Fishing’s Good in L.A.

Today, our friend David Rainer for the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources takes us fishing in L.A. (That’s Lower Alabama) where the late fall and early winter produces great fishing opportunities.
from The Fishing Wire

When the first real cold front of the fall sweeps through Alabama, my attention starts to focus on the many hunting opportunities that our great state offers. However, that doesn’t mean I disregard a fishing invitation when it comes my way this time of year.

In fact, fall and winter fishing in L.A. (Lower Alabama), can be some of the best of the year along the Gulf Coast.

When my buddy, Jay Gunn, sent a text and asked if I wanted to go fishing in Magnolia River recently, I sent a one-word text back – “certainly.”

Gunn guides on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay, mostly in the Gulf Shores-Fort Morgan area. He wanted to check out Magnolia River and Fish River to see what we could find in terms of speckled trout, redfish and white trout.

After fishing Magnolia for a while with little luck, we made the short run down Weeks Bay to Fish River, where the river channel is deeper.

“I always start shallow and work my way deep,” Gunn said. “Most of the time, it seems the shallow fish are the most aggressive. In the fall and winter, when it warms, that’s when the specks seem not to bite as well for whatever reason. When it gets cold again, they seem to bite again. You would think it would be just the opposite. You would think their metabolism would pick up when it’s warm and they would feed more.

“Normally the fish follow the shrimp around, but this has been a year when there weren’t a lot of shrimp in the rivers. Actually, there haven’t been a lot of shrimp in the bays, either.”

I talked to shrimper Doug Plash in October about shrimp, and he said the shrimp numbers were so low he couldn’t cover his fuel costs at the time.

Speculation about the poor shrimp crop centers around the unusually wet spring and summer, which kept the salinity in Mobile Bay and the estuaries low, which kills the larval shrimp.

“During the late summer and fall, the fish were a lot more scattered than in the past because of the poor shrimp crop,” Gunn said. “Now the fish have to feed on menhaden and threadfin shad, which most people call alewives. Those fish seem to move a lot more than the shrimp do, so that’s why the fish seem to be more scattered.”

While Gunn had already secured plenty of live bait fish with his cast net, we decided to try plastic minnow imitations in Fish River.

Fishing the river ledge, I cast the ¼-ounce jig up on the shelf and hopped it a couple of times. I thought for a flash that I had hooked one of the numerous snags on the ledge, until the snag started moving at a rapid pace.

When I set the hook, the drag started to whine on the spinning reel spooled with 10-pound fluorocarbon line.

“Aha, they’re still here,” Gunn said within seconds of the hookset.

I wasn’t sure what “they” meant, but the fish was certainly powerful and wasn’t about to be horsed to the boat. A few minutes later, that familiar bright bronze flash appeared as the fish neared the surface. I reached up and loosened the drag a bit more to ensure this brute of a redfish didn’t have a chance to break the line when he made his numerous runs.

Slowly, the fish began to tire and eventually ended up in the net.

“Boy, these redfish in Fish River sure are pretty,” Gunn said. “They just shine.”

The bright bronze color of this bull redfish is evident as Capt. Jay Gunn shows off this Fish River catch (Above) before he slips the fish back into the water , where it quickly disappeared into the depths of the river channel. The second bull red of the day, which was almost identical to the first, (below) came on the same minnow-imitation lure bounced along the river ledge.

After measuring the fish at 38 inches and taking photos, Gunn slipped the big red back into the water, and it quickly swam back to another ambush point.

“It happens about every five to eight years,” Gunn said of the influx of bull redfish into Fish River. “For some reason a bunch of bull reds show up in Fish River and Magnolia River. I guess they follow the menhaden up there. They get up there until we have a real cold front. A few stragglers will stay there all winter. Sometimes a lucky dog will catch one of them. If he’s real lucky, he’ll catch two.”

