Morning Star Fish Report

Fish Report 10/29/09

Tog

A CBass Prediction

Wheat Field

Hi All,

Weather.. lots of weather.

Not as bad as weather gets, but plenty bad enough to keep us in port.

Tog should cooperate nicely - water temp dropping, mixing.

Season opens back to 4 fish on November first.

Going every chance we get - even with the very smallest of crowds - even if crew outnumber crowd.

Calling for 10 knots in a long-period ground swell Friday...

I listened to the House Sub-Committee on Oceans testimony Tuesday. My Congressman is on that Committee. He's heard from me.

Brilliant people, especially Dr. Murawski--but human--and a guy I suspect is looking for a huge Government contract for monitoring catch made up the first panel.

The second panel was fishers, mostly well-spoken and to the point.

One group quite proud, the other angry.

I was dismayed to hear what sounded like a verbatim recitation of a Pew press event from mid-summer coming from a NOAA scientist.

The RFA's council, Mr. Moore, did a fine job. I thought his the best of the lot.

Still, as the panels finished and the questions subsided.. I knew what it was to feel the wake of a passing freighter - while stranded in a life raft. No rescue - not this time..

Perhaps the financial distress caused by this "Emergency Closure" will be a catalyst for improving management.

Tagging studies being definitive, habitat fidelity solidly established, dividing the mid-Atlantic into 3 or 4 regions/zones and splitting the quotas/allotments is absolutely necessary.

This is the most critical change needed: Create regionally controlled quotas for winter to ensure that massive over-fishing does not occur on a single regional sub-stock.

Apparently, sea bass abundance to our north is where ours was 5 years ago, at least according to the data. Remember, the need for some regulation was so obvious that fishers acted. In Maryland we had a 6 year head start on management, our 9 inch size limit giving us a solid lead when federal management came. Our stock grew incredibly soon after the creel limit was introduced, and then collapsed. In 2003 sea bass were so abundant I honestly thought we were nearing the habitat's holding capacity.

I suspect what happened to our fish will now continue time after time, regionally. The currently-peaking northern area will experience heavy trawl pressure in January, February and March because it is the most valuable part of the stock. Bigger sea bass are worth more per pound, that's where the money is: it will be targeted. This heavy pressure, recreational included, on a regional stock; this mature cbass stock with the males all grown into legal size, and virtually none sub-legal, will get hit heavily and start to topple. Removal of the males, furthered by continued--even increasing--recreational and nearshore artisanal fishing in spring, will create a spawning shortfall come summer. Imbalanced, that area's cbass population will no longer replenish faster than fishing is removing--regional collapse then unforestallable.

Meanwhile, other areas will be in better population phase, have more numerous fish. Statistics which only deal in coastwide stock assessments will camouflage on paper the heavily pressured sub-stock's problem.

Unnoticed in the whole of the coastal data set, that regional fishery then collapses to below size-limit. The cycle, the rebuilding, begins anew as more small sea bass transition to male and create a new spawning stock.

In aquarium settings sea bass transition very rapidly from female to male when a single male is removed from amidst females. That is not what I observed here after our most recent collapse in early 2004. Males never completely absent, it wasn't until 2008 that they were abundant, far more so this year--most sub-legal.

From Cape May to Chincoteague we are well into the upturn--and would have enjoyed it far more had the size limit remained 12 inches. In 3 years, maybe 2, we'll be where the northern region is now; where we were in 2003.

In 3 or 4 years we start all over.

Unless its sooner.

Or it gets fixed.

Shutting us down on sea bass was, and remains, rubbish.

Some are willing to peel back the watery veil and have a look. Most--including the power centers--are all about paper crossing a desk. No scholarly work exists with our natural reefs on them. While I have written several papers, made video: its anecdotal.. There's virtually no scholarly knowledge of mid-Atlantic natural seafloor habitat. There's no paper to cite.

Without efforts to find out what habitat is missing, protect what remains, and restore at least the natural footprint of reef in the mid-Atlantic; the cycle I've described above could worsen depending on habitat impacts.

You can not restore squirrels to a wheat field, nor can you restore reef-fish to barren bottom.

A pile of horse-feathers is any claim of rebuilding reef-dwelling species without knowledge of their habitat. Managing sea bass is all about controlling fishing pressure on discreet habitats; its succesful restoration measured via the regional holding capacity of its reefs.

The bold assertion of grand economic gains for survivors of this regulatory tempest--fisheries quickly rebuilt--are hollow, if not disingenuous; disappearing into thin air upon realization that we now manage fish by sky-fall, not reef production.

Coastwide catch-restriction creates oscillation in sea bass abundance. The peaks will remain temporary, and the valleys more economically destructive, without a solid foundation of habitat and a method of maintaining a sub-legal spawning stock..

