Conference wahoo::fishing-v2

I surf fished the sand bar at the Merrimac Monday and Thurs nites.  Monday was pretty hot!
Lots of schoolies.  Thurs nite was slow, but I hit the tide wrong.

I think the best time there is 2 hours before and after low tide (when dark).

Bring some waders, but watch out for those rips or the blues will
have you for dinner...

...bill

    Is anyone headed out to the Merrimac this weekend?
    
    It's been quiet in this notes file so I'm wondering if the
    fishing has died off.
    
    I'm going out Sunday night/Monday morning to take a shot at
    some stripers. If their not around I'll try for some blues.

       Fished at Plum Is. Saturday 9/17. Fished from shore as well as the
     jetty. Had only one strike. I was there an hr. or so before low tide
     (this was the pm low) and fished for about two more hrs.  
     When fishing the Is. Are there better times and tides to fish ?
     
    Paul

As far as I can tell, there are still a lot of stripers around.
You have to fish at night (from what I can see). Also, you
have to be lucky and be at the right place at the right time,
and have the right bait. Last Friday (16-SEP), we surf fished
Plum Island.  We got there at 9:30PM and fished through the high
tide at the sandbar. Nuthin.  Then we fished the front beach
till 1am from the central entrance down to lot 1 of the 
reservation. Nuthin.  Then we went back to the sandbar at 
halftide and gave it another shot. Nuthin.  Lots of folks
there, but I didn't see any fish.  The Monday before, I
did well at the sandbar with plugs and eel flies.

Kay at Surfland said there have been some big fish caught
off the front beach real late at night.

...bill

    I fished the sandbar for a few hours before low tide on sunday.  I,
    along with at least half a dozen others, didn't so much as get a
    strike.  
    
    Kay told me that they've been hitting stripers and blues everyday for
    the past 2 weeks at sunup.  She said that the best areas were across
    from the church and lot 1 of the reservation.

    Just wanted to let you all know that here in Maryland, Rock season
    opened last Saturday.  We hooked 5 all together but only landed 3. 
    They were each 27 inches.  Dinner around here has been wonderful. 
    Hubby went out Monday and landed two 23 inchers.

	We'd -all- have plenty if we could keep them that small!  Here in Mass.
they have to be 36 inches to keep...
						B.C.

    \ We'd -all- have plenty if we could keep them that small! 
    
     Only for a few years, as we discovered once already.
    

	I don't think that reasonable slot limits would hurt anything.
As it is now we're killing the fish that are more productive than the 
smaller ones.  How many 24" fish get killed during the unhooking process
while the angler is waiting for a 36?

	-IF- the recreational angler is at fault for the problem, instead
of all the commercial fishing and pollution, then look at how it happened.
	The size limit was 16" and there was no possession limit.  Are you
going to try to tell me that if we were allowed to keep one 24" fish a day
that we'd be back in the same situation?   

Unless they get the whole coast in line those of us in the northern states
will continue to get screwed no matter what the size limit is.

					B.C.

    re: .10
    I don't see the problem with what this charter boat captain is doing.
    He has people paying him to find and catch fish. These people I would
    assume don't have access to the fish and would like to enjoy a day of
    fishing. They would also like to enjoy the fruits of their labor and
    fill the freezer with some fish for the winter. As long as the captian
    meets the fishing regulations, great. 
    
    
    Steve
    

RE: .10
	You're right!  I don't -have- to keep any, but if it's OK with you
I wouldn't mind having one for dinner once in a while!

	You should list that captains name, he sounds like the most 
successful (Although the most expensive that I've -ever- heard of) charter
boat in NE waters.

	Even if he gets 5000 lbs. a year it's still a -whole- lot less than
than some of the netters can get in -one- set, and how many other fish do
they kill as bycatch!
 
	One type of netting I've seen goes like this:

Guy owns pickup truck, tin boat, and net.  School of Bass drives bait against
the shore.  One end of net connects to truck, other end to boat.  Launch
boat and motor in a big circle around fish and back to truck.  Attach 2nd
end of net to truck and haul the whole mess up against the shore.  Legal
fish go in truck, everything else is dead and gets left in water/on shore,
the undersized fish, the bait, everything.
What?  No legal fish in that haul?  Oh well!  Just go do another one.

	Let the charter capt. find fish for a few hundred people.  So what?
A few hundred families get to eat fresh Striper.  I think you'd also find
that locating the fish and putting them in the boat is a whole lot more 
work than a video game to the capt., no matter how good he is.

					B.C.

Would this be Capt. Buddy Vanderhoop?

No, it's not Buddy.  He's pretty good himself though.  I don't know what 
his name is, just that he's really good at it.  By the way, I don't have 
anything against charter boats or what they do for their clients, especially 
this guy.  I really respect what he knows and the amount of work and skill
it took to get him where he is.  And like I said, the clients always come 
back wearing big smiles.  It would be nice if they weren't so cold about
it, but it's their livelihood, and success is measured in fish taken.