Not more than 15 minutes after the bull red disappeared into the tannin-colored water of Fish River, another fateful cast was made. This time, there was no doubt a big fish had slammed the bait. Another fight was on with similar results. Thank goodness for quality drag systems on small spinning reels.

“The thing about fishing this time of year is you’ve gotta be patient,” Gunn said. “The fish may not bite at daylight. A lot of times they don’t bite until on up in the day. Winter tides are such that low tides are early in the morning, say 3 a.m. to 10 a.m. When the tide starts moving, they bite a lot better.”

Although we fished Magnolia and Fish rivers, Gunn spends a lot of his winter fishing time in the Intracoastal Waterway and Little Lagoon.

“The water temperature stays a little steadier in the canal and lagoon,” he said. “The salinity stays pretty steady, too. There’s not a lot of freshwater influx. The fishing is just steady and dependable. In the canal, you may end up with a variety of fish – redfish, speckled trout, white trout, puppy drum and sheepshead.”

During the fall and winter, the Mobile-Tensaw Delta is known for its fishing for inshore saltwater species like specks and redfish. Traditionally, the Delta fishing is prime because of the migration of white shrimp out of the multiple rivers at the head of Mobile Bay.

Capt. Bobby Abruscato has made a living fishing around Dauphin Island and Bayou La Batre, but six years ago he started exploring the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Now, he seldom leaves that area during the fall and winter because of the abundance of speckled trout.

“Earlier in the fall, when the water temperature was still above 62 degrees, I was fishing the shallow flats around Del Van Bay, Grand Bay and the Spanish, Raft and Appalachee rivers,” Abruscato said. “Those rivers are shaped all the same. There’s a shallow dropoff on one side of the channel, and there’s a steep dropoff on the other side of the channel. I was catching trout mainly with shrimp-imitations under corks.

“Then when we had these cooler snaps, I started catching them on the edges of where it drops down into the main river channel. Lately, since we had that last cold front, I’m catching them all on jigs in the river channels. They do that every year when it cools off like this.”

Abruscato also noticed a lack of shrimp during his fishing trips, and he said shrimpers have told him it was the slowest year they could remember in Mobile Bay.

“When the shrimp move out of the Delta, you’ll get the birds following the shrimp,” he said. “The trout will push the shrimp to the surface where the birds can reach them. This year the bird activity has been almost nil.”

But the fish, especially speckled trout, are still there. Although Abruscato said the fishing isn’t as good as it was last year, he’s been catching a limit of 10 specks per person consistently.

“And in the last two weeks, the quality of the fish has gone up,” he said. “We may only have five throwbacks all day. We’re catching quite a few fish from 18 to 23 inches.

“We’re catching some slot (16 to 26 inches) reds, but no bull reds. Everybody’s got trout on the brain right now. I’ve got trips later this month where customers want to catch redfish, so I’m going to have to find some. I’m sure some are up there. They always are.”

The Great Goliath

Today’s feature on Goliath Grouper comes to us from the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council. One of it’s most interesting findings is that Goliath’s, contrary to popular angler opinion, eat very few snappers and other grouper species.
from The Fishing Wire

The goliath grouper population is showing signs of recovery in the Southeastern United States. This should be fantastic news, since goliath are considered critically endangered throughout most of the world, but many Gulf fishermen don’t see it that way.

That’s because goliath grouper have a bad habit of eating fish that are struggling at the end of fishing lines and spears.

Understandably, this opportunistic behavior has led many fishermen to believe that goliath are a nuisance – directly competing with them and decimating game fish populations.

However, scientific studies have concluded that goliath grouper are not the reef fish gobbling, top predators they appear to be, and they don’t seem to harm the snapper or grouper populations on reefs where they live and eat.

How do we know this?

A very straightforward way to figure out what something is eating is to check out what’s in it’s stomach. When scientists capture goliath their stomachs are emptied and the contents are classified.

Using gut content analysis, scientists Chris Koenig and Felicia Coleman (2009) found that, rather than eating all the game fish in sight, 72% of a goliath groupers diet is invertebrates – 62% of which is crabs. The figure below shows how many of each prey type were present in the stomachs of the 226 adult and juvenile goliath grouper studied.

