scarce ling

[DaveTats]

Originally Posted by jmurr711

amazing the stir mountaintrout are causing lol come May 90% of anglers will forget they exist meanwhile i will be killing 400 with Hank & company

You, Orr and myself will be going wild while Danny is shaking his head at us.

[Denlon]

Originally Posted by beerbelly

does anyone know why the ling r so scarce, is just a cycle there going through, or to many dog fish, or r they getting killed as by catch, its getting hard to put a decent catch together

I already posted a few days ago on the hay days of whiting & ling fishing off the Long Branch pier. However, I'll go you one better.

My grandfather was an old Russian who took me several times in the mid 1940's for night walks along the beach in winter when it was ass-freezing cold. We had carbide miners lights on our heads. I only went a few times when I was about 5 or 6 years old, but I really did get to experience the "Frost-Fishing" for whiting. You may have heard of it and thought it was bullshit, but it really did happen. On these super cold nights, the whiting would chase the baitfish (spearing?) up onto the sand and immediately freeze. They could be picked up and thrown into the coal bags or potato sacks we carried. I think I can remember getting a half dozen whiting like this. These we taken home to his chicken farm in Freehold and smoked in a homemade smoker. The smoker was also used to smoke eels speared thru the ice off the Marine Place docks in Red Bank.

Anybody else old enough to remember frost fishing or spearing eels in winter?

Denny

[GEOFISHNJ]

I do remember frost fishing with my dad and grand father during a cold snap

[Fishing Dude]

We always caught some ling in the delaware bay in Nov. when striper fishing in some of the deeper area`s of the bay. But last year in Nov. the striper bite took so long to turn on in south jersey. When we had the kids on the boat we would drift with small hooks to give them some action. We got into a nice school of them in 25` of water just about 500 yard off of Brigatine. They were all spikes but there was lots of them.