“The stripers are here.” That’s a direct quote from Captain Chuck aboard Sea Star III. He found stripers weighing in over 20-pounds with a beauty at 29-pounds.
Stray Cat Charters took some time off but when they got back out for stripers, they caught a 35-pounder on a bunker spoon on the Cuma Lump off Ocean City. They have a full winter fishing schedule available including open boat trips for sea bass, tog and stripers. You can fish Thanksgiving Day 7 a.m.-noon and an offshore sea bass trip 5 am until 4 pm. Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving.
Captain Ray found the warm water keeping striper fishing a bit slower than normal but he was still able to catch stripers on flies and plugs. They were pretty much school size fish, with the best action around the inlet. After the North East blow, cooler temperatures got the water down to around 55 degrees, more normal for this time of the year.
On a personal striper trip, he was at the right place at the right time. After a slow couple of hours picking up a couple of fish, he hit a pod of fish that must have been just coming in from the ocean. In the last three hours he caught 35 more stripers on a chartreuse buck tail deceiver fly. The fish were caught in 2 to 4 feet of water in the back bay on an out going tide. No keepers but a good number were 25 to 27 1/2 inches making for the best fly rod action, Ray has seen since 2003. “It is afternoons like that, that you live for,” Ray says. Here’s hoping these fish hang around and spread out in the back.
RFA NEWS: In an online blog appearing at House Speaker John Boehner’s website, RFA’s executive director, Jim Donofrio was quoted as saying that President Obama’s new National Oceans Policy regulations “stifle job growth” and create “too much uncertainty” for America’s angling community.
“The recreational fishing industry is ‘Main Street America’ in every sense; it is largely composed of small, family-run, mom and pop businesses,” Donofrio said, going on to say that “creating additional levels of bureaucracy” will reduce the overall productivity of his industry, and that a time of high unemployment “it seems counterproductive to advance and fund the NOP when it will stifle job growth in the fishing sectors.”
The latest hearing focused primarily on the President’s executive order, an action which bypassed legislative protocol and led to starting headlines in the national news media in 2010 about the future of recreational fishing opportunities. The House Resource Committee which for close to a decade has refused to approve the burdensome oceans policy has been convened twice in the past month to review the presidential edict.
RFA encourages anglers to sit down and view the testimony, archived it its entirety at the House Resource Committee website at http://resources.edgeboss.net/wmedia/resources/112/2011_10_26_fc.wvx
UPDATES: This column was in too soon to contain any decision regarding the Atlantic Menhaden vote due today.
Black Sea Bass are legal again; 25 fish at 12.5 inches, Nov. 1-Dec. 31 Go get ‘em.
Send your fishing reports and pictures to cmiller@cmcherald.com. All pictures submitted, if they don’t make it in the print version, can be seen on the Herald’s Web site www.cmcherald.com, click on community, then fishing and boating.
Cape May – Governor Murphy says he doesn't know anything about the drones and doesn't know what they are doing but he does know that they are not dangerous. Does anyone feel better now?