The only downside to gut content analysis is that it only shows a snapshot of what’s been eaten recently. Since we are what we eat, stable isotope analysis can determine what a marine organism has eaten over a long period of time.

Chemical signatures found in the muscles of fish can indicate what food source was used to build that tissue. The more nitrogen in the muscle, the higher up on the food chain an animal feeds. Koenig and Coleman (2009) found that goliath grouper holds a relatively low position on the food chain and actually about even with pin fish.

Finally, in reef fish surveys conducted in southwest Florida, Koenig and Coleman (2009) found that there was no significant relationship between the number of adult goliath and the number of other groupers on a site. Interestingly, the number of snapper actually increased along with the number of goliath grouper on a reef.

So what do we do when the science says something that seemingly contradicts what fishermen are experiencing?

Fishery managers do their best to balance the views and needs of fishermen with the requirements of the law and the science. In 2012 the Gulf and South Atlantic Councils joined up to consider how to move the goliath grouper fishery beyond moratorium. The Ad Hoc Goliath Grouper Steering Committee was formed as a direct result of public input suggesting we consider allowing for a limited fishery as the goliath population recovers.

At the initial meeting, the group recognized the importance of both scientific and public viewpoints for future management of goliath by initiating a science workshop to gather all the research that has been done on goliath since the last stock assessment, and asking for a stakeholder survey and workshop to be conducted.

In January, the Goliath Grouper Steering Committee will hear the results of the science workshop and stakeholder survey.

They are expected to consider how to move forward with potential management actions for the future. More information about this meeting can be found on page 4.

Koenig, C.C., and F.C. Coleman. 2009. Population density, demographics, and predation effects of adult goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara). Final Report to NOAA MARFIN for Project NA05NMF4540045

Try Metal Jigs for Fall Stripers & Blues
from The Fishing Wire

Diamond jigs are the hot ticket for fast Mid-Atlantic action from now through year-end

Fishing along the Mid-Atlantic coast isn’t over so keep the boat in the water, break out the cold weather gear and enjoy some of the best inshore fishing of the year.

One of the most productive techniques available from fall into early winter is vertical jigging using the simplest of lures, the venerable diamond jig. It’s just a long, shiny, four-sided piece of metal with a swinging tail hook, but this gem of a lure has been catching gamefish for a hundred years, and it is still one of the most productive you can fish with in saltwater. Talk about staying power; the diamond jig has it.

You can make a diamond jig dance in a number of different ways to imitate a variety of baitfish and in the process attract the attention of pretty much any gamefish you come across. This time of year the primary baitfish on the inshore grounds is a slender silver and olive-colored fish called a sand eel. They are found in enormous schools from a few miles offshore to right in the wash, and are feasted upon by striped bass, weakfish, bluefish and bottom species like sea bass and codfish. Even whales can be found swimming through the schools devouring them by the ton.

Sand eels get their name because of their eel-like shape and because they will frequently dive into sandy sections of ocean bottom in a bid to escape the jaws of hungry predators trying to eat them. Diamond and a variety of similar metal jigs are among the best imitation of the look and swimming motion of sand eels. They come in a variety of weights, but for stripers and bluefish, which will rarely be found in water deeper than 70 feet at this time of year, the two- and four-ounce models are ideal. Most jigs are chrome with a plain or tube tail hook, but painted diamond jigs are also becoming popular. They can be fished using spinning or light conventional outfits. The most popular are saltwater size baitcasting reels on medium action trigger stick rods loaded with braided line for extra sensitivity. Top that off with a 3- or 4-foot length of fluorocarbon leader material and a clip to make it easy to change lures quickly, and you’re ready to go.