Unless you just close the fishery.

Bloody fine bit of management that.

Regards,

Monty

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

posted by Monty # Thursday, October 29, 2009

Fish Report 10/25/09

Two Tog

Window Dressing

Hi All,

Fished near-bout all week with light crowds.. er, all put together it wouldn't have been a crowd. Did fish Tuesday to Friday though with Saturday's south at 30 ending the streak.

Was fun. Bite alternated between steady all day to fussy with a couple good flurries. Different daily; just as you'd expect of tog.

Had a couple folks aboard that had no experience with the fishery. Light rails.. its been a great time to learn; clients enjoying as much individual instruction as needed, I think.

Even Cathy, who I've fished with since 1982, who can bring a tear to a grown man's eye while sea-bassing and surely did trout fishing back when: even though she fed the tog a steady supply of crabs for about an hour without a hook-up, Cathy can no longer say: "I can't catch tog."

Poor tog...

I had a voice in the creation of our tog regs. So did many others. Sea bass now closed - I'm hit by ricochet bullet I helped load. The two fish limit was to be an 'incidental catch' limit, slowing directed effort, easing pressure while many other species were available in the bays and ocean. Never anticipated cbass closed in the best time of year. Ever...

Had I written the tautog regs it would have been: Ocean - 3 at 16 inches, only one of which could be female, dropping to one fish in summer. Coastal bays I'd slowly up the size limit - work it to 16 over a long period, six or eight years.

I was recently saddened to learn that a local fishing club's highliner in the coastal bay-category had the lead with a 15 1/2 incher. Guy eats, sleeps & breaths tog..

Lot more ovarian bang-for-your-buck in the larger fish. We all 'know' more eggs means more fish. (fecundity study Himchek, NJ)

Its not that simple of course. Those eggs have to survive. Then the juveniles have to survive. Then fishing starts to be a factor.

I received an interesting email from Rich Wong of the MAFMC this summer who did his masters on juvenile tog. He argues that tautog populations are limited by suitable grasses & especially macro algae in their earliest weeks and months of life, this when they've first settled to bottom from the plankton stage. Little chameleons, these youngsters change color to match, exactly, the color of the growth they're in. His argument: more juvenile habitat in our estuaries would allow more fish to 'recruit' to the fishery--to grow up: that the species is not limited by hard-bottom reef habitat: rather, any bottleneck of stock expansion is in juvenile habitat limitation.

I remain unpersuaded that juvenile settlement does not occur in the ocean, but Wong's work is certainly convincing of the importance of inshore habitat.

Fair-many sea bass fall from that same patch of sky.

Lot of folks working on this region's bays, get these factories back into full fisheries production. "Enviros" some call them...

Meanwhile, all the coastal artificial reef we have built has been settled to some extent by tog. In our tag & release work there is no evidence of migration; a couple on walkabout, but nothing resembling sea trout, striped bass, or even sea bass: our region's tog are homebodies.

Fishing now with a two fish limit, we're doing lots of tagging. Have had a couple good recaptures--old returns, fish with a story--and keeping at least a big fish dinner. Opens back to 4 come November 1st.

Soon do a fish report on these 652 and counting tag returns. Wonderful developments in artificial reefing too. Need to match a $25,000 grant towards the Radford..

But not yet. Sea bass under martial law - addressing that issue more important, discussed below.

Keep bringing a .22 to a sniper match; playing the fish-pool though Sam, Larry, Dennis, Henry & Brian are onboard..

Writings form rampart, logic grape & chain-shot, email as cannon - no surrender.

Like Custer, I can't.

Regards,

Monty

Warning: The following verbiage has been modified from its original format for profanity.

Despite lead scientists' findings that the black sea bass quota could be safely doubled, the current stock assessment and statistical data review committee's recommendation has 'safe harvest levels' for 2010 the same as 2009: the lowest quota ever.

Current MRFSS catch/discard mortality estimates hold that recreational fishers have far exceeded this year's quota.

If I'm not mistaken, this means the sea bass season in 2010 will be greatly shortened with a smaller creel limit and larger size limit.

And, if that's correct, then the piano-wire necktie will have done its job perfectly, a low-budget guillotine, though no other aspect of management has.

This window-dressing, the numbers on paper or screen in offices where payroll is unquestioned; these estimates that are truly important to some very few people will be as they'd like, as if an architect could submit as-built drawings before the foundation's been poured; this tiny sub-set of the management community happy with their efforts while hundreds in business experience severe economic repercussions and thousands are denied access to a fishery they too have helped rebuild.

Pretty numbers with ugly consequences, experienced in an ugly economy.

This sometimes-uneasy alliance of regulators and fishery scientists call sea bass a "data poor fishery." They know full-well there are errors, not just in the catch estimates, but in the stock assessments too--the larger guess of just how many fish are out there.

