Re: The short of it!
I have to laugh at these reports about cold water year after year as it relates to global warming. Is there global warming, yes. Is is impacting certain aspects of fisheries movement and habitat, probably. To what extent, no one really knows.
Winds and currents, as we've been seeing for so many years, influences local water temperatures more than GW. If there weren't as many South winds and upwelling, fish would be staging in deeper depths. But since those depths are ice cold, fish are seeking warmer shallower depths. Eventually that dynamic will switch as more fish flood in on full moon tides, South winds subside and inshore waters heat up. Same pattern we see every year. It's most likely the reason, no pun intended, we're seeing so many keeper fish being caught in a few feet of water because that's where the warm water and bait is. It's not rocket science
Biggest issue is the powers to be have once again adopted policy decision so that commercials have pretty much exclusive harvest rights for most fluke at 17.99" and under. I guarantee you as crazy as the ludicrous razor thin slot was last year, a lot of anglers, party boats and charter operators wish the 17" - 18" slot was still in place. Selective harvest of larger fish commercially coupled with the mandated harvest of larger fish recreationally combined with killing millions of juveniles in the process of both will eventually catch up and kill this fishery. It's a certainty and just a matter of time.
Just remember, global warming and ice cold baits coming up and the 4th of July is right around the corner. And in two and a half months when the stock schools up and heads offshore, once again the spawn will be annihilated by commercial netting. This fishery has been managed as bad as any fishery under management and if the politicians and bureaucrats don't wake up, they'll destroy one of the most important fisheries to the Mid-Atlantic coastal states.
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