Fish Report 10/8/24
Opening Sat/Sun 10/11 & 12 to sea bass trips..
And a long dagoned letter showing how we could test for reducing age at maturity in sea bass..
Sea Bass Open Oct 11..
Fishing Friday 10/11/24 from 9:30 to 5 (late start allows a little N wind to calm) $125.00 - Sells out (which ain't happening!) at 18. This trip will be relatively inshore where we had some limits last October..
Sea Bass Saturday - Oct 12 - 7 to 4 - $155.00 - sells out at 18..
And Sunday, Oct 13 for sea bass, 7 to 1:30 - $110.. (Super calm morning & beat the wind in!)
Clam, Squid and Jigs provided on all sea bass trips.
Reservations - Anna is a one person operation. She might be slammed when I hit send. (or maybe not!) If she cannot pick up, Leave her a message. She has a method to her madness..
Reservations at 443-235-5577 - She has other jobs too. The line closes at 8pm and reopens at 8am. She won't take reservations for trips that are not announced.
If you want a spot call the reservation line at 443-235-5577.. Emailing me is no good - her service handles reservations. I'll have no idea what spots have been sold. I do check email for questions; check FaceBook messenger too..
***Be a half hour early! We always leave early!!**
..except when someone shows up right on time.
Clients arriving late will see the west end of an east-bound boat. Seriously, with a limited number of reserved spots, I do not refund because you overslept or had a flat.. If you're reserved and are the last person we're waiting on - you'll need to answer your phone. I will not make on-time clients wait past scheduled departure because of a misfortune on your part.
Sea Bass Size limit 13 inches - 15 per person.
Try to always leave a half hour early (and never an hour early!) I rarely get in on time either. If you have a worrier at home, please advise them I often come home late. It's what I do.
Trips Also Sometimes Announced on Facebook at Morning Star Fishing
https://www.facebook.com/ocfishing/
I post after action reports (or lack thereof) (and sometimes detailed thoughts on fisheries issues) for every trip on my personal FB page and Morning Star page. Posts including OC Reef Foundation work will be included on that page as well.
Bait is provided on all trips.
No Galley. Bring Your Own Food & Beverage.
If You Won't Measure & Count Your Fish, The State Will Provide A Man With A Gun To Do It For You. We Measure & Count — ALWAYS — No Exceptions!
It's Simple To Prevent Motion Sickness, Difficult To Cure. Bonine seems our best over the counter because it's (supposed to be!) non-drowsy. It's truly cheap & effective insurance. If it makes you a bit sleepy - but not chumming? That's a great trade!
"The Patch" of Scopolamine, however, is a prescription only that beats all comers.
If the ocean still wants to get the better of you? Zofran (anti nausea) can be a day saver if you have it left over from a prescription.
Honestly - If you get to go on the ocean once a month, once a year or even less; why risk chumming all day? And then there's the ebullience of youth! Of course you can party hard and go on a moderately rough ocean!
No you can't!
If you howl at the moon all night, chances are good you'll howl into a bucket all day.
Bring A Cooler With Ice For Your Fish – A 48 Quart Cooler Is Fine For A Few People. Do Not Bring A Very Large Cooler. We have a few loaners - you'll still need ice. Should you catch some monstrous fish, we'll be able to ice it.
No Galley! Bring Food & Beverages To Suit. A few beers in cans is fine for the ride home.
Reef Blocks - As of 10/8/24 we have 42,366 Reef Blocks & 2,340 Reef Pyramids (170lb ea) deployed at numerous ACE permitted ocean reef sites. There are also 1,336 pyramids deployed by MD CCA at Chesapeake Bay oyster sites working to restore blue ocean water. Counting those awaiting deployment we have exceeded 5,000 pyramids made since my crew and I fashioned a prototype mold in late August 2019.
Currently being targeted oceanside: Ryan & Shari's Bay Breeze Reef 208 Pyramids - Uncle Murphy's Reef 284 Reef Blocks; Rambler Reef 424 Reef Blocks & 13 Pyramids - Pete Maugan's Memorial Reef 116 Blocks & 14 Pyramids - Calder's Reef Improvement 100 Blocks & 12 Reef Pyramids - Virginia Lee Hawkins Memorial Reef 550 Reef Blocks (+98 Reef Pyramids) - Capt. Jack Kaeufer's/Lucas Alexander's Reefs 2162 Blocks (+57 Reef Pyramids) - Doug Ake's Reef 4,194 blocks (+16 Reef Pyramids) - St. Ann's 3,035 (+14 Reef Pyramids) Unnamed Spot at Jackspot Reef 200 Blocks & 12 Pyramids (many w/bamboo added) - Sue's Block Drop 1,786 (+30 Reef Pyramids) - Kathy's Cable 276 blocks (11 pyramids) - Rudys/Big Dad's Barges 140 Reef Blocks (+9 Pyramids) - Benelli Reef 1,552 (+18 Pyramids) - Capt. Bob's Bass Grounds Reef 4,790 (+ 116 reef pyramids) - Al Berger's Reef 1,970 Reef Blocks (48 Reef Pyramids) - Great Eastern South Block Drop 260 Reef Blocks (+10 Pyramids) - Cristina's Blast 140 Reef Blocks & 2 Pyramids - Capt Greg Hall's Memorial Reef 362 Blocks (+2 Pyramids) - Kinsley's Reef 964 Pyramids - Bear Concrete Reef 512 Pyramids, 44 Blocks plus 16 pipes..
