Friday, January 17, 2025

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The Fishing Line: Weather and politics equals few fish

 

By Carolyn Miller

Similar to the spring of 2009, the weather has once again become a bigger story than the fishing scene.
High winds caused Captain Ray to cancel most trips and when he was able to get out, the fishing was a bit slower. There seems to be less bait and resident stripers around than normal for this time of year.
Especially missing are the larger bait fish the bigger fish feed on, like peanut bunker and mullet. Ray did find some action in the back bay shallow flats and along sod banks and creek mouths.
Smack-it-jr popping plugs caught both stripers and small blues for spin anglers and chartreuse and a chartreuse jiggie fly on floating line was the best producer on the fly rod. Ray says it should just be a matter of time (and weather) before we see some migratory stripers moving in to get the action started.
Bill (bucktail willie) Shillingford fishing out of Whale Creek Marina is finding a steady diet of striped bass every morning the weather allows. Bass are hitting poppers, live spots, and bucktails. Generally they are undersize but bass over 28-inches have been caught.
There also are a ton of small sea bass and small bluefish still around for anyone not interested in stripers.
On the regulations front, U.S. Representative Frank A. LoBiondo (NJ-02) petitioned U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to suspend the premature closure of the black sea bass fishery. Part of his letter reads: “I have serious concerns about the reliability of the data used to make this decision, the appropriateness of it being used to make a decision of this magnitude and the overall necessity for this closure in light of the current status of the black sea bass stock…I respectfully request you suspend the recreational black sea bass closure until this data can be reviewed and additional data from recreational fishery and related business can be reviewed for validation.”
Weather and politics are impacting the fishing scene like never before. Stay tuned.
All photos submitted appear online at SeeMyBigFish.com. Be sure to send your fish stories to cmiller@cmcherald.com. This column appears first online at capemaycountyherald.com

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