Think we will see Whiting in our lifetime?

[SaltLife1980]

Originally Posted by Knot Guilty

The only thing wrong with winter flounders is the season and bag limits.

Could not agree with you more.. if they just gave us a decent season and bag limit everyone would be happy and more boats could target them..

[bulletbob]

Originally Posted by Knot Guilty

The only thing wrong with winter flounders is the season and bag limits.

So you're saying the bays, rivers, tidal creeks are full of flounder of all sizes?, as they were all my life, until maybe 20 years ago?..

If I fished off the wall at Shark River or off Shore in the Shrewbury River, or the beach of Raritan Bay with sandworms, I can still catch a few dozen??.. As someone that used to fish for winter flounder a LOT, I find that pretty hard to believe.. It was nothing to catch a 5 gallon bucket of them in a few hours 100 yards from shore in Union Beach when I lived there.. Same thing with the Shrewsbury. I have a difficult time believing they are still around in those kind of numbers..
Hey, you guys still live there of course, and I moved away in the early 90's... maybe things have changed, but even in the 90's I noticed the catch sizes were shrinking each year... If I am wrong, I defer to the locals to set me straight on the numbers... bob

[Blind Archer]

Being a Raritan bay local my whole life and having some un-imaginable catches through out the years, my first notice of the decline in flounder was in the early 90's. Before that, the party boats really didn't work the west end of the bay too often. The spring run marquis were lit up with "Bay Flounder" and a new era of pressure on the pre-spawn females was in gear. The loss of roe ripe females from the year classes started the numbers to fall off to where a dozen for a couple of hours was decent catch. If the Boston harbor flatties can be fished out to warrant the current limits, Jersey certainly could too! Just curious, with the warming waters, does any one have insight to the New Hampshire and Maine whiting and flounder fisheries ?

[CaptTB]

Think we will see Whiting in our lifetime?

No, I don't.