Some Comments on Fluke
 

Having attended and spoken at the NJ Marine Fisheries Council meeting yesterday, I will share my thoughts on the outcomes.

All options presented are considered "conservationally equivalent", meaning that in a perfect world, all will result in the same recreational landings of fish (in pounds). The "perfect world" makes many assumptions, with the most critical of which being that "effort and availability will remain the same as the previous year". We all know this is not true. Weather will be different. Cost of fishing (fuel, etc.) will effect the trips we sail. Fish migration patterns will differ affecting the when and the where we can catch fish. Factor in to that the variability of MRFSS which is simply an estimating tool based on a sampling of less than 1% of the fishing effort/landings and it is quickly apparent why we can't ever catch "exactly" our target. For these reasons, we have no idea what MRFSS is going to spit out for rec landings irregardless of the regulations.

I will, however, put forth the following information which was the basis for my decision to speak on behalf of 17.5". I understand that many of the opinions express on this board and at the meeting yesterday come from avid highly successful fishermen whom enjoyed a great deal of success last year. I commend and respect you for that. Understand, however, that there are hundreds of thousands of other fishermen/women that do not enjoy the successes you have had.

1) We did NOT lose season. The 2012 season is 5 DAYS LONGER THAN LAST YEAR and is the LONGEST IN A NUMBER OF YEARS.

2) The highest reported landings according to MRFSS have historically come from the longest open seasons. If your season is open, MRFSS reports landings no matter the known availability of fish, weather, etc.

3) NY has become the poster child of the negative impacts of MRFSS when choosing to go with longest possible seasons by the use of higher minimum sizes. Most would agree that hasn't worked.

4) The NJ Marine Fisheries Council, as LAB posted, has been within a couple % over an extended period of our target landings. Their management mechanism of choice over this time span has been to use size as the primary management tool as opposed to always trying for the longest possible season. The decision yesterday to again manage by size instead of opting for the longest possible season is consistent with that history and will, hopefully, continue the trend of relative success managing to the target.

5) The technical committee of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission composed of state biologists have stated time and time again that the best way to constrain harvest is through season. This decision is again consistent with that advice.

Again, I commend those of you "sharpies" that have enjoyed success at 18". You are the 10% that catch 90% of the fish as the saying goes. I understand and respect your position, but the decision passed down yesterday is consistent with the best information for constraining harvest to the target and will benefit many anglers giving them a better opportunity to harvest a fish to bring home.

Your mileage will vary on the above. Thanks to all whom have and continue to take the time to participate in the process.

Re: Some Comments on Fluke
 

I am not a fluke sharpie and think that those of us doing a majority of our fishing in the Manasquan river from boat and wall are very pleased with this outcome. Absolutely!

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Very well said capt.

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Given that argument - shouldn't you have voted for Option 6?

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Capt. Adam,

Thanks for your explanation of the new regulations and your reasons for supporting them. I wish you had weighed in on the poll before the vote was conducted. You may have opened up some eyes, then again, maybe not. Are the regulations agreed upon yesterday perfect? Probably not, I guess time will tell. But, they are put forth in hopes of making it better for all fishermen. Hopefully MRFSS will open their eyes, and realize that the fishing public does act responsibly and does desire to come up with a management plan that we can all live with. But, year in and year out we are at their mercy.

Good or bad it is what it is guys. Hopefully, next year you will get what you want, whatever that may be. I can assure we will never get back to the no min. and no closed season ever again. But, I believe that unbridled horse is what got us here in the first place.

Good luck! Catch 'em up.

Thanks to all the guys who showed up yesterday. No matter what option you favored. You at least showed commitment for your cause.

