantee building big rock reefs would work wonderfully off in the deep.

With sometimes 10 miles of clear bottom in every direction, and then broken only by the human tragedy of a small shipwreck, we have not yet begun to utilize reef building's potential. We can make fish, create abundance where there was scarcity

..instead, we'll choke on tighter regulations found in knowing Connecticut's cbass catch was down 99% in 2005; up 4,257% in 2006, then up 43 & 425 more percent in 2007 & 08, then crashed back into the sea with a 99% decline in 2009 (declines are limited to 100% where zero provides a floor) then --that miraculous year again-- in 2010 CT's sea bass catch was up 5,083% -- These Are Real Numbers From A Real Chart, This Is Where We Now Source Fishery Management, Where Recreational Quota Overages Come From; This Is Real Data Used To Close Real Businesses By Emergency Regulation.

They don't have reef on their computer screens - not Yet.

Might take another decade, but they Will.

If we assume "restoration efficiency" as judged by goverment expenditure its obvious that fishery restoration comes from statistical catch estimates & holding meetings. If, however, we instead consider where people go fishing--where they catch fish--and in what habitat those fish they're catching survived to maturity--then a different picture emerges.

We really must have regulation. I saw what unregulated fishing left behind in the 80s -- at times it was a barren sea.

What we need are accurately balanced restoration efforts..

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Its been over a month, a beautiful calm Saturday in May with cbass closed, a day I very surely would have sold out - I picked up a bird watching trip.

Were we to measure 'fishing dedication' by the passion these folks put into their hobby I expect there'd be fewer folks called 'fisherman.'

Offshore some 45 NM I get reports of whales to starboard. (these folks see EVERYTHING before I do with their binoculars unless it's perfect radar weather, then I can 'see' larger birds a couple miles away.)
Turning toward the whale sighting, saddleback dolphin are heading NE & really making steam. I see what looks like a mile of dolphin and then spot one of the whales close to us -- its all I can do to keep up, these animals are moving fast.

Dolphins now all ahead of the whales, we're suddenly catching up swiftly. This pair of fin whales porpoising, blowing every few tail beats; Swimming harder than I've ever seen large cetaceans go, their head and forward body muscle groups visibly knotted as they blow; Sprint almost done, the whales are scarcely submerged as they collide into the feeding saddlebacks -- the dolphin seemingly pushed out of the way as the fin whales feed.

Never, ever saw such as that.

An hour later we saw it again - better because I had an idea how it would play out.

The whales must have known what the dolphins were signaling each other -- dinner bell.

An amazing sight.

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I see bottlenose dolphin almost every trip. (the gray ones like Flipper, saddlebacks have a flash of yellow) The book says bottlenose live clean out to canyon's edge.

But when I see offshore bottlenose their fins have a slightly different shape, they're much larger, and their behavior is different..

Speciation occurring? Just not enough data--enough necropsies--to compare the two? Different animals I think..

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Looks like we finally have a calm spell coming.

Expect we'll go fishing a while. Build some more reef with those Allied Concrete Oyster Castles too.

Plenty of spots open.

Regards,

Monty

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Capt. Monty Hawkins
mhawkins@siteone.net
Party Boat "Morning Star"
Reservation Line 410 520 2076
http://www.morningstarfishing.com/