Them Fluke are still out there! 9/12/24

[Detour66]

Left the barn to a super flat bay! Had a whale break the surface 3/4 of the way to the tip of the hook! Very cool! Headed down the beach to some hard bottom in 55ft of water. No drift ...time to move on. With such calm conditions I decided to fish one of my favorite areas that has lots of structure and various depths but sometimes is hard to fish due to too much current. Not today! We had a .5kt drift that was perfect. We caught Sea Robins, Sea Bass, Ling, Chub Mack and Fluke. Only 3-4 oz of weight was needed to hold bottom in 60-80ft of water..perfect. We wound up catching 24 Fluke most in the 17" plus size with 4 of them keepers between 19-21". We also caught some nice sized keeper Sea Bass but let them go hoping to get some bigger knuckleheads. It never happened! (Oh well) 6" Gulp tipped with spearing did the trick. The weather was perfect and so where the seas. They are still out there. Get them while the getting is good. Tight Lines!

[Duffman]

Awesome man! nice report. Hope she ran well for ya!

[Gerry Zagorski]

Great report and saw some similar reports with all around good fluke fishing.

It ain't over till we say it's over!!

[reason162]

Excellent!!

[Broad Bill]

Did anyone get out fluking today, no reports.

[Duffman]

Did anyone get out fluking today, no reports.

Yes. was up by the VZ but bite was slow slow. Bait draggers did better than gulpers.

Got a few hours to work with this morning before cooking and football. High tide 6AM and have a particular hole I wanna try.........

[Broad Bill]

Thanks for your reply Duff. If the majority of fish have been staging in 60-80 ft, with the upcoming week of strong NE and coming up on strong full moon tides, these fish are ready to go. Glad to see people caught this week in deeper water but conditions are on us to start the 60-80 mile migration.

Say a prayer for this stock. As I said the commercials are going to again hammer them at a time they need to be left alone. As Dan stated, I also don't understand why local smaller commercials put up with these out of state mega boats from NC and VA. killing our fishery in local waters.

Don't know if anyone saw the effort to move the demarcation line for small mesh netters and fly netters 5 miles east and increase the number of boats with exemptions to harvest 200 lbs. of summer flounder per trip. The bigger issue here is these boats, not targeting summer flounder, are already killing who knows how many fish in the pursuit of targeting other species, BSB, porgies, ling, winter flounder etc., but they have to throw them back dead. The push is to allow more small mesh netters to retain 200 lbs a day which will only incent targeting them. Our good friend from ASA Michael Waine sits on the Committee. GARFO will spin this as an efforts to reduce dead discard but it will further incent the harvest of summer flounder to bolster catch values by $500-$1,000 per trip. 42% decrease in quotas this year, probably 95% of recreational catch released as shorts but let's increase exemptions for the number of boats that can retain by catch fluke in the small mesh fishery and move the line closer where fish can be harvested by moving it 5 miles closer to shore. Another hit for the fishery for the benefit of the commercial sector.

[Duffman]

Managed to get 5 with 1 over 18" in 2 hours. All in 6-10 FOW. If they are staging in 60-80 FOW i wouldn't know but i can tell you there are still plenty in shallow.

[Broad Bill]

That should be the norm with bait moving out of the bays but didn't seem to be the pattern this year. Glad you caught. Hopefully this week of predicted strong east winds isn't the nail in the coffin.

[Detour66]

Managed to get 5 with 1 over 18" in 2 hours. All in 6-10 FOW. If they are staging in 60-80 FOW i wouldn't know but i can tell you there are still plenty in shallow. Nice! With all that east wind coming this week it would be nice to catch them close home? Sent you a PM.

[Duffman]

Nice! With all that east wind coming this week it would be nice to catch them close home? Sent you a PM.

Replied to ya. Yeah close to the barn. And watch the guys on the jetty coming out. I have some new hardware I didn't expect to acquire!!!!!

Looks like a solid 6-7 days East coming up!!!!!

[Broad Bill]

Duff interesting report. As mentioned, strong NE for a week is in my opinion going to end this. Tomorrow is the full moon and fluke ride those stronger tides to use up less energy. There will always be lingering fish around probably into December but in my opinion this week is the big push and these fish now are the exclusive property of commercial netters until late April / early May next year and the stock will once again get crushed throughout the fall and winter months. Reduced quotas translates into even more selective harvest by commercials which leads to greater levels of discard mortality and harvested breeders. This stock has zero future if management elects to maintain the absolutely asinine regulations they've used to manage it since the early 2000's. The overall population has declined by approximately 50%, age and gender composition has become completely imbalanced and the rate of decline will accelerate. It's a mathematical certainty.

[Duffman]

Duff interesting report. As mentioned, strong NE for a week is in my opinion going to end this. Tomorrow is the full moon and fluke ride those stronger tides to use up less energy. There will always be lingering fish around probably into December but in my opinion this week is the big push and these fish now are the exclusive property of commercial netters until late April / early May next year and the stock will once again get crushed throughout the fall and winter months. Reduced quotas translates into even more selective harvest by commercials which leads to greater levels of discard mortality and harvested breeders. This stock has zero future if management elects to maintain the absolutely asinine regulations they've used to manage it since the early 2000's. The overall population has declined by approximately 50%, age and gender composition has become completely imbalanced and the rate of decline will accelerate. It's a mathematical certainty.

I'm guessing the ocean fishing will be over after this blow but I'm confident the shallow water stuff will go for a few more weeks.

One thing I noticed this year if it's worth mentioning........and grant it I prefer to fish as shallow as possible......the amount of small, postage stamp size flatties was way more than I've seen in a very long time. Fish from 8-10-12" were plentiful and aggressive.

Another observation......fish I've cut early in the season were stuffed with crabs. As the season went along almost all the stomachs were empty.

I know what Im seeing is most likely completely different that what guys south of me and fishing deeper are seeing.

[Broad Bill]

One thing we've learned from the past is recruitment levels 100% greater than we've been seeing over this past decade haven't translated into a larger population of the stock, more liberalized regulations or an increase in older age classes. As a matter of fact, it's resulted in the complete opposite so the million dollar question is what's happening to all these juvenile fish once they migrate offshore.

[Gerry Zagorski]

One other thing I noticed this year, the fish seemed to like meat, not that the gulp didn’t work but I think it worked better tipped with some sort of bait.

[Broad Bill]

Interesting observation Gerry. Could be smaller fish prefer bait, could be cooler water temps or younger age classes might be catching on to how much Gulp costs and are doing their best to cut us a break in return for our help stopping the commercial massacre of juvenile fish that happens every year, year round.

Very concerned as you all know that this stock is in even worse shape than the 42% quota cut suggests.