Scientific trawl data to estimate how many fish live where no trawl-net can be towed.. Recreational catch estimates discredited by the National Research Council, NRC, that guess how many have been caught by sport fishers.. An estimation of almost half our quota, not as catch, but dying of release mortality, this when I couldn't force an under-size sea bass to go belly-up with scientists aboard..

Inferior data, no matter how thick its binder, leads to poor decisions.

So why in the Billy-Blue-Blazes haven't fishers been asked to provide supporting data that might better these decisions?

Maybe there is a full-press effort to get accuracy from Vessel Trip Reports, VTRs. Maybe there is a dedicated effort to find truth with existing, but unused, data.

If so, they're awful quiet about it. Ought to share the news.

Make headlines around some parts.

The fellow that looked at our assertions of over-estimated flounder catch last year reviewed the exact data set that had created the errors. He would not use our airplane over-flight boat counts, or any other reasonable data source we offered, to lower the number of shore and private boat fishers.

We sought to compare known catch rates of party/charter fishers with an improved estimate of the number of other participants, and--refusing anything remotely anecdotal--got the same data looked at with the same result.

Rote: mechanical repetition of something so that it is remembered, often without real understanding of its meaning or consequence. (Encarta)

Above I had an example of juvenile tautog production being limited by habitat.

My anecdotal assertions and video--YouTube search 'Common seafloor habitat mid-Atlantic' & also see Nick Caloyianis "Natural 3-D Bottom: Mid-Atlantic Bight"--these images not enough: coral reef in our region remains scientifically unsubstantiated..

The NRC has a book, albeit thin, titled "Effects of Trawling and Dredging on Seafloor Habitat" that has multiple descriptions of habitat damage. The American Fisheries Society has a book, thick--could be used for self-defense, is--entitled "Benthic Habitats and the Effects of Fishing" with numerous examples worldwide of habitat loss.

Yet repetition of known-to-be-safe statements by rote leads to this sentence from a recent MAFMC Press Release titled: MPA Designations moving forward. 10/19/09 "...3.) For fishing gear impacts - the Council should adopt its prior determination that hydraulic dredges may adversely impact EFH but that the impacts are temporary and minimal..."

There are areas where that is a true statement.

There are also habitats, some already lost, none already found, some completely gone for forty and more years, where "temporary and minimal" may understate the stern towed gear's effect.

Every square yard of reef has a production value many times greater than sand. Some of this production, from the most sizable boulders and, as in Russian roulette, those bottoms that simply haven't been impacted in a long time, is still enjoyed by modern fishers. Much of it though has been lost and will only be enjoyed by future fishers if we accept the task of finding and restoring it.

The production of our many artificial reefs is shared, not cherished nor even recognized, amongst all.

The loss of our natural reefs' production, through reduced catch, is shared by all too.

Management's single, laser-like focus on catch restriction--and its use of poor data to base regulatory decisions on--has brought my industry close to death.

Now, after 12 years of federal sea bass management we are denied access: closed, not in a time of crisis for the fishery, but for a minor paperwork crisis of dubious origin that coincides a national economic crisis causing intensifying effect.

It is management's refusal to find, protect and enhance Essential Fish Habitat--this a clinically diagnosable denial of restoration biology: their unwillingness to look deeper, search harder, for positive results in regional stocks that have--though accidently--already occurred: to model means of maintaining very high spawning stocks plainly evident in the fishery and use those models for betterment of commercial and recreational opportunity: and, finally, to use regional stock divisions--regional quotas--as a decisive and fundamental management tool supported by science that meets any gold-standard test.

I find the absence of this type of work negligent, especially since 'more of the same' has proven disastrous. I believe its inclusion, the embracing of restorative work instead of relying solely on fishing reduction, would send the Mid-Atlantics' fisheries well beyond rebuilt; that management has no concept of what is achievable and, as of now, has no firm tactic to achieve anything other than temporary restorations, stock oscillations, in which no business can survive.

Forget the window-dressing. Side with jobs, not problematic fishery data.

Pull those research boats out of their NASA-like deep trench research. Put them to works of immediate economic importance. Find the natural reef habitat that is and once was.

Build more too; its easy.

Seek realistic catch data using the knowledge of those deeply involved with recreational fisheries.

And reopen sea bass before regulatory mortality climbs near 100% - for fishers, not fish.

Regards,

Monty

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

posted by Monty # Sunday, October 25, 2009

Fish Report 10/19/09

Goin' Fishin'

Another Letter to Dr. Lubchenco

Hi All,

Dogoned-no-good-stinking-nasty weather... (That's the Hallmark version)

Have not fished since before the last report. West at 10 Tuesday & Wednesday - forecast like that, ought to be able to do something with it.