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Thank You..... :)

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I don't post on here a lot anymore, but I can not sit here and not comment at all on this. So we have lived at the 18" rule for 3 season now and last year I really saw the average size of the fish improve and it would continue to improve the longer you left the size limit at a certain size. Now we drop the size a 1/2" which I believe will have little impact on the number of "just short" fluke people will catch. Its about fishing areas that do not get the pressure or knowing how and when and with what to use to bring the bigger fish out to play. Yes dragging spearing ad squid will catch big fluke, but more big fish will be caught when you target them. You can take the biggest fluke sharpie in NJ of his boat/chosen for hire boat take away all his typical tackle and techniques and give him a rental rod and single hook with 40 people on a party boat all with the same bait right next to one another and while he might do better than most. He will not catch the same quality fish he would while fishing on his boat/chosen boat to hire using the skills and techniques he has developed over the years of learning and improving. So because people have worked to become better fisherman and be able to catch fish when others cant we have to suffer with shorter season and lower bag limit. How about the other 90% you talk about stepping up their game a little bit. Ill admit it I have a major addiction problem when it comes to fishing. If the government banned fishing I would rather be in prison or dead than stop. I work to pay for my fishing addiction, and it is my sanity in a F-d up world.

So now we have nothing inshore to fish for but stripers for part of the month of October, great so every boat on the ocean will be targeting one fish that should be great. I know you will come back and say blues and albies, and ling, but honestly albies could be gone depending on weather, and so could the blues. Both seabass and blackfish are closed for a big part of October.

Might even pull my boat earlier this year.

I will end by saying that I understand the desire to give people a better chance at catching keepers, but as soon as areas get picked over for a few weeks you will be throwing back a lot of 17 3/8 inch fish.

Throwing shorts back is a good thing makes me see the stock is health and i always say see you in a few years when I toss them back. Plus I never net a fluke even if I think it might be close to being a short or if I intend on releasing it anyway. I do not buy that throwback die if handled properly. Be kind to the future fish you will be catching no towels, cut the hook off if you have a deeply hooked fish it will rust out, don't put your hand in gills unless your taking picture prior to putting it in the box.

Ok I'm done.

I was so defeated when I heard the news. I didn't attend the meeting because it is over 2 hrs away and I could not take the day off work. I did attend the bft meeting last year and that really did not do anything for us.

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It's very disturbing to me that a charter boat capt. and chairman of rfa is actually is voting for less size and bag limit. Do you realize that these laws that you voted for are the same that bought NY to it's knees? It's also disturbing that a charter boat captain voted to reduced size and bag limits, thats shows signs of weakness as far the captain of Karen Ann 2 goes. If you can't limit out with 8 fish at 18", you may think that at 17.5 and 5 fish a man, your chances will be easier. My opinion is if you had a 2 fish limit at 17", you still would have a problem limiting out. I'm just so disgusted as a fisherman of 40 years that there are captains out there in 2012 that actually will vote for a reduction in their catch. By any chance did you vote to have helicopters enforce the 3 mile limit when striper fishing? Next sea bass and tautog meeting I will attend to vote for a complete shut down of both, since you snj guys depend on that dearly and have destroyed fluke regs., we can both sell our boats and you and I can golf

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Put down the pipe

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oh yeah almost forgot if you want to email send me a PM me I will gladly send it to you just don't want to make my personal email public on public forum. Ill give you my phone to if you would like to discuss or even meet you for a drink if you want to chat over a few cold ones I really am a sensible guy that just enjoys fishing.

Have a great day

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What should be kept track of is how many fish ARE kept between 17 1/2 and 18, and how many are kept over 18. to compare whether losing 3 fish was worth how many were kept in that new elligble slot.

Probably going to see there are not as many in that half inch bracket as some have hoped for.

all that aside with all the talk last year through the SSFFF that they wanted to see a limit imposed that would target more male fish into the total catch , it seems that has also been lost in the shuffle as the new limit still will put more female fish than male fish into the daily catch.

and as far as a slot limit not being used because F&G felt it would be harder to enforce, they dont have a problem enforcing other rules that may not be as inportant to the fisheries, so that should not have been the reason to take that option off the shelf.

