Snow is starting to fall in Ocean City and surrounding areas now and by the time it’s all said and done we could have some “historic” snowfall totals. Ocean City doesn’t see much snow so a couple of inches is a lot. Well our forecast is for somewhere between 6″ and 12″ with locally higher totals. Several businesses have already decided to close for tomorrow and I’m sure more will follow suit if the forecast pans out. Things could get really interesting. If you live in or around Ocean City and you don’t have to go out….don’t. You can stay home and win some cool prizes in our snowfall guess giveaway over on Facebook. Facebook.com/fishinoc
It was another good wind day today so some of the fleet was glad to get out and do some tautog fishing before this winter storm rolled in. Captain Chase Eberle of Chasin’ Tides Charters had an awesome day of toggin’ with 10 fish in the double digits.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star was glad to get out again today as well and had a very good day with fish up to 28″.
Toggin in the calm before the storm
..and boy was it calm. Sliver of moon made for easy navigation in our pre-dawn departure. Ocean was laid out flat like a polished piece of steel.
Long time tog fisherman, Alex had rounded up a bunch of my old regulars and some new fellows too – all were welk skilled blackfishermen. He pushed 20 blocks & a pyramid by the rail just before sun-up. I expect Capt. Bob Gowar’s Memorial Reef will be used by fishers and divers for at least another hundred years – many hundreds if successive generations too nourish it with more cement or even larger projects.
I’d planned on using the current from yesterday – a brisk northerly current – to our advantage this morning. Anchored and waited like Linus in the pumpkin patch for the water to begin moving a bit better.
Ocean sort of skipped a tide I suppose. Does what it wants, promise. Without current the first stop was just a bust.
Ahh, but after that my anglers lines began to show some indication of current. The bite fell our favor & built into an excellent day.
It’s not always so, but often fish will put on the feed bag before a major storm.
How can they tell?
Derned if I know.
Barometer must tell em something.
Bruce took everyone’s pool money (again!) with a 28 inch female he tagged and released.
I had five clients who could have taken a limit. Lots of other fish were caught – some serious dandies. Instead of taking thirty and more tog, we boxed 6 on the whole boat. One of those was to pay the rent for our block pile storage.
I think about Capt Orie Bunting’s tales from the early marlin fishery. While
other skippers wanted to throw as many dead marlin on the dock as possible – they felt (perhaps correctly) what they threw on the dock drove sales.
Those “kill em all” guys wouldn’t carry Capt Orie’s best client – one of the DuPonts – because the DuPonts wanted to throw back their marlin, release them.
That was in the 1950s..
I don’t see tog ever going ‘all release’ as marlin have today – sure hope not. Tog are a fabulous kitchen fish in so many ways – even smoked.
If we’re to see fishing as great as it was in the early 1980s and again in the 2000s, however, we’ll have to learn to temper our catch.
Shall.
I hope to release my work on correcting NOAA’s recreational catch estimates during the storm tomorrow.
NOAA claims theirs is a ‘science’ – sure seems to be random wild guesses about Private Boat catch instead. Those gigantic errors essentially write our regulations. Overfishing MUST be acted upon by management. Season gets shorter, size limit longer, bag limit fewer..
Private Boat extractive power in sea bass is often times greater than all Party/Charter/Trawl/Trap & all added together.
Nuts.
It’s just crazy.
Makes us always and forever exceed our recreational quotas.
We’re about to take a 28% cut in sea bass coast wide because Private Boats in states with unimaginably restrictive regulations “catch and keep” way too many.
Boy, I sure doubt it.
To demonstrate MRIP’s capability for jaw-droppingly incorrect sea bass catch estimates, one need only examine a series of “Shore” sea bass landings. For instance, in Sept/Oct 2018 Delaware’s Shore sea bass landings were estimated greater than all boat catch combined. Those ‘shore caught’ sea bass were ‘larger’ too at 1.3lbs than Private Boaters caught, claims MRIP. No boats – just caught from shore.