Sea bass remain closed. Great big water temp drop, anticipate a tog bite - should snap. Go see. Two fish limit - practice/dinner/tagging.. Some fun.

Rail sells out at 15 for tog trips.

Sell a ticket, weather's good, we're going.

That's it for the "what's biting" part of the report.

Below you'll find a couple other things on my mind..

Regards

Monty

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

That's how I titled a recent letter to Senator Mikulski, Senator Cardin, Congressman Kratovil, Dr. Lubchenco and others.

Tried to convey the sense & reaction of hearing a real mayday call, the spine-chilling, survival instinct-activating response that is the mariner's.

Sometimes an engine overheat is mistaken for fire, a live-well pump's hose--disconnected--has only to be turned off, a diabetic need only eat, a child playing on the radio - false alarm.

But when its real, even when its not, responders get going. DNR Police, volunteers, Coast Guard assets---moving---boats, ships, helicopters, airplanes, satellites - unrelenting action - rescue.

Mayday response from Congressman Kratovil - yes. Good thing too or I'd have thought my 'radio' broken.

The rest ain't pickin' up what I'm putting out.

Or, maybe they are.. yawn..

What is occurring in our fisheries is as if the Coast Guard's electronic data stream, the radio transmitting weather buoys, were broken. Showing impossibly dangerous sea conditions: their only correct response would be closing ports & inlets to traffic, halting all commerce at sea.

Unwilling to check the data, they scoff at mariners' observations of calm conditions.

Now years later, knowing full-well the buoy data is rotten and bearing the scars of a flogging by the National Research Council, they still close off traffic when these monitors light-up - without ever checking actual conditions.

That is exactly where we are with the Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey - MRFSS. Sea Bass, summer flounder, and many others fishery plans depend on MRFSS to estimate catch..

Well, it isn't exactly that, its management having to use MRFSS' center, a huge statistical spread, a spread which well may contain the correct estimate of the number of fish caught--somehow statistically valid--but only rarely in its center.

Irregardless: the coastal buoy data, these recreational fish catch estimates, are as rotten as a one of those 'cooler surprises' when, a week or two after your last fishing trip, you open that Coleman and--instantly overcome--gag-retch-spit, odor foul enough to make a skunk blush.

Like the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, fishers now starve next to a sea full of bounty. They in need of knowledge to catch them, we the skills to prod a system into action; neither wanting more than to eat.

This MRFSS data is causing economic pain to fishing crews, bait sellers, sinker makers, tow-boat operators, .....the restaurants in which fishers might dine, the hotels where they might stay and, indeed, the very people that would enjoy use of these services.

From Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod, all this fiscal pain to all these people can be reduced--not eliminated-but lessened--by reopening sea bass & flounder to recreational fishers that have done nothing more than cooperate in their restoration.

The sea bass "Emergency Closure" is not fisheries restoration. I have no idea how to convince the higher-ups that reef-dwelling fish need reef: that the obvious effects of stern towed gears used decade upon decade have diminished these reefs: the fact sea bass return 'home' to spawn each summer leaves the idea of a 'coastal stock' untenable, that they must be managed regionally: and that in their unique physiology, that they change sex in response to population rise and fall, is the greatest means of population increase if we can but grasp it...

No, this 'emergency closure' is only causing crisis, not fixing one.

Catch restriction but a handy wrench; the tools for real restoration remain unused.

Regards,

Monty

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

posted by Monty # Monday, October 19, 2009

Fish Report 10/16/09

Gales of October

Tags

VTRs: A Short-Term Solution

Stay with me on this one too..

Hi All,

Nicked some triggers on Tuesday, our last day before this gale rolled onto the coast. Winds peaked at forty three knots, seas sixteen feet, water temp dropping all the time: they were likely our last triggers of the year.

Also caught tog, some more than nicking them, a double header of keepers, tags returned after celebrating a birthday, maybe two: but not everywhere I might expect - trouble. Oscillating up and down over decades, the tog stock has a long recovery period after overfishing. We won't contribute much to those ills with a two fish limit--a bit though. Have certainly earned our keep with building habitat, conservative management and the determination of those releasing all females or limiting their number & fishing far above the required size limit.

Seemingly barbaric, bleeding these fish adds to their flavor; fillets a beautiful white, fresh and firm; a noble fish, worth the extra effort.

When the wind lays down we'll be targeting them as best we might. The two fish limit designed to keep early fall pressure on our far more abundant cbass that are now closed: opening back to 4 tog come November.

The fantastic abundance of summer flounder, unforeseen in occurring and apparently unnoticed by management, is denied to us in this difficult time as well. We have tagged a fair-many of late; running low, just sticking them over 18 inches. One 22 incher ate a tog bait, green crab, hardly a common flounder bait. Put a yellow ribbon in a 22 inch sea bass too.