Vertical jigging is a simple and effective technique, but it relies on more than just rods, reels and lures. Unlike trolling, you have to find schools of bait and gamefish and position the boat on top of them before you start fishing. That means you have to be adept at using your fishfinder to identify the right targets and position the boat above or close by. When schools of bait are thick and the gamefish are mixing it up, that’s pretty easy to accomplish. But when the bait is scattered and the gamefish are in smaller pods, it takes a bit more concentration and search time. Vertical jigging over empty ocean bottom is not very productive, so there’s no sense wasting time and energy when you don’t have fish showing on the sonar screen. It’s best to hunt until you find them.

Identifying where fish are holding in the water column is also important. If the bait and gamefish are holding right on the bottom, then you want to keep you jigs near the bottom. If they are holding mid water, you’ll want to work them up higher in the water column so your lures spend the maximum time in the strike zone.

Bringing a jig to life is pretty easy. Drop it with the reel in free spool, but watch the line as it sinks. If you see the line slow or jump, get in gear, tighten up and set the hook. If it reaches the desired depth or strikes bottom, then start a moderate retrieve that incorporates a lift and drop motion. If the fish are holding near the bottom, don’t reel at all. With the reel in gear, lift the jig until the rod tip is high, then drop it so the jig flutters back down. When the jig is dropping, try to follow its descent with the rod tip so the line doesn’t have too much slack. Gamefish frequently grab the lure while it’s sinking, and you want to be able to feel any subtle strikes. When you do, set the hook.

Remember that sand eels sometimes dive into the bottom to get away from predators. When they emerge they leave a little puff of sand behind. You can imitate this behavior by allowing the jig to strike the bottom before each lift. If you’re not getting bites while actively working the jig, try dropping it all the way to the bottom and reeling it back up at a slow to moderate pace. There are days when stripers will follow a jig almost to the surface and grab it just before you’re ready to lift it out of the water for the next drop or cast.

Speaking of casting, you can reach out with jigs by casting them well away from the boat and letting them sink to the bottom. Then start a lift-and-drop motion with a turn or two of the reel handle after each lift. This will walk the jig back to the boat with an up-and-down action that can be extremely effective and covers more area than just dropping the jig straight down.

Fishing jigs is a favorite technique for catching striped bass and bluefish, and the bonus is you can do it on very light tackle, which makes battling these able fighters all the more fun. Give it a try; it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it, and you will have a technique to add to your arsenal that you can rely on year after year – because diamond jigs are forever.

Look Who’s Back: Sturgeon are Spawning Again in the Chesapeake Bay
from The Fishing Wire

Matt Balazik, the sturgeon surgeon. Photo courtesy of Matt Balazik

Atlantic sturgeon are spawning again in the Chesapeake Bay. But they’ve been gone so long that we’ve forgotten the basic life history information that scientists need to boost their recovery. A species recovery grant from NOAA Fisheries should help.

In 1997, Dave Secor was a young fisheries biologist just starting his career at the University of Maryland. Like almost everyone else, he believed that Atlantic sturgeon, a species that has survived since the age of the dinosaurs, had been long gone from the Chesapeake Bay. But that year a small number of juvenile sturgeon turned up, and they were too small to have immigrated from elsewhere.

“That was a major surprise,” Secor said.

Though sightings were rare back then and still are today, the population of sturgeon that spawn in the Chesapeake Bay has grown. In 2012 that population was added to the endangered species list. Usually a listing is bad news, but in this case it was cause for celebration.

Now scientists are racing to find out what’s driving the recovery so they can reinforce it. Their efforts recently got a big boost when NOAA Fisheries awarded a three-year, $1.75 million species recovery grant to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Atlantic sturgeon were prized for their flesh and for the caviar made from their roe. But fishing for them in the Chesapeake peaked in the 1890’s, and no one alive today has seen a healthy run of sturgeon in the Bay. Even basic information about their life history was forgotten long ago, and this is a problem for the scientists working to protect them.

“We need to find out where they’re spawning so we can protect that habitat,” Secor said. Scientists also hope to locate their nursery grounds and to identify the biggest threats to their recovery. Ship strikes and poor water quality are among the top suspects.

