Flounder

[Capt Sal]

Originally Posted by Solemate

I know I am in the minority here but the concept of killing a spawning female really is just a feel good idea. Whether you kill it in Jan or July a dead fish cannot reproduce. The only fishery that has responded to regulations in my opinion is the Striped Bass and they were banned from commercial harvest. Granted I am not a scientist but it seems obvious what needs to be done if indeed we want to see a rebound in stocks of any species.

FYI we restricted the destruction of Striped Bass by commercial netters period!

[NoLimit]

Originally Posted by hammer4reel

That’s not totally correct .
Recreational fisherman really abused the winter flounder fishery .
Tons of boats catching garbage cans full after filling a cooler in the hay day .
We all thought it was an endless flow of fish .

Second one is striped bass , killing millions of breeders when they are stacked up laden with roe , and easy pickings .
.

NO fish should be targeted during their spawn .
Sadly that’s when winter flounder and striped bass get fished the hardest

Let’s assume you are correct. If so why after 20 years of zero recreational landings of winter flounder is there still no winter flounder... except in the commercial fish markets at $20/lb???

Go ahead. We will wait for your response

[hammer4reel]

Originally Posted by NoLimit

Let’s assume you are correct. If so why after 20 years of zero recreational landings of winter flounder is there still no winter flounder... except in the commercial fish markets at $20/lb???

Go ahead. We will wait for your response

.

There is very little flounder coming from NJ draggers of that catch .
Guys that commercially fished for them don’t anymore .
Also why the ones that do get a premium price for it .

It sucks that fishery is gone , it was out spring kick off .
But anyone who thinks that we didn’t hurt that fishery didn’t fish it all those good years .
.
Coolers weren’t big enough for the catches , so even guys fishing in a tin boat were using garbage cans .

Fishery hasn’t been shut down 20 years either , been shut down to 2 fish for little over 10 .
.
Very few guys now fish for them at that limit , but I would hope the bay fishery has come back some .

Fishery in shark river will never come back due to the whole area being silted in .
99% of the areas we fished there are full of parking lot dust .

[hammer4reel]

Originally Posted by Capt Sal

Hey Dan to i have to FACT CHECK YOU LOl First of all Whiting spawn like every other fish. Winter Flounder spawn in the spring? So we we shouldn't fish for them in the Spring. Blues spawn in the Summer??? Shut that down also. Stripers spawn in the Spring so shut that down also. When do Tuna, Tilefish ,Makos ,Theshers etc. spawn? Sea Bass go off shore and spawn in the winter along with porgies??? No more off shore PB fishing. We all want to protect the stocks and protect the future of all species but at what cost? If we do what you want there would be no need for your charter boat or any for hire boat and who would buy a private boat??? Comments welcome but let all o0f us keep them civil! We are all entitled to our opinion and this one is just mine. Other than that it is 82degrees and sunny here in Florida LOL

.
Wish it was 82 here Sal , tired of winter already .
I totally understand we want to fish when a species is here ,. And for us many of those are catchable only in the window they are spawning . So of course we want to fish .
.
But it also is when those fish ball up the most and are easiest to hurt .
.
I always would have liked to see striped bass a C/R fishery until May 1. By that time most eggs would be dropped .

Sure those same fish could be caught full of eggs in the fall .
But when they are within days of dropping millions of eggs it just makes no sense to be killing them by the thousands .
..

My take on what caused the winter flounder stock to flatline. Look at the attached landings levels between commercial and recreational. Plot those numbers against the decline in the spawning stock. Like Sal mentioned, the inshore flounder fishery typically came down to a month or less of fishing. Almost no one fished for flounder in the fall when they arrived from their offshore summering grounds. During the winter, the fish are in the mud and infrequently feed unless you have warm days and an incoming tide when a few might come out of the mud to feed. You could see the mud all over their white side. Very few fish were harvested during the fall and winter months.

In the spring when water temperatures rose, the fish would come out of the mud, females would drop their eggs and fish would school up and start feeding heavy in anticipation of their easterly migration to their summering ground. That's when most recreational fish were harvested and the duration was somewhere between 4 - 6 weeks max. The duration between females coming out of the mud and dropping eggs was probably 2 weeks. One weekend females would have full egg sacks, following weekend they were all empty.

