Posted on September 17th, 2023
The ocean was nice enough for the fleet to get back out there today, and it looks like it’s going to be nice all week. We do have another system to keep an eye on to our south, but we’ll enjoy the nice weather while we have it.
Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler reported good fishing for sea bass today with a few flounder mixed in. Fishing is good right now and the weather this week looks great.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star had a nice day with the sea bass today and he also saw a nice mahi come aboard.
Cleared the inlet and found a flat calm sea. Had thought we might. Wasn’t sure.
Sweet.
As one might expect after a multi-day long range hurricane swell bombardment where the bottom had been stirred several days, fishing was somewhat of a pain today.
An insurmountable challenge?
No
..but a challenge nonetheless.
Thankfully, today’s trip was scheduled for sea bass. Time the day was over we’d done quite well with them. Some nice sea bass too. The boys and I even got to wet a line owing a light rail.. (Wonder what’s for dinner!!)
But Mahi? Sure hope they’ve settled by Tuesday. Saw a few today, heard reports of some, even caught an inshore jumbo – No Mini Mahi Mayhem though..
See what Tuesday brings.
You’ve perhaps seen where folks at NOAA are bravely taking on the Recreational Catch Data issue. There’s talk of rescinding 30 to 40% of our estimates.
Long time coming. In 1998 Maryland’s top manager laughed in my face when I complained of impossible catch estimates. After many letters, repairs were ordered by Congress. In 2012 the old system, MRFSS, was out and the new one, MRIP, in. There’s no doubt in my mind NOAA’s repair “MRIP” was driven, at least in part, by spite.
I kid you not.
It’s FANTASTICALLY worse than tahe old system.
In 2016(ish) I was told by the head honcho for MRIP that if I kept on it would only get worse.
Man of his word.
MRIP’s final “Recalibration” was so awful that EVERYONE complained.
Now the right people are in place to fix it. Or at least start fixing it.
Lots more to this story. Incredibly much more.
In this article you’ll see Mississippi contested their MRIP Private Boat ‘effort’ numbers. Theirs similar to ours – far more Private Boats were ‘estimated’ to have gone fishing than was possible.
We had a video camera up for two years. Unfortunately, it was down for what would have been the most revealing period, but there’s plenty of video evidence the estimates were way too high.
In July/Aug 2020, MRIP had a statistical spread of recreational Private Boat anglers from 40,000 to 325,000 in just two summer months. Managers have to use the centerpoint for creating regulation.
The video camera showed between 25,000 & 52,000 anglers for the same period.
That’s roughly 142,500 anglers as an estimate that must be used ..or 26,000 anglers that actually went.
And there, friends and neighbors, is where our annual accusations of overfishing come from..
Experiment over and of ‘no use;’ they took down our inlet camera.
Hmmm..
Sure seemed pretty useful to me.
I’ve worked on recreational catch estimates since 1998. I’ve never seen NOAA management buckle as they have in the face of video evidence.
I’ll be asking you soon to have MD fund that inlet camera. (Was fed money – a grant..) Needs done.
If you know folks in MD Gov you can start right away.
They might be talking about chopping our estimates. Long, long way to “Did chop our estimates.”
In 2012 the correction I just KNEW would result in a huge reduction came through as the opposite.
Hey Maryland Fisheries, lets get it right. Put the inlet video camera back up..
Cheers,
Monty
Rich Daiker and Stacey Schindler (“Stacey is the pretty one”) had an awesome afternoon at the route 50 bridge today catching a limit of flounder from 17″ to 23″. Live bunker was the ticket.