“This recovery may be part of a cycle,” said Secor. “If we don’t pursue this now, we may not see it again for another 20 or 30 years.”

A Fish That’s Hard to Follow

But finding their spawning grounds is difficult, not least because there are so few of them out there. To solve that problem, scientists will use the new funding to tag about 240 sturgeon with acoustic transmitters. That will allow scientists to track their movements in the Bay.

Atlantic sturgeon spend most of their time at sea, travelling up and down the shelf break where they plow the bottom with their snouts, eating worms and crustaceans. Like salmon, they return to their natal streams to spawn.

Unlike most salmon, however, which spawn once and die, sturgeon make the spawning run repeatedly. They can live up to 60 years and can grow up to 14 feet (4.3 meters) and 800 pounds (370 kg).

Matt Balazik, a postdoc at Virginia Commonwealth University, is doing most of the tagging. The acoustic tag, about the size of a Sharpie marker, is inserted into the belly of the fish through a small incision. The minor surgery takes less than five minutes, and the unharmed fish are quickly sent on their way.

The tag emits a coded sound roughly once a minute, a signal that’s recorded whenever the fish passes within range of a receiver. Each tag has a unique acoustic signature, allowing scientists to track individual fish.

“You can think of the tag as like an EZPass,” said Matt Balazik, referring to the device that motorists in the Northeast attach to their windshields, “and of the receivers as toll booths.”

An acoustic signal is used because sound waves travel well underwater. Radio waves would dissipate quickly in the murky Bay.

Collaboration is Key

Scientists have tagged sturgeon all along the Eastern seaboard, but the Chesapeake is uniquely difficult because it’s a meta-estuary-an estuary comprised of many smaller estuaries-and it’s the largest one in the nation.

“In the Hudson it’s a piece of cake,” said Dave Secor. “A few receivers bank to bank and you’ve got the river covered at that point.” The mouth of the Chesapeake, on the other hand, is 20 miles wide.

But the tagging project got a big boost from the Navy, which recently installed an array of 58 receivers, most attached to Coast Guard buoys, throughout the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

The Naval Base at Norfolk, Virginia is the largest in the nation, and it’s one of several naval installations in the lower Chesapeake Bay. As a federal agency, the Navy is required to minimize interactions with endangered species.

“We want to know where and when sturgeon are utilizing the Bay,” said Carter Watterson, a Navy biologist. “Once we know that, we can work to minimize any impact we have on the species.”

The Navy will benefit from the tags that Maryland and Virginia researchers deploy because they increase the value of the receiver array. And the state researchers will benefit every time Watterson sends them tracking data on their fish.

The buoys the receivers are attached to also record environmental data, allowing scientists to correlate sturgeon activity with ocean conditions. This will be key to understanding how those conditions affect the fish, and in particular how sensitive the fish are to the low oxygen levels that plague the Bay every summer.

A Living Fossil

Sturgeon have existed in pretty much the same form for at least 85 million years. A living fossil, they survived the meteors that killed off the dinosaurs and many other catastrophes since. “They’re designed to handle anything,” Matt Balazik said. “Except humans.”

But don’t write them off just yet. “The fact that they’re still hanging in there makes me a bit more optimistic than I was earlier in my career,” said Dave Secor, the biologist who was surprised to see juvenile sturgeon in the Chesapeake Bay in 1997.

“What sturgeon have taught me as a scientist,” he said, “is that sometimes it can be delightful when you’re wrong.”

Research Finds More than 50 Fish Species in Gulf Rely on Decommissioned Rigs
Species include fish that are key to fisheries economy
from The Fishing Wire

Divers capture a school of amberjack and red snapper above MI-A-7, a cut-off oil and gas platform located approximately 50 miles east of Port Aransas, Texas.(Credit: Dr. Matt Ajemian)

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Early research from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s artificial reefs monitoring program shows that decommissioned oil and gas structures converted to artificial reefs are supporting a high abundance and diverse fish assemblages within the Gulf of Mexico.