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Shirts & Sweats at OCReefs.org for donors..
Now available as 'name a (small) reef' are 'Tog Cabins' made of parking lot car stops & 'Coral Castles' made of concrete pipe.
See ocreefs.org's 'donate' page for this opportunity.
Greetings All!!
Here is a letter I've sent to Fisheries Science & Management trying to push ahead the idea of using what I know to be true in making sea bass prolific again..
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On how issuing scientific collection permits for an eleven inch recreational sea bass size limit at the African Queen Reef 12 NM SSE OCMD would demonstrate size limit regulation's ability to vastly increase an area's spawning population and rekindle exponential population growth within that site.
I watched sea bass swell - true exponential population growth - from the mid 1990s into 2003. (In hindsight the new 25 sea bass creel limit in 2002 made the expansion appear to continue, but the stock was likely flatlined for those two years of 2002/03 yet lower extraction made them appear more numerous as above size-limit fish mounded.) In 2004 a rapid decline was begun - a decline unmistakable to fishers.
That first time their rise & collapse was a mystery. I thought habitat regrowth key & wrote about it. Habitat was expanding through the mid/late 1990s owing the absence of trawl. In 2003 I wrote, and very much believed, DelMarVa's sea bass were at habitat capacity. It seemed to me then the only way to make DelMarVa's sea bass population larger was to build more reef.
But seafloor habitat regrowth alone wasn't why the sea bass population had expanded so incredibly. Habitat regrowth had helped, but was not why they grew in such vast number.
In 2006, after ruling out everything I could imagine that would cause their rise and, beginning in 2004, subsequent sharp decline, I realized the cause had been in front of me all along. We were no longer seeing hundreds and hundreds of small male sea bass every day.
Used to. Sometimes during the mid/late 1990s and into 2001 we'd even catch and release what must have been over a thousand small male sea bass in a day.
Why were we only seeing a few under 9 inch males a year?
What had happened to them? Why were many female sea bass no longer switching and becoming male during age one?
Although in diminishing number, there were still loads of age one sea bass. Why was there suddenly only a rare small male instead of a much higher ratio of age one (under nine inch) males as had always been the case before? A male sea bass is, after all, dead simple to spot. The bright blue nuchal hump of a knot-head male sea bass is unmistakeable in summer.
Sea bass then dwindled from their 2003 high - the very best anyone alive could remember - to the worst spring run anyone had ever seen in 2015. (My business was saved by a surreal spike in summer flounder - in 2007 I became a summer flounder fisherman: fishing the exact same reefs - I had a new target. Now that too has fallen away. A commercial trawl man said, "That's because they let us catch too many!"
In 2015/16 I predicted our sea bass'si rise AND then-distant 2021/22 fall from that 2015 nadir owing recolonization of the Maryland Wind Energy Area. My prediction, based soley on age at maturity cyling down to age one then back up to age 3 or 4 as is common on stable - yet recreationally fished reef populations with post-2002 regulation of 12 inches or better, became 100% true - except the population burst lasted a bit longer before noticable collapse began in 2023.
(see note A below on the Wind Energy Area's massive sea bass evacuation and subsequent expansion - plus notes on how I am certain sub bottom profilers are the bad guy where survey's effects on sea bass are concerned.)
Every plan I've ever devised to test my theory has run headfirst into catch data's tight grip on regulation.
"Ohhh, can't do that." Knocking the size limit down on even one area of reef has always been a bridge too far.
If no way is found around regulation founded on MRIP recreational catch data (which no one believes) sea bass will return to a nadir. And, without the population burst owed recollonization of the wind area? ..a robust fishery will never return with dropping the size limit..
Management could likely look at and see population rises and falls I claim occurred using VTRs only (Vessel Trip Reports from For-Hire and commercial trap.) Any inclusion of recreation catch estimates in such a work, however, will continue to blind science and management to any truth of manipulating a sea bass spawning population for maximized production.