While I agree recreational daily harvest limits were too high, I don't believe a fishery which really amounted to 4 - 6 weeks out of the year with a very small window harvesting egg laden females ruined a fishery. Rec's harvested the same way throughout the 70's and 80's and the fishery was as strong as ever throughout those decades. Did we contribute, you have to agree we did. Did inshore habitat issues effect the spawn, you have to think they might have. Did predation (seals, cormorants etc.) have an impact, probably but they weren't nearly as prolific back then as they are today.

Winter flounder can live for 15 - 18 years and females can lay in excess of 3 million eggs annually. If you look at the spawning stock chart, SSB went from 50 million pounds around 1981 to 15 million pounds over the next seven or eight years, a 70% decline in 7 - 8 years. Look at commercial landings, not to mention the levels of discards they must have operated at, over that time frame. Commercial is a year round fishery, not 4 - 6 weeks. Whether females are harvested coming out of the mud in the spring or any time throughout the year, the net result is less females and mature breeders in the biomass. Again larger older age classes representing the future of the fishery. Fisheries can't sustain that pressure and that's what happened to the winter flounder fishery.

Look at the attached pic, it's from an article that appeared in the Asbury Park Press. Note the comments in the article from the following link by Willie Egerter, owner / Captain of the Dauntless.

https://www.app.com/story/sports/out...ttom/14759557/

In the early 80's, I had a night trip aboard a friends boat chunking bass in Raritan Bay. We couldn't find bunker so we went over to Belford to see if any boats were off loading. They were, I'll never forget this. The guy took me inside the freezers they use to store fish. There had to be 20 of the large heavy corrugated containers they use for off loads (probably four feet high each) and every one was loaded with the largest winter flounder I've ever seen in my life other than maybe fish seen from the Gulf of Maine stock in Nova Scotia. Fish had to average 4 - 5 lbs, they were absolutely huge. I turned to my friend and said, there goes another fishery. My guess is they were harvested from the mudhole area. Where they were harvested doesn't matter, the fact they were harvested with obviously larger species being targeted does. Again it's the same story being told over and over. If you kill the breeders, you kill recruitment and by default you kill the fishery. That's what happened to the winter flounder stock. Pollution, climate change, predation didn't kill this fishery. A year round harvest commercially, total tonnage harvested and the targeting of older age higher market value breeders took this fishery down within 6 - 7 years. No different than what's currently happening with the summer flounder stock.

When I was growing up and the fishery was healthy, every summer the bottom was paved in Shark River with juvenile winter flounder. There were so many it looked like the bottom was moving around the floating docks at Fisherman's Den. No more, they're gone because recruitment today is less than 10% of what it was in the 70's and 80's. I assure you that didn't happen from recreational anglers fishing maybe 6 weeks out of an entire season.

[NoLimit]

Originally Posted by dakota560

My take on what caused the winter flounder stock to flatline. Look at the attached landings levels between commercial and recreational. Plot those numbers against the decline in the spawning stock. Like Sal mentioned, the inshore flounder fishery typically came down to a month or less of fishing. Almost no one fished for flounder in the fall when they arrived from their offshore summering grounds. During the winter, the fish are in the mud and infrequently feed unless you have warm days and an incoming tide when a few might come out of the mud to feed. You could see the mud all over their white side. Very few fish were harvested during the fall and winter months.

In the spring when water temperatures rose, the fish would come out of the mud, females would drop their eggs and fish would school up and start feeding heavy in anticipation of their easterly migration to their summering ground. That's when most recreational fish were harvested and the duration was somewhere between 4 - 6 weeks max. The duration between females coming out of the mud and dropping eggs was probably 2 weeks. One weekend females would have full egg sacks, following weekend they were all empty.

While I agree recreational daily harvest limits were too high, I don't believe a fishery which really amounted to 4 - 6 weeks out of the year with a very small window harvesting egg laden females ruined a fishery. Rec's harvested the same way throughout the 70's and 80's and the fishery was as strong as ever throughout those decades. Did we contribute, you have to agree we did. Did inshore habitat issues effect the spawn, you have to think they might have. Did predation (seals, cormorants etc.) have an impact, probably but they weren't nearly as prolific back then as they are today.

