Terrible fluke season
 

Out fishing today. Fishing mostly the sea girt reef area today. As of 12:39 we caught one short fluke and one keeper sea bass and mostly sea robins otherwise. This is the worst fluke season in my life that I have experienced. The reef isn’t even producing sea bass on drifts over great bottom. I’ve heard enough talk about the water temps etc. with the l fluke fishing being off. It’s mid July and we will be into August soon. The fluke aren’t there period. In my opinion the breeder killing regs have caught up with us like I predicted they would. We will see if things improve this afternoon.

Re: Terrible fluke season
 

Sea girt has been crazy tide specific .
Fish chewing in small windows .

Last Sunday we didn’t have a keeper from 630 till 1 .
From 1-4 it was lights out fishing , throwing back keepers looking for the slots .

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Re: Terrible fluke season
 

Good to know that at least someone I hear of had a good slot window of fishing

Re: Terrible fluke season
 

I agree. It sucks for sure
However - The recreational quota has nothing to do with the fluke demise. Period! One commercial trip harvests more poundage of fish in a day than 50 party boats bring back! And let's not even think about the short bycatch that goes back dead and unaccounted for. As we suffer - there quota continues to increase.

Re: Terrible fluke season
 

While it’s easy to think that it’s not correct .
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Even with the increased harvest they got this year of 5000 pounds a week .
With their season quota the 165000 recreational fisherman (sw registry not including all those unregistered fishing on for hire boats .)
If each just caught 1 fish for the season they caught twice what a commercial boat does for the year .


Fisherman numbers add up poundage quick .
If all fished and took home just a few fish the poundage goes up exponentially.
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Re: Terrible fluke season
 

I'll say this, the amount of people I personally know and have witnessed take home their 2 slot fish this year almost every single trip - from shore/boat/kayak - is mind boggling. These are people who might average 1 keeper every 3 or 4 trips from past seasons, esp from shore.

It certainly adds up.

Re: Terrible fluke season
 

This. We fished late in the afternoon the other day and it was on fire right before dark. Guys on my dock had them good right at dawn also yesterday. Maybe really early and really late. 🤷

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Re: Terrible fluke season
 

June seemed ok.so far July is terrible not as many skates or robins either .are pirate draggers working after dark?.something is obviously wrong.

Re: Terrible fluke season
 

I think years of higher size limits has helped taken its toll on the fluke population. He have been primarily taking all the breeding fish with an 18inch size limit not to mention the mortality on shorts as we all try and get are limit of 3 fish. Just think back 5-10, 15 years ago what the pool winners were on our local party boats. Most days the fish were 6-8 lbs. with an occasional double digit doormat. Now the pool winners are generally 3-5 lbs.
Just my opinion and probably worthless.

Re: Terrible fluke season
 

Party boat Facebook pics this time last year were catching good this year especially considering new regs keepers way. Way. Less. Not a lot of short life either.