2024 Fluke Season!

[reason162]

Lose the teaser for giant fluke this year
Video - https://youtu.be/7d-kIBwaw4g

[dales529]

Great video's on Fluke! So you are the sole reason MRIP says we landed 1 million fluke (not lbs but fish) last year shore based LOL

[reason162]

Originally Posted by dales529

Great video's on Fluke! So you are the sole reason MRIP says we landed 1 million fluke (not lbs but fish) last year shore based LOL

LOL thanks Dales! I was never surveyed unfortunately!

[Broad Bill]

Reason you’re obviously a very intelligent person, love your posts and videos and think the fluke jerk bait technique you developed is pretty incredible. I do however disagree with you about your position, and Charles Witek’s position, regarding harvesting larger sexually mature fish versus younger age classes in this or any other fishery mentioned in the video you posted. If harvesting larger breeders is the key to this or any fisheries future, why were regulations recently changed with stripers to focus on the harvest of smaller slot size fish from regulations which previously mandated harvesting larger primarily female breeders? It’s the same dynamic we have with the summer flounder stock or any stock.

The summer flounder fishery flourished when there were no possession limits or size limits. The biomass consisted of almost 95% younger age class fish 2 years and younger and recruitment levels were at record highs. Years ago, no one targeted larger fish the way they’re targeted today with the regulations in place and the use of increased size limits to manage recreational catch. That's proven itself to be a failed technique. Difference in the manner the fishery is being managed and the issues impacting it, in my opinion, are a number of contributory reasons all of which need to be addressed but aren’t.

The population of the biomass was upward and exceeding 200 million fish in the 70’s and 80’s so harvest risk relating to gender and age groups in years past was spread over a much larger population. Today, that risk is much more concentrated because of the populations declines. Over the last decade, the overall population has plummeted in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 million fish, an unimaginable drop in a stock within a relatively short period of time driven by historically low recruitment classes.

The theory that harvesting smaller fish as opposed to larger breeders better serves the stock needs to factor the following. First, every recruitment class, from what science tells us, loses 25% of the class to natural mortality each year so within the first three years every recruitment class cumulatively loses almost 60% of the class population due to natural mortality alone and possibly before ever experiencing a singular reproduction cycle. Now add fishing related mortality to that number, especially commercial, and the percentage of fish which survive the first three years of their life cycle, male and female, is extremely low. The number of younger age class fish you hypothesize will have a few years more to spawn with the adoption of larger size minimums is a lot less than your comments suggest. Now add in the impact commercial operations has on the spawn, which isn’t an issue of the size fish being harvested as opposed to the damage done to the stock by allowing commercials to drag their nets during the fall offshore migration when fluke spawn. Admittedly, NMFS has no idea what impact this is having on the efficacy of the spawn overall as females ready to drop their eggs are being mopped up from highly concentrated schools of migrating fish. That's not a sustainable practice.

Here's the question fisheries management should be asking and answering if they’re honestly interested in managing the fishery as opposed to managing sectors. Why let 60% to 70% of younger age classes succumb to natural and fish related mortality and force the harvest to consist exclusively of the few larger breeders that make it through the first three to four years of their life cycle as opposed to harvesting the younger age classes before they succumb to these mortality causes and let the larger more fecund breeders perpetuate the stock? Does it make more sense to depend on juvenile females to promote yearly recruitment or older females which can individually produce tens times more? I don’t believe killing younger age classes in the pursuit of harvesting older age classes while losing more than 25% of every recruitment class annually is a sensible, sustainable or prudent management philosophy. It makes no sense. History supports that argument as the data science has provided us shows an absolute inverse relationship between lower recruitment statistics coinciding with increases to size minimums NMFS has mandated and the transition this fishery has undergone over the last two decades.

If there were no stocking programs in fresh water and anglers targeted largemouth and smallmouth on their spawning beds in the spring at Merrill Creek and retained them, how long do you think it would be before those two fisheries collapsed? Summer flounder are not different and the essential concepts of fishery management the same in my opinion. I know we'll never agree on this but that's exactly why it's important to share opposing opinions because, more likely than not, what's best for the fishery is probably somewhere in the middle of both our beliefs. Again love your contribution here so just speaking my mind, not attacking your beliefs. That's an absolutely beautiful shore caught fluke in your post and why I'm so compassionate about this fishery. I don't want to see it lost to future generations and I'm very concerned it will be based on the path we're on.

[NoLimit]

Yep, When there was no limit, there were a lot more fluke, flounder, whiting, and ling. We are killing the breeders and letting the smaller fish die of natural causes (or getting killed because of by catch)

[JettiCrawler85]

I took a private lesson with Reason.

Changed the fluke game forever.

Caught way more fish using his method.

Stocked my freezer last season and still have many vacuum packed so everything I catch well into July will be going back in the drink.

[reason162]

Originally Posted by JettiCrawler85

I took a private lesson with Reason.

Changed the fluke game forever.

Caught way more fish using his method.

Stocked my freezer last season and still have many vacuum packed so everything I catch well into July will be going back in the drink.

Thank you!! It's no special method - it's just jigging with relatively light tackle...but somehow with all the hi/lo rigs people forgot the basics!

[reason162]

Originally Posted by Broad Bill

Reason you’re obviously a very intelligent person, love your posts and videos and think the fluke jerk bait technique you developed is pretty incredible. I do however disagree with you about your position, and Charles Witek’s position, regarding harvesting larger sexually mature fish versus younger age classes in this or any other fishery mentioned in the video you posted...

Bill, I appreciate your post and your manner of posting - at the end of the day we share the same goals but we can agree to disagree on the methods.

Very briefly in response to some of your points - I think you'll see the striper slot move around each year (if the council does their job) in order to protect specific year class fish, and also remember the rebuilding from the last collapse was a result of a large size limit (I think it was 36") and no slots were involved. That was also an option for the current crisis, but I believe rec anglers - led by charter/party boats - wanted to keep a slot in place.

Stripers have a very different reproductive cycle than fluke, and fluke have a very different reproductive strategy than black bass. On the latter point, protecting bass during the spawn would be akin to keeping the draggers off the fluke spawning grounds over the winter - on that point I think we can both agree.

Also, my mind can indeed be changed, if shown proper evidence. If for instance the sex ratio imbalance for fluke can both be demonstrated to exist and be shown to have a detrimental effect on recruitment - I would change my mind in an instant. The problem of course is we don't agree on what constitutes "proper evidence." For myself, a peer reviewed study is a basic threshold, and that has yet to be forthcoming.

In any case, I think we understand our respective positions very well at this point, and again I appreciate the quality of our discourse on the subject. I hope you have a great fluke season!