Fluke Season

We're about 40% through the 2020 fluke season, curious how everyone would rate the season thus far. Reports seem to be way down, don't know if that's indicative of the fishing or fishing effort.

July full moon is 7/20 which will bring a new body of fish but curious what anyone's thoughts are about the current state of the fishery.

For the last four years with 18" / 19" minimums for most states, short to keeper ratio has run around 15:1 and average keepers per trip if any keepers were caught averaged one. Many angler directed fluke trips resulted in empty coolers. Does it seem those percentages are holding this year or changed for better or worse not that it could really get much worse than one fish.

Curious people's thoughts. Thanks.

[Angler Paul]

The moon was full on 7/5, the new moon is on 7/20. Ocean fluking out of Barnegat has sucked so I've been tuna fishing.

Paul thanks for the correction. You're right, the full moon was July 3rd not the 20th which is the new moon.

Full moon for August is August 3rd. With the July full moon so early this year, large body of fish should have moved in from the east but that doesn't seem to be the case which is partly why I started the thread.

So essentially we have one more full moon tide left during the season in early August for a body of bigger fish to move in from the east. If the season holds true with the last two or three seasons, fish will start their migration back out to the shelf in September well in advance of the season closure depending upon weather of course. First tropical storm of the season happening so soon doesn't bode well for the local biomass to hang around until the 9/22 closure.

Hope I'm wrong but as mentioned last year this appears to be shaping up as one of the worst fluke seasons on record with an inordinate amount of shorts and a severe lack of keepers.

Allowing 50% of age classes to succumb to natural mortality before growing to a size eligible for harvest and harvesting almost all breeders in the process while recruitments statistics have been radically reduced is no way to manage this or any other fishery. Hopefully fisheries management will wake up one day and figure that out.

[Capt John]

Dakota,

Seriously, do you think fisheries management cares about the recreational/for-hire sector?

NOT....

Another shitty year.....

[hartattack]

Tom,, The NJ body of fluke is substantial, however those > 18" remain scarce. I've never seen so many tiny river fluke before, double headers were common when they were thick in June. If the size limit was 17" we'd all agree that 2020 was epic but that one inch difference is a game-changer we may never be able to undo

[hammer4reel]

Tom , look at Jerrys reports .
Guys putting in effort are catching plenty of fluke .

We have only fished a few trips and it’s been quick limits on all but one trip .
And that trip was definetly weather related .
.
This year has shown the most sand eels I have ever seen. . From the wash to 80 miles off . Bait everywhere . And every species of fish is gorging on them .

Fluke , sea bass , bluefish and tuna are all packed with so many sand eels it’s a wonder why they ate another bait .
Sand eel type baits are def producing better than standard offerings

[NoLimit]

The fluke reports are so dismal, that we haven’t even tried. It’s a disgrace what the govt has done killing all the breeders.

[Gfedor]

Originally Posted by hammer4reel

Tom , look at Jerrys reports .
Guys putting in effort are catching plenty of fluke .

We have only fished a few trips and it’s been quick limits on all but one trip .
And that trip was definetly weather related .
.
This year has shown the most sand eels I have ever seen. . From the wash to 80 miles off . Bait everywhere . And every species of fish is gorging on them .

Fluke , sea bass , bluefish and tuna are all packed with so many sand eels it’s a wonder why they ate another bait .
Sand eel type baits are def producing better than standard offerings

Capt Dan 100% right on about the sand eels. My fishing has been limited this year , but the fish that we did catch from tuna to small fluke where loaded with sand eels

Guys I agree with all your comments, especially the reemergence of sand eels as a forage base. What I disagree with is the average recreational angler being hamstrung with this 18" or 19" minimum. If the fishery experiences the 25% natural mortality the models use (God only knows how that number is arrived at) coupled with commercial operators being allowed to harvest fish between 14" and 18" which recreational in the four most populous states can't, those young fish Henry you refer to will never translate to greater catch levels in two to three years. Never. They'll be wiped out through discard mortality, natural predation and commercial by catch mortality.

Danny I agree above average anglers will always have an advantage finding fish, I'm talking about the average recreational angler. We have the same conditions today which led to the collapse in this fishery in 1988 which is commercial harvesting primarily larger sexually mature fish and worse recreational has to retain larger breeders when in the 80's we could retain 13" fish. The discard rates associated with both recreational and commercial are killing this fishery. You can't harvest the breeders and let younger age classes succumb to natural mortality and by catch mortality, especially when the by catch mortality in commercial is 80%.

We'll see where it ends up but my bet is 2020 is another disappointment and the increase in smaller juvenile fish were seeing today will not translate to increases in larger fish due to the insane number of fish being wasted as a result of current regulations.

Not arguing with anyone, stating my opinion. Dan I know some operators have increased mesh sizes to avoid mortality to the smaller fish but the vast majority haven't and the percentage of this stock being thrown back dead rivals the whiting fishery in the 70's. We know how that ended up.

[Brewlugger]

So far this season I would say our keeper catch in Barnegat bay has been a little above average with a good keeper to short ratio. What we are seeing is the short fish have been mostly 7 to 12 inches and we are not seeing many 12 to 17 inch fish at all.I did one ocean trip this year 2 weeks ago and we had 3 keepers and 3 shorts. That day it went from nothing to catching and back to nothing in 1 hour.