Winter flounder can live for 15 - 18 years and females can lay in excess of 3 million eggs annually. If you look at the spawning stock chart, SSB went from 50 million pounds around 1981 to 15 million pounds over the next seven or eight years, a 70% decline in 7 - 8 years. Look at commercial landings, not to mention the levels of discards they must have operated at, over that time frame. Commercial is a year round fishery, not 4 - 6 weeks. Whether females are harvested coming out of the mud in the spring or any time throughout the year, the net result is less females and mature breeders in the biomass. Again larger older age classes representing the future of the fishery. Fisheries can't sustain that pressure and that's what happened to the winter flounder fishery.

Look at the attached pic, it's from an article that appeared in the Asbury Park Press. Note the comments in the article from the following link by Willie Egerter, owner / Captain of the Dauntless.

https://www.app.com/story/sports/out...ttom/14759557/

In the early 80's, I had a night trip aboard a friends boat chunking bass in Raritan Bay. We couldn't find bunker so we went over to Belford to see if any boats were off loading. They were, I'll never forget this. The guy took me inside the freezers they use to store fish. There had to be 20 of the large heavy corrugated containers they use for off loads (probably four feet high each) and every one was loaded with the largest winter flounder I've ever seen in my life other than maybe fish seen from the Gulf of Maine stock in Nova Scotia. Fish had to average 4 - 5 lbs, they were absolutely huge. I turned to my friend and said, there goes another fishery. My guess is they were harvested from the mudhole area. Where they were harvested doesn't matter, the fact they were harvested with obviously larger species being targeted does. Again it's the same story being told over and over. If you kill the breeders, you kill recruitment and by default you kill the fishery. That's what happened to the winter flounder stock. Pollution, climate change, predation didn't kill this fishery. A year round harvest commercially, total tonnage harvested and the targeting of older age higher market value breeders took this fishery down within 6 - 7 years. No different than what's currently happening with the summer flounder stock.

When I was growing up and the fishery was healthy, every summer the bottom was paved in Shark River with juvenile winter flounder. There were so many it looked like the bottom was moving around the floating docks at Fisherman's Den. No more, they're gone because recruitment today is less than 10% of what it was in the 70's and 80's. I assure you that didn't happen from recreational anglers fishing maybe 6 weeks out of an entire season.

That chart shows about 100,000 lbs in recreational landings and I dont believe that for a minute. Half of that would have to be in the NY metro area and we are lucky to think that it has been even 1000 lbs. After this Covid BS, I dont believe and govt stats.

Whether it's 100,000 lbs., 75,000 lbs., or 125,000 lbs. I'm not sure. What I am sure of and what the chart shows is what once was a vibrant robust fishery for the recreational angler is for all practical purposes gone and what's left is almost exclusively commercial and even then a shadow of what it once was.

[AndyS]

https://www.njfishing.com/forums/showthread.php?t=445

[Capt. Debbie]

I ran my charters out of shark river 1988 to mid 1990's and the flounder fishing there was crap then too. That's over 30 years ago it stunk too.

Same as the whiting fishing going to shit in NJ dating back to last century.

Same as inshore Boston Mackeral fishing in the Spring and even in Barnie.

Same as the north NJ weakfishing going to shit too for decades now.


SERIOUSLY:
The good old days for all these fish are an old man's memories of his childhood. And were they actually all that good? Remember... Whiting in the 1960's off of Long Branch pier with pops in January? Eight fish then look like 60 now. LOL

Originally Posted by dakota560

...

When I was growing up and the fishery was healthy, every summer the bottom was paved in Shark River with juvenile winter flounder. There were so many it looked like the bottom was moving around the floating docks at Fisherman's Den. No more, they're gone because recruitment today is less than 10% of what it was in the 70's and 80's. I assure you that didn't happen from recreational anglers fishing maybe 6 weeks out of an entire season.

[Fluken-Around]

When I was growing up and the fishery was healthy, every summer the bottom was paved in Shark River with juvenile winter flounder. There were so many it looked like the bottom was moving around the floating docks at Fisherman's Den. No more, they're gone because recruitment today is less than 10% of what it was in the 70's and 80's. I assure you that didn't happen from recreational anglers fishing maybe 6 weeks out of an entire season.[/QUOTE]


I also remember the days in shark river were your killie and crab traps always had juvenile winter flounder in them. Then when fishing for summer flounder you would always find juvenile winter flounder in their stomachs or they'd be puking them up all over the boat in the river. No more!!