My many thanks to those that trouble themselves with reporting their tagged-fish catch returns.

Light crowds - we'll get some great practice and tag a mess of these rascals, keep a pair for dinner. Sell a ticket and the weather's good, we're going..........

Though well-found, my partyboat business lies bludgeoned and bleeding, nearly breathless, hull grassing as bedsores, her mooring lines--now doubled for gale winds--are all that's left to support her though this regulatory tempest. Sea bass closed in what should be a time for putting-up fish for winter, a time for banking maintenance funds and paying down the remainder of the many bills associated with business is a regulatory failure unlike any I've seen.

This region's last sea bass collapse occurred--unnoticed by management--back in very early '04. We are well into the rebound now, spawning stock comprised of many sub-legal males; we're looking great.

Or would be.

Commercial fisher, environmentalist, recreational enthusiast, manager, scientist, partyboat patrons & crew; all share a similar goal: healthy fisheries.

But the only tool in use is catch restriction.

Amazing to me is that even among a few of the best funded environmental groups, those what might understand every single link in an estuarine food web, no real connection has been made between healthy marine habitat and restored fisheries. Historically, great strength borne with ignorance has often brought a poor end.

Not at all intriguing might be stern-towed gear operators working to keep fisheries scientists in the dark, but they too surely benefit with fish in abundance..

Spectacularly, some--many--in the recreational fisheries are so afraid of the dreaded Marine Protected Area, MPA, that they'd as soon there be no discovery of sensitive habitat either.."Keep that closet closed or we'll never fish again!"

Living in fear of the truth.. Not a good place to be.

Fish populations driven higher solely by catch restriction offer tenuous success; their creation of bioeconomic stability apt to topple at some bit of overfishing--real or imagined.

Fisheries restored through habitat increase will be on sounder footing, as would many overlooked parts of the food web. Fishers having more options, these many species doing well, reduces fishing pressure as effort broadens in spectrum.

Seeing what happens beneath that watery veil, which fishers have no trouble breaching for their purpose, is indeed necessary.

Science, at least thus far it seems, can't be bothered about it unless it pertains to genuine discovery, not economic recovery.

There are corals, exquisite in every regard, growing on every hard surface in this marine region.

Fish live there.

Though all groups with a marine interest want to see a similar conclusion, none are on the same path. Any hope of bridging the gulf lessens, widening daily as the regulatory difficulties of decisive management, wrought of poor data, envelop more participants with its disruptive, business eliminating, lawsuit filing result. Battles fully joined, the amity & goodwill of fishing a memory.

That we might find a way out before MRIP, a way to simplify, if only temporarily, the regulations on the reef-using demersals, we might then find more common ground. Any of these rebuilding targets can be exceeded with focused management that includes habitat at its center, a center surrounded by solid catch data, and from that firming, more surety in biomass estimates.

Deeper still to flesh out a solution.

Try.

Try by using VTRs.

Fishing Vessel Trip Reports, VTRs, are a a form sent out by NMFS in Gloucester, MA. Every commercial boat, including party/headboat, has to fill out this form for each trip; at one time I understand trawlers had to go tow-by-tow. The information includes a fairly general location, number of crew, number of passengers, trip time, soak time, number of hooks, and quite detailed information on catch--species by species--discarded & kept, and assorted permit numbers. I personally include habitat type, marine mammal & turtle sightings.

NMFS has been collecting this paperwork for some time, and from a lot of boats.

The Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey is not allowed to use VTRs - or wasn't when last I heard, though it sure seems like MD partyboat MRFSS numbers smoothed out, got extra accurate a couple years back, despite the slippage with this year's cbass pre-estimates.

Mountain of data; many tales to tell: ought to have a listen.

Tales of passenger increases when the fishing's good, and of sliding sales when its not; release ratios over much of the coast - dividable down to several sq. mile areas, catches in same fashion--species specific catches, fishing pressure readable same; bigger boats that got out in weather when smaller ones didn't, no boats got out, more, lots more: buckets and buckets of data.

All of it, every byte, can be used in some fashion to check the broad accuracy of stock biomass estimates.

And all of it, every byte, can be used in some fashion to check the broader MRFSS work.

Instantly, nearly all the underestimated catch would jump out as Maryland's 2009 estimate of 1,192 sea bass surely must.

For those creating, using & supporting MRFSS, I'd suspect their perception an ugly thing, like a good friend gone to crack, the death of a neighbor's child, or the disappearance of 30 years--seven days a week-- hard work.

Surrender? Move to common-sense size and creel limits right there? At least until MRIP is up and running? Get rid of the indefensible positions that have boats fishing next to each other under wildly different regulation?
Nah - live and breath the data - anyone actually doing this would press on.

