Where the heck are the Fluke?

[Billfish715]

The tagging studies and scientific studies do show that fluke are migrating north toward Montauk, Block Island, Nantucket etc. Those fish, though are fish that spent a year or two in the N.Y. Bight or off the coast of NJ. As the fluke age and take on size, they are moving north of us. My tag returns have come from fluke that I tagged the previous year and were recaptured in places like Barnegate Bay and the Manasquan River and Brick Beach to name a few. To me, that means fish are returning to places near where they were caught.

Do more fluke move north from south Jersey to the N.Y. area? Absolutely! Many folks would like to pin the reasons for a decline in the fishery to a single occurrence. To say that the fluke are moving out because of a change in the climate is very short sighted, but it's an easily understood and acceptible excuse to the casually informed public. It's also a very popular rationalization that does not mention other environmental and biological theories.

Let's talk about this again in a month or two. If the fluke don't show up in any numbers by then, we'll start pointing fingers at lots of factors but most of them will point toward the scientists who are generating (or not generating) catch limits on offshore spawners.