Posted on December 14th, 2021
Hit the vid to see the gear available at Sunset Provisions at Sunset Marina.
We had sunny skies and decent temps today, but the wind was a little puffy so the ocean was a little rough. Not too rough for everyone, but most stayed in the bay where there was some good fishing to be had too.
Bryan Mindte of Sunset Provisions who you see above tried some ocean striper fishing with Big Bird Cropper and Shaun Flaherty today, but the water out there was a little rough and a little dirty. The crew headed back to the bay where they found plenty of short rockfish action at the route 50 bridge.
Blake Gunther of Gunther and Sons Fishing fished with Derek Yobst and Jason Stokes in the bay today and had some great luck with the tautog on our Fish in OC tog jigs. The guys combined forces to put six nice keepers in the box.
The ACSA handed out there seasonal awards for Angler of the Year this evening where Ron Smith won for the ocean division and Shaun Flaherty won the bay division.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star was the lone ocean report today, but it was a good one with sea bass boat limit #12 in a row
Horizon clear & sharp in predawn’s glow; we enjoyed another fall sunrise heading east. Kieth D pushed 22 blocks by the rail. I could see a good number of sea bass on the screens atop almost 1200 reef blocks. In thirty years it will just be a coral mound with no discernible substrate.. What’s so hard about that? Why doesn’t the professional fisheries community advocate for such a simple method of making the ocean a better place for fish? In my experience, building reef makes more fish – period.
Ah well..
We paddled a while more, even guided a while by saddleback dolphin. Nice show that.
Weatherman always and forever with more funny business at hand; light westerlies forecast a few days ago instead became 20.3 knots north. Thankfully it was switchy – first N then NNE and back. Didn’t build too big a set.
Sea bass sure didn’t mind. While fishing the wreck of the RickyRay, Ted was first to bag out at 10:39. Rich had todays pool winner. By 11:20 everyone else was done – even the crew. The rent shall be paid this day!
Had a barge all lined up to sink tomorrow. But, while I was offshore today(beyond coms), the operation got canceled.
And now I’m hearing the Joint Fisheries Council Commission meeting in Alexandria has likely just laid the groundwork to regulate me out of the sea bass business.
Be working on that.
Fight.
Quite the house of cards NOAA has allowed to be built. MRIP shows MASSIVE recreational private boat catches – sometimes just one state’s private boats are said to catch more sea bass than ALL Party/Charter and COMMERCIAL Trawl/Trap north of Hatteras COMBINED..
Lot of really well-paid people overlooking that.
So, with these enormous catches on a computer screen NOAA says – “Hey, must be a lot more sea bass/fluke/scup than we thought. Let’s increase commercial quotas by a LOT.” And, just to make it fair, maybe someday we’ll increase recreational quota too.
And they did raise commercial quotas – A LOT. Couple years ago.
But not ours.
Not yet.
Recreational private boat catch is an illusion. It’s absolutely not real.
Commercial catch is dead fish, guaranteed.
Watch.. Real catch is going to come around to haunt — but they’ll jack-up Private Boat landings still more and make it recreational fishers’ fault.
It’s already happening.
Endless, endless hours at the computer coming. Be trying to show what everyone senses – that MRIP aid far too faulty to use in any aspect of fisheries, especially regulation.