I went into some great detail last year that for our state's MRFSS estimates of summer flounder catches to have been accurate there would have to have been small boats stacked atop one-another, and shore fishers shoulder to shoulder, had they caught as well as party/charter skippers: this based on VTR CPUE--catch per unit of effort. Had they not caught as well as professional effort, it would have required far more fishers.

An extremely intelligent fellow, from Woods Hole I think, went over those assertions, and from others, and concluded that MD's catch could indeed be as MRFSS predicted because he didn't have hard data to use that bore-out our anecdotal offerings..

An emergency now--for fishers anyway--maybe a few phone calls to DNR police: "Where do they fish, how many boats/people.." Anglers themselves untrusted; some state and non-profit biologists are frequently out and could establish fishable area on charts. There's the often maligned MRFSS field interviewer - eyes on, at least enough to spot Bad Science creeping into a data set.

Could the asserted fishing effort--the number of participants--actually have occurred?

Boots treading--truthing--not paper where errors grow enormous unchecked, can yield a better answer.

It might be Bad Science..
..if VTRs show a decline in catch and passengers, but the 'private/rental' category in the data skyrockets..

..if private/rental boats are shown catching low yet shore effort is stacking fish like cordwood, their sinkers barely missing the skunked fishers hulls..

..if numbers of participants are high, but party boats are only sailing weekends..

..if any marine catch is shown to occur when it was too rough to go..

Once started, a lot of comparisons would emerge. Accuracy, more solid, created in just a couple small geographical areas would establish some percentages to work with over broader swaths.

Would work.

Needs to.

COB Tuesday?
Yeah, probably not.

No hurry at all?

Now Katrina, front-liners fully engaged...

Time for some very real leadership.

Want to try Maker's Mark by Christmas.

Not food stamps.

Regards,

Monty

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

posted by Monty # Friday, October 16, 2009

Fish Report 10/10/09

Triggerfish, Tog & ..Drum?

Closure: RFA's Response

Decoys For Sale

Hi All,

Very light crowds offering no fiscal relief; derned if it ain't fun though. Triggerfish have been the main target. They're almost out of here; very late to have them now. Been some wonderful fishing.

Fall rules - we're tagging them under 11 inches, boxing the rest.

Come to think of it, fall rules will remain until the state accepts management of this important fishery.

Too busy with triggers to really get down to business with the tog. Today I decided to give it a little more effort..

Dang those fish are fun.

Unforgiving too; we broke 3 off close to 10 pounds, one may have gone 12/13.

I will have my toggin gear aboard come morning.

Water temperature is slipping, that's key.

Season opens back to 4 fish later, still at two now.

Couple nice dinners in a pair of good tog. A fishery that folks love or hate; heck of a lot of fun if they're biting..

My customers have caught four black drum in almost 30 years of bottom fishing off Maryland's coast. All caught this week; three of them by Hurricane Murray.

Talk about odd.. Hurricane 3 -- tens of thousands of others 1.

Caught on triggerfish rigs, they weren't big, just 10 - 12 pounders. Cooked one, tagged the others....

The Recreational Fishing Alliance, RFA, is going to court over the sea bass closure. And not solely for this particular closing, they want to see clarity brought to the whole process.

An honorable suit, the RFA is trying to raise money for their legal defense fund.

If you're so minded the website Googles easily...

Fair to say that I have a conservation minded client base, perhaps the most so for a party boat. Still, raising the size limit to 12 1/2 inches was bad for business. We had the highest release ratio this June of the last ten, maybe ever: 86.15%.

Having seen the cbass stock grow fantastically at closer to 50% releases--even when there was no creel limit, throwing back almost 90% diminishes the experience as the enjoyable camaraderie of this type of fishing doesn't stop until the dishes are washed.

Slowed by regulation and now closed, a coastal small-business economic disaster has been created by MRFSS data that no one believes: or should.

I know the statistics are not meant to be a hard number - they're a spread. How it came to be that managers 'have to' use the centerpoints of catch estimates I do not know, but there --the centerpoint-- is the crux of the problem.

That and with all this squirrel hunting, no one's gone to see if there's any trees..

Common sense regulation would carry the day better than data best handled with a wide pitch-fork.

A couple years after the new federal fishing registry, MRIP, has been up, the back checking will make for some interesting reading. The firmer 'number of participants' license data, overlaid on field intercepts--real, actual fish counts--will show just how crazy some of these estimates have been.

Fishing 7 days a week for tog, triggers--its a water temp thing--and whatever else we can find. The rail is limited to 15 for tog fishing; limited far more by other pressures.

Now selling decoys I made 20 and more years ago on eBay. Rather my daughter's children had done that..