Hopefully guys remember next year and some things can be changed, but for now we have to make the best of what we got, as its already been SUOA

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If the only concern was limiting harvest, then yes. But the goal is to find regulations that will provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people. Everyone needs days to fish and there was simply no way to justify shortening the season from 2011.

Not true. What brought NY to it's knees is a broken system of assuming availability and effort will remain the same in every year combined with use of a system that samples 1% of effort and landings to generate an absolute number. In the "game" of MRFSS, NY played the game by keeping the season long, long, long. The Council did the exact opposite yesterday of what has gotten NY in trouble.

Would A-10 Warthogs have been more appropriate? :eek: :D :D :p :p :D :D :eek:

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NOAA actually built a Death Star to enforce the limits. No superlaser as they spent all the money on a cappicino machine and the worlds largest disco ball.

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Will the disco ball help them predict the wind?

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I like the size limit and season length. As far as not being able to fish for anything in oct? Who said you couldn't fish for Seabass and blackfish?you can't keep them but no one is stoping u from fishing. I start black fishing in sept at the sandy hook reef because I love to fish for them, not because I want to fill my freezer.
Capt Art
24 Rampage express

Re: Some Comments on Fluke
 

No it's for the private parties they will be throwing on it.

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Thanks to all that did what they did to try to help everyone if they know it or not!!!!

BC

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That's not totally accurate Adam. The start of NY's troubles and the continuation of them resulted from constantly RAISING their size limit to keep season or extend it. NJ was not looking to increase size for season but maintain it. NY has since maintained or increased its season but with a VERY high size limit, much higher than NJ. I know I do not need to explain to you the difference in weight of a 20+ inch fish vs. an 18" fish and what that means to a states landings.

In addition, while you are correct about seasonal guidance from ASMFC staff, you will also recall that going down in size is always cautioned since they have little to no data to tell them what will happen. There has always been a caution that they cannot accurately predict (a relative term in fisheries management to be sure but you know what I mean in this context) what effect it will have.

I could go on with the previous cautions given byu tech staff every year there has been proposals to drop size limits, but I know you are aware of them already.

MRFSS is always a crap shoot, that is for sure!

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I am disappointed with the results of the meeting but the time to debate it was before or at the NJMFC meeting on 3/1. I did my best testifying in favor of the longer season but could only talk about 3 of my 10 points supporting it because each speaker was supposed to be limited to 2 minutes.There were sound arguments on each side. When speaking about the potential of exceeding our quota this year, I really don't think it matters much if we chose option 2 or option 5. One thing that matters is what type of season we have, some years the fishing is outstanding and other years it is poor. Unfortunately, what matters the most is the inaccurate data (MRFSS) that is being used to determine how many fish we caught. The data is inaccurate and is a real crap shoot. We have had some years where the fishing was poor coastwide throughout the season and we were told we overfished our quoata and the opposite has occurred as well. At this point we need to push for more accurate data and keep our fingers crossed that we do not exceed our quota.

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No one loves to catch fluke more than me. It's been an obsession since I was five years old. In 1955 my great-Uncle Joe and my second cousin Richard Human who lived on Jamaica Bay, L.I. built a wooden 16' boat together in their garage. I learned how to fluke fish from them in that boat. There weren't any size or bag limits. They still just kept decent size fish and just enough to eat. Maybe we ALL should go back to those days and not keep so many fish. No one said we have to catch limits every time we sail. I've seen so many pictures on this site of limit catches it got to be annoying.

I'm happy for all the children who are going fishing on a party boat this year. I witnessed a father, mother, son and daughter on the Sea Tiger this past July catching fluke. Every time the kids caught a fish it was under 18". They were getting frustrated. The daughter, about eight years old, kept asking her dad why all their fish had to be thrown back. I figured the father paid over $100 bucks for their half day excursion. They didn't get to take any fish home.
I spoke to the father who swore he would not do this again. It saddened me to no end. And I have been very upset about it. I imagined as a little boy going fishing with my great-uncle and his son and not bringing a 'bragging' (any size) fish home. I wouldn't be fishing today.

