Re: Where are all the ling!
Many members here will call me a doom and gloomer, and get all pissed off, but IMHO we will be seeing bag limits and seasons on Ling soon... They get hit hard all year by recs with the restrictions on all the other species, and the draggers don't give them much of a break either. i see them on ice all year up here in ny state, 250 miles from the ocean. at big prices.. they are marketed here as whiting at times, and hake at others
The fall and winter seasons that used to be hot for Ling are just a shadow of years past.. Now they are more of a welcome bycatch during the spring/ summer Blackfish/seabass/early season fluke seasons... Ling were caught for decades on fairly shallow open bottom, clam beds, along channels, in mud, sand, rocks, wherever there was food for them.. Today, fishermen think of them as a "deep water" wreck/ reef/rock fish.. Thats only because the numbers are so far down historically.. We always caught them right on sand/mud bottom from the shorline to maybe 50-70 FOW from Jan until early June and then again starting in Nov.. It was an 8 month season inshore, right to the shoreline jetties at times,and then in summer, the deep water wrecks would yield big numbers of BIG Ling.. Times have changed drastically for the Squirrel/Red Hake, and I fear the impending imposition of pretty severe catch restrictions one day before very long.. The numbers are simply no longer there... I think they still get a lot of them in New England, not sure, but in the NY Bight, I am not very optimistic... bob
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