Fri 6/26 Afternoon Fluking.....

It

Originally Posted by Mako231

2 years in a row fluking is horrible in Jersey.Weather manipulation is a real thing.

It's not weather. Fisheries management has used minimum size restrictions to turn recreational summer flounder into a C&R fishery to subsidize the larger fish the commercial industry target. That's not by accident.
Commercial prime size are 18" to 20" fish which have greater market value. Larger sizes to supply the sushi market. Why do you think there's so many 17.99" and shorter and NJ, NY, Ct. and RI have either 18" or 19" size minimums. Those four states make up ~85% of the recreational quota.

Over the last 4 seasons, average recreational landings per angler trip is slightly over 1 fish with discards averaging 14 to 15 shorts for every keeper. So essentially with the use of size minimums to control harvest, the practical daily possession limit has been one fish for the last four years. To understand how bad minimum size restrictions have handicapped the recreational sector, the above statistics don't include angler trips where no keepers were landed. Add those statistics and average landings per angler trip would be significantly lower than one fish per angler trip. Unimaginable. Don't ask how these statistics are being arrived at but they are the statistics being used to manage the fishery.

Until recreational size minimums are changed which doesn't appear to be anytime soon, the practical summer flounder bag limit based on landing statistics is one fish. Worse than winter flounder regulations if you can imagine that. Both fisheries have been shifted from recreational to commercial utilization based on politics. 18" and 19" summer flounder minimums for the above mentioned states that make up a significant percentage of the annual recreational quota will prevent the recreational sector from ever having a fair share of this resource.