Sunrise, pleasant company, catch fish, maybe some big fish.. With all the ills in this world I could certainly have far, far worse.

Regards,

Monty

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

posted by Monty # Saturday, October 10, 2009

Fish Report 10/4/09

Toggin Begins Monday

Man-Made Fish Stocks

Chitlins & A Sniff Test

Stay with me on this one..

Hi All,

This has to get fixed.

Sea bass being closed isn't right. Sea bass being 12 1/2 inches isn't right.

Fluke being closed isn't right either..

Now we're going to go catch tog and that isn't right.

At least I hope we're going to catch tog..

Could have frequently limited everyone on cbass at 11 1/2 inches, many at 12.. They were deliciously fat & would-be tasty.. throwbacks.

Must have been a fantastic summer for feeding, the shorts really are chubby.

Saturday's 10 to 15 southerlies were a bit more 20ish.. Rough day. Those that survived nicked a solid dinner out of it, more.

Sunday very different - the last day of sea bassing this year was calm with the bite 100% on.
Very nice fishing.

Now over, unless..

Tagged a bunch of fluke between 18 and 24 inches in the last couple days. They all bit sea bass rigs baited with clam - on artificial reef.

I wonder what we'd have caught were we allowed to keep a few; were we really trying for them.

I wonder how little impact it would have on the flounder's population if we were allowed 3 per person forever..

Fluke seem to be thriving on our artificial reefs. Seeing more small flounder than ever before, seeing them on the anchor, on the drift, natural & artificial reef, open bottom while croaker fishing; everywhere. I didn't anticipate flounder becoming an offshore fishery when reef building started. Should have though. Makes sense because our natural reefs didn't get trawled-flat for sea bass, they were towing nets for fluke.

Natural reef? Curious thing about tautog management; all the places we target them, bridge pilings, a stone jetty, shipwreck, or artificial reef; its all man-made, there's precious little remaining natural reef that's robust enough to suit tog. How can managers possibly assert they know how many tog there should ecologically be based on the holding capacity of habitat they have yet to find?

To mandate a "tog stock restoration target" when the known fish population lives almost entirely on/in man-made substrates leaves a lot of room for debate. The validity for a need of restoration is, I think, questionable.

Management actions to sustain & enhance recreational or even commercial tautog fishing? Yes, a strong case can be made for the bioeconomic benefits of regulation. But using catch restriction to force man-made habitat's fish abundance higher..

What's restorative about that?

Three decades ago I was taught that every fish thrown back died; that we shouldn't do it.

Two decades ago I learned that was wrong. But I had to prove that it was wrong, prove that fish did live, prove that what we throw back could make a huge difference in the quality of fishing: I instituted a 9 inch boat limit and tagged the heck out of sea bass, followed with a 16 inch tog limit; tagged them too.

It was making a difference, plain as day.

I pled for real management, any management, of our region's fish.

Slow in coming, just over a decade later the pendulum has swung too far..

It was in the late 1960s, early 70's that sea bass fishing, mostly drifting, became wreck fishing, mostly anchored.

Then Soviet factory trawlers were fishing so close to shore that Ocean City residents saw men walking deck. Unregulated fishing of every sort flourished, especially surf-clamming & trawling, scouring the bottom clean of fish, clams - and growth.

In a biological wink the habitat was lost.

Our fisheries restoration targets are based on historical landings - catches from years ago.

Were it not for a few boulder bottoms, catastrophic shipwrecks, even the horrors of war that visited our coast so many years ago, black sea bass would likely be a notation in some dusty ichthyology text.

Just the most robust habitats survived the era of unregulated fisheries; so far as natural reef habitat is concerned, we're still unregulated: low-lying reefs flourish or die at the whim of stern-towed gear fishers.

Nearly everything I wrote about tautog habitat above is equally true for sea bass. Almost all the places we target them, bridge pilings, a stone jetty, shipwreck, artificial reef; all man-made. There's only some remaining natural reef. How can managers assert they know how many cbass there should be based on the holding capacity of a habitat they have yet to find?

How can they claim to have rebuilt the sea bass stock when it is only catch restriction upon man-made habitats propping up their claim of restoration; that continuing to fish this year would shatter all hopes of meeting management's goals..

Might the environmental community rejoice at 'restored' wood ducks dodging between townhouses and tall shrubbery, their whistles echoing off vinyl siding, nesting boxes stacked like condos around golf course ponds: or would they prefer a slow deep river, broad flood plain and pockets of still water between stands of oak and other trees, their dead making nesting areas..

Nowadays the purposeful siting of man-made reef has expanded on what others had to have noted when fish populations flourished around shipwrecks.

The stock of cbass we fish today results from nearly fifty percent man-made habitat.