The only thing I feel bad for is the fish.  I was pointing out that while 
we talk about whether we should keep one fish of any size once in a while, 
these guys who do it for a living are helping people keep huge fish every 
day.  Fish that otherwise wouldn't be killed at all.  

Maybe I'm wrong here, but it seems to me that the genetic vigor of the 
species is in the eggs of those big cows that have what it takes to live 
this long and grow this big.  Killing too many of them must be bad for the 
species.  Killing the same number of smaller fish should not be so bad for 
the species as long as there are plenty of bigger fish around.

I'm sorry about my choice of words in .10 - I should have proofread my 
reply before submitting it.  In reading it now it doesn't seem to make a 
point.  I was feeling bad because the weekend before was my last on the 
Vineyard for the season, so I had to complain about something.  My real 
point was about depleting the breeders, and that there are some true 
experts out there doing it a lot faster than we ever could.  But as .12 
points out, maybe it's all background noise compared to one outing for 
one trawler.

I thought it best to pull .10 - it sounded too much like bashing, and as 
such it shouldn't have been in here in the first place.

	Thanks Tom, but I wasn't trying to get you to delete notes or anything
like that...  I thought it was just another discussion in notes!  Everyone
should remember that the reader may not know just where the writer is coming
from.  It's hard when you can't see or hear each other.

	So, getting back to keeping Stripers, I was saying that a slot limit
may be a good thing.  I've fished in more than a few parts of the world and
slot limits are used successfully all over the place.  One example would be
Snook in Florida.  They fight great and they taste great so everybody wants
to catch them.  They are a gamefish so you can't buy/sell them.  Bag limit
is 2 fish a day, minimum 24", can only keep 1 fish over 37".  Another example
would be King Salmon in Alaska.  They have slot limits on some of the waters.
I can't remember what the size limits are but you have to list each fish
caught on the back of your license and you can't fish waters that contain that
species for the rest of the day!

	I'd be real happy if they let me keep a smaller Bass or two a day
and only one a season over (pick your favorite trophy Striper size) a certain
length.  Eat a few and save more of the productive breeders.

					B.C.

In the fishing rports section of the Fisherman this week the NH, ME indicated
that some people thought that there is a strain of stripers that breed and
hold over in the Saco and Pisquata rivers.  Anyone else heard of this.
If it's true then it must also be true for the merrimack and plum island
sound.

Over the years I have noticed that the fish are here the first week in may
and probably a couple weeks earlier.  Since most people stop fishing in 
October and don't start until may, how would we know they are here if no-one
is catching them?  The fish seem to arrive about the same time they start
catching them down the cape.  Maybe they are coming from many places instead
of just the Hudson river and Cheasepeake bay.

Any thoughts/facts on this

Gordon (only 5 months to launch)

    	There are definitely some fish that stick around all year long.
    My friends father caught a small striper a few years back while ice
    fishing for smelt in the Lamprey river. My guess is that the warm water
    discharge from the treatment plant keeps them in the area.
    
    	If this is true, you'll probably find them near the warm water
    discharge of the Seabrook nuke plant in the winter.
    
    	Ray
    

    Send me the exact location, and I'll get in the water and tell you if
    there are stripers there. Stripers, like most bass and bass-like
    creatures, are as friendly as hungry stray dogs when they see a human
    underwater.
    
    John H-C

         I'm on the way to the cape this wknd. for golf. I had a thought of
      doing some fishing while I'm there. I was going to fish the canal. 
      Anyone out there ever fished the canal at this time of year.
    
    Paul
    

    re 409.19 -
    
    one place to look is the outflow of the conventional power plant in
    Newington NH.  It is between the I95 bridge and the Sullivan Bridge on
    the NH side of the Piscataqua.  It flows out behind a riprap wall.
    There are small schoolies there when the water is cold.
    
    I've heard that the northern stock of stripers have broken stripes -
    some of their stripes are not continuous, but have a break, then
    restart on a new line.  Many of the fish I catch in Kittery have these
    broken stripes.
    
    Jack
    them.

RE: .20
	This time of year and later too!  Saturday night there were still
some schoolies along the edges popping bait every now and then.  The water
was -thick- with small baitfish!  If you cast down along the shore the bait
would just shower away from the fly/lure for the whole retrieve!  At night
find the eddys along the edges during a running tide, during the day watch
for the birds.  Day or night cover -lots- of ground looking and listening.
I'd throw flies, small poppers, small swimmers, or bucktails.  
	There are still reports of keepers from the Cape, water in the 50s
all the way up to Saco, ME.  Too early to quit, at least for me.  R.I. is
next, CT -may- be a little too far...
					B.C.