Other notable Shore catches: in Sept/Oct 2016 Maryland shore ‘landed’ 178,000lbs of 1.4lb sea bass. That’s about 3 years of all MD Party/Charter landings – bigger fish and equal to three years professional effort in just two months. We looked high and low. Finally found an angler who had caught a barely legal sea bass from MD Shore. It was not 1.4 lbs.
In 2017 NJ shows over 50K lbs of Shore-caught sea bass that average 1.3 lbs apiece. VA had about 50K lbs too, but theirs averaged 1.8lbs.
Come 2019 VA’s Shore numbers were up to 80K lbs, but their average size was down to 1.6lbs. NY’s were also that big.
In 2020 RI took 36K lbs from shore that were dern near 3lbs apiece — average.
In 2021 there were almost 100K lbs caught from shore averaging 1.7 lbs..
If any of this sounds remotely plausible, you’re not familiar with the fishery.
At all.
NY Sept/Oct 2020 is the most likely shore estimate I’ve seen since the early 1990s — 15,800 NY Shore sea bass become 2,600lbs of catch at 0.2lbs apiece. (Black Will Fishing..) That might be the truest estimate in all of modern MRIP.
Still, it’s funny how just the summer before NY’s Shore caught sea bass averaged 1.6lbs apiece.
While these shore estimates have no bearing on NOAA’s accusations of recreational overfishing—they’re just not large enough, this small selection of Shore estimate errors confirms MRIP is indeed capable of immense errors. Promise- these seemingly huge errors will become minuscule when compared to what I’ll demonstrate from Private Boat landings.
I believe MRIP can be scientifically repaired using the ‘percentage of catch’ test to make ‘Bayesian Stops’ …
My method of testing MRIP uses observations by For-Hire skippers from the state in question to gauge a “Percentage of the Catch” with private boats.
I think it more accurate by far than their dart-board guessing.
We really are out fishing in the ocean. We really would have to follow along ultra-closely with Private Boat effort if it were consequential to our clients’ catches – or risk not catching..
Time after time and year after year I’ve counted boats and anglers out fishing our wrecks & reefs. I’ve had other skippers report Private Boat effort they’ve seen. Only once did I ever surmise more private boat guys than party/charter clients.
Once.
One Day.
A flat-flat calm Fourth of July day when sea bass were as fussy as I’d ever seen too.
I think my “eyes on the water” assertion of MD’s Private Boats catching 25% of our sea bass is extremely generous. Fantastically.
Eyes on the water sure doesn’t get MRIP excited though.
Party/Charter is often estimated low. In 2021, this past May/June only (MRIP’s “wave 3”), MD Party/Charter is estimated to have caught 8,900 sea bass.
Estimates lower in For-Hire, VTRs – the data we give NOAA after each trip – shows MD For-Hire at 12,700 sea bass. All of us partyboats carrying well, there were several charter boats doing their level best to eradicate legal cbass from our reefs too – Promise.
Using ‘percentage of the catch’ based on the actual VTR reported For-Hire catch instead of MRIP’s low estimate — MD’s Private Boats would have (generously) caught 3,175 for a total of 15,900 recreational caught sea bass out of Ocean City, MD in May/June.
MRIP disagrees.
They have MD Private Boats catching 103,300 sea bass in May/June.
That’s a lot of fish.
And, in MRIP, it’s just a tiny, tiny error.
Really.
Super small.
Absolutely inconsequential to coastwise quota.
It’s only 32.5x too high by my method.
Forty years I’ve been targeting sea bass from MD.
Estimating rec landings via ‘percentage of the catch’ is far more accurate than MRIP’s “statistically pure” nonsense.
So, tomorrow I’ll try (again) to show NOAA and all of Management how truly far removed from reality current estimates are.
No State’s Private Boats are exceeding a million pounds of sea bass with today’s draconian regulations in place.
With an ocean of potential we’re stuck in a feedback loop where Recreational anglers are always wildly overquota on something – whether sea bass, flounder, sea trout – wherever the latest statistical spike has occurred, the klaxon sounds and we lose more access to our fisheries..
Needs Fixing.
Cheers
Monty