So to all the youngsters, who are going to be able to keep a fluke or two, and to all the party boat captains who hopefully get returned fares, have a great fluke season!

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Paul

I thought the Board stated that the "NJ Volunteer Program" was the "science" that they used, not MRFFFFFSSSSSSSSSS ???

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This SUCKS! 17.5in.-5 fish. Last year 18in. 8 fish. Whats the 1/2in. and 3 less fish = we went backwards. All my time and money I spent with the RFA and SSFFF to help get the regs angler friendley and some South Jersey Captain looking after his own intersest blows smoke up the powers to be a$$ more "eliquently" gets his way. Hey Captain One Way thank you.

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"Socks"..... Couldn't hit the nail on the head any better.....

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I am in total agreement. If my car wasnt totaled right now I would have been there, next year I will be there if I have to walk. ? I just hope the damage done here can be reversed next year. I really cannot believe a for hire captain would vote for an option with less fish and a shorter season than they COULD have had. If I wasn't so pissed about the regulations we have been delt I would laugh about the 1/2" making a difference in catching a few keepers and catching non on most days for the average angler. I can see it making a difference for the guys who only fish surf or the back bays, but look at the rocks on a weekend or the channels in Raritan Bay and tell me that isnt the majority of fishermen. Some days the 1/2" may be the difference between someone bringing fish home or not but most days it will not be the case!

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It sounds like some guys attempted to compromise as to which options were best. Those from up north appeared to be concerned, rightly so, for the people down south as well as for themselves. Many people fish bays and river down south, and they dont have the same opportunity to catch larger fish. I know it's only a half inch, but 17" would have been good. 5 fish is plenty for a day out. We have to take all anglers into account.

Re: Some Comments on Fluke
 

....and your point....is?

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I did not keep count but I thought it was pretty close to a 50/50 split for option #2 and option #5. If the RFA took a vote, and it was that close, and they chose the majority position, they would have still disappointed 48% of the membership.
I thought the meeting was poorly attended. I expected to see a packed house, especially by more of the professional fluke captains. However, if the split was the same across the state, we may still have had the same outcome.
I chose #2 because I hate to go down in a bag limit, would rather have a longer season, and I don’t really think ½” is going make that big of a difference in the number of keepers. (I could be wrong about the ½” though)

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It was the best option for ALL of the NJ anglers. North, South, Central, Back bay, Ocean and Surf anglers

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Survey says WRONG!

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Where do you fish out of Capt.? It was the best option for all of NJ anglers?
Back bay? Ocean? Surf?
So where do you think that the majority of the 17.5-17.99in. fish will make their home for the fluke season ?
1. Backbay
2. Surf
3. Ocean

Only pick one PLEASE.

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I fish out of What I call Central NJ. I can fish out of BI or LEI. I can't just pick one since I fish all of them accept the surf.

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Garone custom rods,
Please remember that site has a following that comes from North NJ. You can see this buy the list of charter boats that are on the site. The poll that was run on this site option 2 and 5 were very close.

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It is what it is. Changing the subject, Capt Fran, I know it's ealy but looking forward to the RFA trips this year, keep me posted. Thanks.

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Nice post Cuz. I agree with you. 5 fish at 17.5 is a very nice bag of fillets to take home. I think the headboats will do well with repeat customers that have a much better chance to bring home some meat. Whats with everyone getting their panties in a bunch? Is it REALLY necessary to bring home 8 fluke? Can anyone give me a GOOD reason why 5 fish isn't enough?