We've been building artificial reef at a fast clip (for a tiny nonprofit) at our Bass Grounds Reef. Everything we've built in the last five years has been instantly colonized by sea bass. I suspect we'll see this habitat expansion cue the smaller male response - at least on some newer pieces I'd think. Therefore the Bass Grounds would not be a good test site.
Further down the beach is our African Queen artificial reef site. It is our most isolated - and with no new reef construction there for fifteen years or more, most stable and has -by far- the worst sea bass production in it's history. The Queen Reef would be a good place to issue "scientific collection permits" to a few boats - or a broader reef-specific permit for all boats.
Sea bass haven't been found at the Queen Reef in fishable number since 2007 or so. I don't think anyone would complain.
Fishing the Queen Reef used to be a third of my year when I carried 70+ people everyday into 2002. Now I sell out at 18 and every attempt to target sea bass at the Queen has been a failure requiring a much further steam for clients to catch well.
It's entirely possible to fish down the Queen Reef to an 11 inch cap this fall. We'd begin seeing 8/9/10 inch (age one and two) male sea bass in early summer 2025.
By 2026 sea bass numbers would be up significantly while all other reefs, natural and artificial, (except Bass Grounds) would remain in decline.
By 2027 there would be fantastic catches of legal sea bass at the Queen Reef.
Participants would need federal & state scientific collection permits as the Queen Reef is outside the three nautical mile line.
Perhaps fishers keeping these 11 inch sea bass could send MD DNRP a pic of their plotter on the way in - plus random compliance checks for 11 inch sea bass.
I believe an 11 inche size limit would re-trigger age one spawning. Ten certainly but 11 probably. Spawning production did not fall off, after all, until regulation; guided (as ever) by horrificly faulty recreational catch estimates, went to 12 inches in 2002. Even if only some age one sea bass and all age two became spawners, an eleven inch size limit would be far better than the spawning production from 12+ inches post 2002.
Why do I believe one isolated reef group will swiftly demonstrate how the recreational size limit can shift age at maturity and greatly effect spawning production?
Habitat Fidelity.
Tagging has shown over and over how our region's sea bass will remain on a reef, then overwinter offshore, and return to the exact same reef come spring.
Not shown yet, but I believe true; as sea bass age to perhaps seven or eight some or many will abandon the urge to rush inshore to spawn and remain further off. They still get color - so they're still spawning - just not messing with the rookies' spawning grounds any longer. (how's that for personification..)
I also believe when the nearshore population is minimized, the impetus for a 'spring run' is removed because there's no competition for spawning spots /harems. Spawners no longer rush in come spring when the population is low.
Owing my own observations during the recent spike in population (2017 to 2022) - and in smaller scale when we've built large new reefs, it certainly appears as though habitat fidelity begins at fertilization.
How the heck..... But, habitat/site fidelity is often seen in avian/mamalian/insect species too. Over and over I've noted where small male sea bass spawn is where a population increase benefit accrues.
Indeed, although there was an exponential rise in the MD WEA and surrounding reefs's sea bass population beginning in 2016, it did not benefit areas inshore, such as the Bass Grounds or 'Sue's Reef,' in the least.
Once proven and applied as good management, sea bass will again be at miraculous levels in just a few years. All we have to do is let them do the heavy lifting.
So I ask you, the Fisheries Science & Management Community: How can we target the African Queen Reef with a reduced size limit soon and begin pushing age at maturity downward to then include - as soon as next spring - the far more numerous age one and age two sea bass already inclined to return there after winter migration?
I've looked at this critically since 2006. My belief that decreasing age at maturity is key to increased - even maximized to exponential(!) - spawning production in these sequential hermaphrodites is key has only strengthened - especially when my predictions surrounding the recolonization of the MD Wind Energy Area were all borne out.
Below are old notes supporting the evacuation of the MD WEA.
Find a way to do this. Once I've checked out - no one will ever press for it again.
Regards,
Monty
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Note A)
The wind area and out to approx 4 miles from its borders -approx 525 sq miles measured by an NGO's charting team- were evacuated by sea bass owing three years with multiple boats doing survey work. The "subbottom profiler" survey gear in particular is the culprit. I believe it mimics the echolocation of a super predator and scares them. At first they did not flee - but simply would not feed when a survey ship was within 4 miles. By the middle of the second year evacuation had begun and by summer 2015 was complete. When I videoed once thriving reefs in the last of August, 2015, there were no sea bass on any of the video surveyed reefs in and around the MD WEA.
None.
During subsequent survey work in 2020/2021 a survey boat was equipped with new gear late in the period that did not bother sea bass at all. It couldn't have been an accident.
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A compilation of work from an email dated 2/16/16.
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..I told 'em about how survey boats are a big pain in the neck because they turn the bite off. At a meeting a couple years back it was a funny story - they laughed. Humor, unfortunately, proved a poor teaching aid.