The new data from the western Gulf shows a high abundance of red snapper living around these structures for years at a time. Researchers in the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI) at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi say 52 fish species from 18 families have been identified at 13 surveyed sites near Port O’Connor, Port Aransas, and Port Mansfield, Texas (http://tamucc.edu/news/2013/10/images/artreef_allsitemap.jpg).

“There’s a lot of evidence that the red snapper populations we see today wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have all of these converted oil and gas platforms,” said Dr. Greg Stunz, Director of the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation. “Red snapper is the most economically important fish in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Stunz, who is the Principal Investigator for a recently awarded grant, says that in addition to supporting a variety of fish populations, artificial reefs lure commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, and divers; benefiting many Gulf Coast economies.

Schools of gray and red snapper congregate around the deck of a toppled oil and gas platform. This is a structure located 70 miles southeast of Port Aransas. (Credit: Schmidt Ocean Institute).

This new evidence is the reason the HRI’s newly-formed Center for Sportish Science and Conservation was recently awarded $600,000 by Texas Parks and Wildlife and $50,000 from the Fondren Foundation to expand their studies on artificial reefs. Researchers will monitor sites around the western Gulf and log the amount and types of marine life that create homes around the reefs. They will use these data to determine how to sustain these new “fish homes” including finding what characteristics are best suited to become habitats for each type of fish and to find the long-term effects of keeping rigs in the Gulf after they stop functioning.

“There are about 4,000 of these rigs in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Stunz. “About 75 percent of those will be gone in the next 20 years, so we are very concerned that we get these rigs into reef programs so that they continue producing fish.”

Data collected as part of the HRI’s “South Texas Artificial Reef Monitoring – Fish Community Assessment along the Coastal Bend” grant over the next four years will help maximize the benefits from artificial reef structures and assist scientists in better understanding how to continue sustaining fisheries for generations to come.

A scientist removes large red snapper captured from vertical longline gear set on an artificial reef, and collects tissue samples from the red snapper.

“Up until now, there has been very little evidence for what’s happening on artificial reefs on this side of the Gulf,” said Dr. Matt Ajemian, Assistant Research Scientist and Co-Principal Investigator. “One of our major upcoming projects will be to set up an array of acoustic receivers at different artificial reefs and track fish movements among them to determine the types of reefs these animals prefer to live on.”

The “South Texas Artificial Reef Monitoring” program works to enhance the effectiveness of current conservation and management initiatives in Texas, which has one of the largest rigs-to-reef programs, and throughout the Gulf of Mexico. The project is also set to serve as an educational tool, providing research experience for students at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

About the HRI: The Harte Research Institute, an endowed research component of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, is dedicated to advancing the long-term sustainable use and conservation of the Gulf of Mexico. Expertise at the Harte Research Institute (HRI) includes the consequences and long-term effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Harte Research Institute is made possible by an endowment from the Ed Harte family. For more information, go to http://www.harteresearchinstitute.org/.

About Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi: Offering more than 60 of the most popular degree programs in the state, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi has proudly provided a solid academic reputation, renowned faculty, and highly-rated degree programs since 1947. The Island University has earned its spot as a premier doctoral-granting institution, supporting two research institutes and 10 research centers and labs. Discover your island at www.tamucc.edu.

Suspected Rockfish Poachers Indicted After Two-Year Investigation

by kking
Maryland Natural Resources Department
from The Fishing Wire

AV Sandusky pulls up a massive, old gill net found at Bloody Point from the poaching operation.

Conservationists, watermen and anglers are applauding efforts by the Maryland Natural Resources Police and its federal law enforcement partners in obtaining indictments of four Talbot County watermen accused of running a striped bass poaching ring that spanned four years and was worth nearly a half million dollars on the wholesale market.