Yet the folks in charge of their restoration have yet to search out where these fish thrived long before a ship ever sank, before man ever sharpened flint or had even climbed down from the branches.

If management brought back the 'natural' sea bass population to a restored original footprint of this region's reefs we'd have an incredible fishery because of man-made reef's added production..

Yet the National Marine Fisheries Service has, to date, utterly failed to find or restore natural reef habitat in the mid-Atlantic.

But they are proud to claim they have restored sea bass, a reef fish.

From: Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act -Public Law 94-265 - As amended through October 11, 1996.

104-297 -(6) "A national program for the conservation and management of the fishery resources of the United States is necessary to prevent overfishing, to rebuild overfished stocks, to insure conservation, to facilitate long-term protection of essential fish habitats, and to realize the full potential of the Nation's fishery resources."

Wood duck boxes around a golf course pond..

A lot of fish swimming around doesn't make for a restoration.

Habitat & habitat fidelity must be factored into management.

No restoration can occur solely through catch restriction.

Discovering what's missing is crucial to putting it back.

Awful lot of work in those sentences.

Get us a lot closer to Magnuson's "full potential."

Too much I guess. Easier to shut fishers down.

Did.

They sure know when we're over our recreational quota.

Think they do..

Size limits, creel limits & seasons are calculated using management plans, stock assessments & the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey, MRFSS.

Never designed for such, managers now use MRFSS to gauge recreational catch in 'real-time' as if monitoring predator drones over a foreign battlefield.

I remember when the National Research Council published its findings in 2006 blasting the MRFSS survey, buckshot in both barrels fired point blank, a scathing report.

I thought--hoped-- that MRFSS as we knew it was dead.

"...the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine."

Those folks didn't like the survey's product.

"Its all the data we have, we must use it." fishery managers now continue to assert. Even after being castigated, excoriated, even keel-hauled by the very professionals that should be most supportive of using statistics as a management tool, MRFSS is still in use.

Well, why not; people fry pig intestines everyday. Safe to say most have eaten sausage casings; chitlins another matter.

The difference, I'd wager, is this foodstuff gets thoroughly scrubbed and checked.

I imagine you could 'falsify the theory' that chitlins were ready to batter using a sliding olfactory scale, a sniff test - they either smell clean or, um, dirty.

Ought to be making use of MRFSS, just needs a good scrubbing & sniff testing for precisely, exactly, the same reason.

I guarantee that many sets of MRFSS data can't pass muster, that they can be falsified beyond question.

But these easily proved mistakes are on the low side. Maryland's 2009 MRFSS estimated harvest of sea bass for the entire recreational fishery--all charter, party & recreational boats--is 1,192 fish.

They're kidding, right?

No, just daft.

My parties have boated that many in one day hundreds upon hundreds of times in years past, even once with a load of state and federal fisheries staff aboard.

Errors this plainly wrong indicate a true disregard for accuracy.

There are more like it.

Errors low dern sure indicate errors high--where they have estimated far more fish got caught than actually were.

If MRFSS were right the salesmen at Sears would remember the shore-fishers backing up the truck to buy freezers for all the flounder they were catching. This while the party & charter boats who provided hard catch data just picked along..

Like the sea bass, that didn't happen either.

Those folks at the National Research Council don't take well to data riddled with errors, they had good reason to castigate the process.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, NMFS, has good reason to abandon it.

NMFS is used to being sued because of MRFSS data. More suits will follow with this sea bass closure.

Make no mistake, MRFSS wins these lawsuits; yet they keep coming.

A good law firm is going to find a chink in the armor. I think the weak spot is in low estimates, but fishers only sue over high estimates because there are such averse effects on the following year's regulations.

Statistical validity is shot-dead high or low. Disproving an over-estimate is nearly impossible because there need only be more fishers to met the estimate. You just add them to the data - whether they really fished or not.

Disproving an underestimate is simple enough; as in the above sea bass example sometimes just one boat's Vessel Trip Reports would suffice...

When the new federal fishing license, MRIP, is up and running MRFSS data will be firmed up. Not just new data, all the hard work that field interviewers did in years past will become justified as the foggy 'number of participants' clears allowing historical catch data to be refined.

For now, MRFSS data represents freshly eviscerated pig intestines that need cleansing.

Job not done, its e. coli have spread to every fishery management plan, all who have sat at the table are ill, some fatally.

Amidst the distraction of vomiting and diarrhea, the emergencies, the lawyers, no one's looking after real and substantiate restoration.

Let the fishers tell management what got caught. Let us build a case. Seat us at the table and review the landings.

We'll help scrub and sniff.

This is an emergency.

Not the sea bass, us.

Regards,

Monty

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

posted by Monty # Sunday, October 04, 2009

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Fish Report 10/4/09

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