Here's what I wrote in my 6/27/15 fish report:
...If what happened to reef fish happened to piping plovers or spotted owls or any kind of marine mammal - law suits would be flying.
Instead, the fact that sub-bottom profilers cause bottom fish to instantly stop feeding is just a yawn..
Allow me to tell you what I know. I think it's either a lot more than the government wants you to know, or simply more than they know too.
No aluminum-foil hat, just facts:
When Maryland's R/V Kehrin was doing survey work for the Maryland Artificial Reef Initiative (MARI) prior to deployment of NYCTA cars at Jackspot Reef in, I believe, May 2007; Capt. Rick Younger did not seem surprised in the least that his sub-bottom profiler had the instantaneous effect of shutting off what-was a magnificent sea bass bite. The Kehrin's sub-bottom profiler unit was turned on just several hundred yards from my boat. It positively & instantaneously shut-off the feeding of sea bass.
Capt. Younger, of course, turned his unit off when asked. The fish resumed feeding.
Survey boats for wind energy will not.
In recent years surveys have been relentless. There is no variance. The effect to flounder & sea bass is 100% predictable.
Another illustration: on July 31st, 2013, I was fishing the Great Eastern artificial reef about 18 NM ESE OC MD in the southern-most portion of the wind lease. I could see the Scarlett Isabella closing and watched my clients' success diminish to absolute-zero when she was approximately 3NM N our position. As my nearest reef that might provide suitable success was either 8NM south or 13NM ESE, I waited for the survey boat to turn north and move its equipment out of range (about 5 to 7 miles).
Closing to 2NM ENE my position with survey gear in use, no fish at all bit while the Scarlett Isabella was so near. None.
Then, at 10:15, she came full-stop and the bite went 'wild' (comparatively). With flounder & sea bass coming over the rail, clients cheerfully exclaimed; "Don't move Captain, they're here!" (I, of course, had kept clients over fish all the while.)
A helicopter approached the Scarlett Isabella and landed aboard ship. That's why she'd stopped. When the helicopter left a while later, the ship came-about and began a new survey leg.
The bite, of course, died completely & at once as they re-started their survey gear.
At 10:40 AM I hailed the Scarlett Isabella on VHF 16 & asked to switch to channel 10. I questioned if they had turned off the sub-bottom profiler while the helicopter was aboard. A few minutes later I was told, "Yes, the sub-bottom profiler was off then."
The Scarlett Isabella was back again last year.
Now yet another survey has been undertaken, this time by the Shearwater and Global Explorer, a drilling ship. They can scarcely be troubled with recreational fishing concerns. The Global Explorer would not speak with me on the radio after I revealed I was a recreational boat. What they are doing is "important."
Recreational fishing businesses, apparently, are not.
Impacts to reef-fish feeding behavior remain 100% consistent. Survey equipment turns the bite off. Unfortunately, the ships this year seem to have a broader, more pervasive effect - their effect on feeding covers more area. . . (end of content from 6/27/15 Fish Report)
I went and filmed several reefs impacted by survey boats in September of 2015. The effect surveys had is plainly cumulative & catastrophic. I made a 4 minute video and released it a few weeks ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ahNqo8geE .. We were late getting out there to film. Really late editing it.. Do have to make a living. Weeks after the survey boat was finished--had left for survey work elsewhere, there remained no sea bass on reefs in & near the Maryland Wind Energy Area..
Last year, in 2015, we had no spring run of sea bass. I'd never seen such a thing. Used to be I would presell all of May starting in the first week of December. (e.g. If you wanted to book a Saturday spot in May right now, in February, fugedaboutit - All Sold Out.) Sea bass fishing was great & clients knew it. Now I'll open the last two weeks of May sometime next month and warn clients it won't be what we used to have.
Having thought long & hard, I attributed the 2015 spring run failure to there being so few spawning sea bass that any impetus--any race among them to be first to claim the best spawning spots--is now gone.
But I wonder if instead year after year of surveys has taught our sea bass NOT to spawn here, not at all.. Spawning site fidelity is everywhere in the animal world. Similar to salmon, sea bass return to exactly the same spot to spawn. Except, unlike salmon, sea bass survive to spawn again & again. (if we don't catch them!) We've shown spawning site fidelity in cbass with tags hundreds of times.
What's going to happen now that we've forced them --year after year by sub-bottom profiler noise impacts-- to leave the only spawning ground they know?
I think what's going to happen is all that bottom in the Maryland Wind Energy Area (MD WEA) will become as if it were a brand new artificial reef - a huge new reef spread out in fantastically greater area than we could ever hope to permit for reef building ..with no fish on it.
((and that absence of sea bass would, of course, trigger 'all hands on deck' age one spawning..))
Cheers All,
Monty