The 26-count indictment handed down Thursday provides the link between the actions of the four men and the discovery of illegal gill nets filled with fish found off Kent Island in February 2011. The incident triggered a massive police enforcement effort, generated a series of tough laws from the General Assembly and closed the commercial striped bass season three weeks early to prevent overfishing.

“Marylanders can be proud of these officers, whose hard work, long nights and nonstop investigative efforts have paid off,” said Governor Martin O’Malley. “Poachers steal from honest anglers, watermen, and all of us who responsibly enjoy our State’s natural riches and respect the livelihoods of the hardworking men and women who rely on this fishery.”

The indictments by a federal grand jury in Baltimore came after a more than two-year joint investigation by NRP officers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Justice Department, who painstakingly shifted through thousands of documents and reports to construct a paper trail of the crimes.

“We hope that Maryland citizens are beginning to realize that these are crimes against the State,” said Tony Friedrich, executive director of Coastal Conservation Association Maryland. “All of our best science is based on reliable catch reports. By falsifying data and poaching Maryland’s State fish, they are not only putting the entire stock at risk but making a mockery of our combined efforts to conserve the striped bass population.”

Beginning in January 2007, Michael D. Hayden, Jr. and William J. Lednum, both of Tilghman Island, and unnamed others conspired to overharvest striped bass and falsify records submitted to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Their illegal catch was sold to wholesalers in Maryland, New York, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

In addition, the grand jury found that in 2011, Hayden, Lednum and two other watermen – Kent Sadler, of Tilghman Island, and Lawrence “Daniel” Murphy, of St. Michaels – attempted to catch about 20,000 pounds of striped bass before the start of the 2011 commercial season using gill nets illegally set and left unattended in the Chesapeake Bay.

Hayden also was indicted on one count of witness retaliation and two counts of witness tampering in connection with the grand jury probe.

Billy Rice, chairman of the Tidal Fisheries Advisory Commission, expressed his gratitude on behalf of the commercial fishing industry for law enforcement efforts.

Officers discover illegal attempts to harvest fish using a gill net as part of this poaching ring.

“Poaching does not reflect a majority of our industry,” Rice said. “It hurts our livelihood and our image. We hope these indictments send a strong message.”

Bill Goldsborough, chairman of the Sport Fisheries Advisory Commission, praised the State and federal partnership that led to the indictments.

“Egregious fishing violations are major challenges for fisheries management,” said Goldsborough, also a senior scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “Effective enforcement like this is essential to healthy fisheries.”

As part of any sentence should the watermen be convicted, the federal government will seek to seize Hayden’s 38-foot work boat, his 2009 pick-up truck and all his fishing gear and Lednum’s 46-foot work boat and his fishing gear.

If these watermen are found guilty they could permanently lose their Maryland commercial fishing privileges.

As part of its continued effort to better protect Maryland’s public fishery, DNR most recently introduced the Maritime Law Enforcement Information Network – MLEIN, a network of radar units and cameras that scans the Chesapeake Bay for law breakers.

BTT Bonefish Tagging Efforts Expand to South Andros

by Zack Jud
Bonefish & Tarpon Trust
from The Fishing Wire

Last month, Bonefish and Tarpon Trust’s Bahamas Initiative waded into the fabled waters of South Andros. While a handful of bonefish had previously been tagged by guides in South Andros, this was the first large-scale tagging effort on the island. As most anglers probably know, catching a tagged bonefish (or any tagged fish for that matter!) is a once in a lifetime experience. From a research perspective, the more fish we have tagged in a given locale, the more likely we are to get valuable data from recaptures – data that we will use to identify growth rates, movement patterns, habitat use, and overall health of the area’s bonefish population.