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I thought the Board stated that the "NJ Volunteer Program" was the "science" that they used, not MRFFFFFSSSSSSSSSS ???__________________

Either the MRFSS or the NJVAS may be used in developing regulations. Usually the MRFSS data is used but for the fluke regualtions in 2011, NJVAS data was used. The NJMFC may use either provided all the options are approved by the ASMFC. I am glad you brought that up because our state biologists are urging fishermen to particiapate in the program. They particularly request that occaisional and less experienced fishermen take the survey so that the data does not become skewed by the more experienced fishermen. Last year I logged in 182 trips, which whas more than anyone in the state. The more data they receive, the more accurate if becomes. This info. is used to help the fishermen of NJ, not hurt them. The NJMFC will usually opt to use the most favorable data for us whether it comes from the MRFSS or or the NJVAS. PLEASE help out by participating in the survey by logging in your trips at the link below.

Paul
2nd VP JCAA
member - BSC, NJOA, NJBBA, SF


http://www.njfishandwildlife.com/marinesurvey.htm

Re: Some Comments on Fluke
 

Exactly! I couldn't agree more. First of all, how many times does actually anyone limit out anyway?

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Been tied up way too long with work (not complaining mind you) but have been following whats going on and especially with this thread.

As differing opinions are as common as fishing reports on here with what option was chosen by the board that is all well and good. There is no way any option picked was going to appease everyone so its no suprise that there is a divide. personally I would have gone with option 2 but again thats the benefit of having "choices" to discuss and vote on.

What is really disturbing is the lack of memory when it comes to how those "choices" were arrived at. Without the tireless work of some that are being bashed here you would never have had a reason to post your thoughts. To even remotely pin blame on any fishing group that represents the best interest of NJ anglers is disgusting to say the least. Do you forget the 99% of all the good that has gone on with Fluke quotas, seasons etc because you dont like the vote??? Last year the Back bay, Surf guys were pissed. This year otheres are pissed. Guess what we all won before hand by even having a choice. The votes were by personal anglers NOT Groups.

The work that goes on ahead of giving you a "choice" is what counts and you are all damn lucky we had a choice. To see comment on where do i send my money now or I am no longer going to support so and so is beyond my comprehension because you obviously dont understand what the real issues are and WHO is fighting for YOU.

Jay: Not to worry, RFA-NJ trips will be posted up soon.

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Yes site may have a North Jersey Bias but thats because there are WAY more people up north.

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The reason 5 Fluke is not enough.First off i spend my hard earned money to fluke fish,love to eat it year round and pack my freezer with it.Why are we giving up bag limit to a fishery the is rebuilt and then some:confused: i just dont get it.I dont want to hear how frozen fish sucks cause that is just opnion so you have no argument there.Second when is the last time you have seen a bag limit go except for last year with fluke and that was because we had to donate a butload of money to hire private people to debunk state science.At this point we will have to donate for every species that we fish for Save the Fluke,Flonder,Sea Bass,Porgies,Blackfish,Weakfish and anyhig else that swims in the water what a joke.Someone stated that with the price of a trip you could buy alot of fish in the store:rolleyes: i like to catch my own all while relaxing on the water.That is the complacent attitude that gets the bag limit droped the "Thank God we still have a season for them " please.And if its just about the sport then maybe the party boats should put that on their signs at the boats so all the wally weekenders will know before they board.That will go over like a fart in church :eek: There is no guarantee for fish no matter what size limit there is.

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Exactly Dales.....

The way I look at this is we might not have had any Fluke season if organizations like the RFA and SSFFF and individuals like Adam, Fran and Tony who volunteer their time had not been involved.

Lastly, we are all on the same team. Do we have differing opinions on the options, sure...Would I have preffered option 2, yep but that does not does not mean I'm going to through my brother under the bus because he has minor difference of opinion to mine. We need to keep in mind the bigger picture here. Our rights to fish are under constant pressure and common sense tells me we would not be as effective if we tried to protect them individually. We need to do it as part of the team.

There is no "I" in TEAM and Together Everyone Accomplishes More. It's the big stuff we need to stay united on and we can't let the little things divide us.