Terrible fluke season

[NoLimit]

[QUOTE=hammer4reel;570610]

Originally Posted by NoLimit

Your crazy , that’s 2500 small fluke .
There are 165000 registered salt water anglers , and that number doesn’t include possible as many as that that only fish for hire boats not needing the registry .

Let’s low ball it at 250000 total anglers .
That means only 1 out of every 100 anglers needs to catch a fluke .
I wouldn’t be afraid to bet our mortality exceeds 5000 pounds a week on throwbacks .

No way - just look at the Atlantic Highlands fleet. Its the largest in the state and you mean to tell me that they are taking even 2000 or 1000 lbs of fluke a week? That is utterly impossible. And I was out last week. From Sandy Hook Bay to Breezy Point, there were perhaps 10 private boats fluking. So dont even go there with "Its the recreational fault"

[Tackle guy]

Party boat fluking was ok in June so far July is a disaster.i go few times a week.heard all the excuses water temp. Moon groundswell wind..all nonsense .the fish ain't there. Captains doing their best but it ain't happening

[Jigman13]

Seems like they're stacked in the back and in shallow water where the massive shoals of peanuts are pouring out. Catching 18"+ isn't the problem this year. It's finding them 17 to 17.999" where I'm fishing.

[Brewlugger]

Originally Posted by Jigman13

Seems like they're stacked in the back and in shallow water where the massive shoals of peanuts are pouring out. Catching 18"+ isn't the problem this year. It's finding them 17 to 17.999" where I'm fishing.

Been the same for us down south, alot of 19 to 22 inch fish in 3 to 7 foot in the back.

[Jigman13]

Originally Posted by Brewlugger

Been the same for us down south, alot of 19 to 22 inch fish in 3 to 7 foot in the back.

I dropped one last week that was an easy 24" in about 4-5' of water. Spit the hook and just slowly sunk back down to the bottom. I was fine with it as I already had my 18"+, but woulda been a nice picture and release--an a PB from from shore...

[Tombro]

This fluke season has been absolutely abysmal. I’m a retiree and private boater who is out a lot. From SRI. I see the rental fleet catching fish constantly. Same for a friend who fishes the Navesink in his boat.
Ocean fluking is stinko! I think maybe I’m going to go old school, and drift live killies along the beach instead of fishing rocky bottom in 60 foot. Hmmm…

[Brewlugger]

Its been different for us this year, even in the back areas that always produced have been very slow and we have been finding isolated pockets of fish in areas where they have been more spread out in the past. Not sure whats going on this year?

[hammer4reel]

[QUOTE=NoLimit;570625]

Originally Posted by hammer4reel

No way - just look at the Atlantic Highlands fleet. Its the largest in the state and you mean to tell me that they are taking even 2000 or 1000 lbs of fluke a week? That is utterly impossible. And I was out last week. From Sandy Hook Bay to Breezy Point, there were perhaps 10 private boats fluking. So dont even go there with "Its the recreational fault"

I did not say it’s the recreational guys fault .
But UFS you think we don’t gave an impact you must fish around a lot of unsuccessful fisherman .
Numbers are numbers . With. A quarter million Nj based salt water anglers it doesn’t take each angler keeping one fish each to get incredible numbers .

If each angler only caught one keeper all season that’s a half a million pounds .
Sure some guys might only catch a few keepers a season , but then there are guys who will catch 75 keepers or more for the season .

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[Tackle guy]

Party boats are not catching this year .daily pictures show 10 to 20 keepers per day.most customers catch no keepers.some of us still enjoy a day on the water but hard to justify money spent for others.hope August is better.

[Togfather2530]

Well as the starter of this thread, I finally have a chance to get on the Internet and catch up with it. Thanks for all your opinions and replies. My opinion is that recreational people certainly do have a drastic impact on the fish harvest as well as commercials. A lot of recreational fisherman are in the dark when they say that a guy with a rod and reel will never have an impact on the fishery. That’s bullshit. I know a lot of the party boats and for higher boats want looser regulations and want to keep more fish. That’s not always the answer just to keep everyone in business. The only thing I know is in my opinion we can’t keep all these breeders. Recreational and commercial fisheries both have a drastic impact as far as I’m concerned the fishery has gone down every year in the last 10 years 👎👎👎