Despite a lingering cold front and 25 knot winds, the BTT-led research team managed to tag more than 650 bonefish in four long days on the water. To even their odds in the face of ugly weather, the team reluctantly set down their fly rods (well, for the most part), and instead relied on a 250′ long soft mesh seine net to capture bonefish for tagging. Working closely with guides from Deneki’s Andros South Lodge, the researchers used the net to quietly encircle large, and oftentimes fast-moving, schools of bonefish. Unfortunately, herding bonefish into a net is a bit like herding cats…they rarely go where you want them to. All too often, a school will make a last-minute U-turn, slipping right back out of the closing net. To put the odds in their favor, the BTT team asked the guides to try to find the largest schools of bonefish possible, figuring that with enough fish in the water, they’d be bound to get a few to swim into the net. Well, the guides clearly know their fishery intimately, putting the researchers onto many huge schools of bonefish, some containing more than 1,000 fish. Worries about catching enough fish during the trip were quickly replaced by worries about running out of tags!

In the first day of tagging, a single net haul resulted in the capture of more than 400 fish (not counting several hundred more fish that managed to stay out of the net as the big school split in half). On day two, in the midst of a raging lightning storm, the team again managed to capture a huge school of bonefish, probably numbering close to 500 fish. Facing fading light and a long, rainy run back to the dock, the crew made the tough decision to call it a day before they had tagged the entire school. They ended up releasing several hundred untagged fish so they could make it home before dark. There’s just that many bonefish in South Andros! Rapidly deteriorating weather reduced the number of fish caught on the last two days of the trip, but the crew still managed to tag fish in all of the popular South Andros fishing spots – Grassy and Little Creeks, the west side, and the southern cays. We don’t want to tell a fish story, but there are some awfully big fish swimming around South Andros wearing a new piece of numbered jewelry, courtesy of BTT.

On BTT research trips, the work doesn’t stop when the boats are parked and the nets are out of the water. An important part of these trips is explaining BTT’s conservation efforts to local guides and lodge owners. Without the continued support of these folks, our work wouldn’t be possible. I am happy to report that our efforts to protect Andros’ bonefish into the future were very well received, and all of the guides and lodges in South Andros seem eager to report recaptures back to BTT. With the busy season cranking up, it’s only a matter of time before clients begin catching our tagged fish. Despite the economic value of the bonefish fishery on Andros, we still have many unanswered questions about the fish that call the island home. How big of an area do these fish use during their life? How quickly do they grow? Where do they spawn? What habitats are most important for the conservation of the species? What do we need to do to assure that the incredible South Andros fishery is protected for years to come? Although it will still be some time before significant numbers of recaptures start rolling in, the work we began last month is the first step in coming up with answers to these important conservation questions. To become a member or support our efforts in the Bahamas or support any of our other great projects, visit: www.bonefishtarpontrust.org

Nature’s Balance

By Frank Sargeant, Editor
from The Fishing Wire

It’s a common refrain anywhere anglers want to harvest more of a given species but the regulators won’t let them.’

Biologists say blue crab populations go up and down depending on water quality and habitat conditions, rather than on predatory fish like stripers.

“There are too many of these (insert your favorite species) and they’re eating up all the crabs and shrimp-we’ve got to harvest more of them in the name of conservation.”

Yeah we do.

Saltwater anglers in Florida make the charge about Goliath grouper, which they say are eating up all the gags as well as spawning permit-despite the fact that there are now more big gags than there have been in decades and permit are also doing very, very well. Commercial fishermen used to say they had to cut down on redfish numbers or all the blue crabs would soon be consumed. Didn’t happen-today the state is loaded with reds, and crabs numbers come and go, as they always have.

Sharks . . . don’t even get me started.

And presently, Chesapeake Bay commercial fishers are saying that the striped bass are eating up all the blue crabs in soft-shell stage, and that they’d be happy to step in and knock back the numbers of those predatory stripes.

This train of logic has one great failing; it is that somehow, all these species survived in balance before man came along to “help” the predators stay in balance with the prey. The problem, researchers nearly always find, is that habitat issues-sometimes caused by Man but more often by natural variation in temperature, rainfall or other conditions-are depressing the species of concern.

Blues are a delicacy both in their hard-shell form, and as soft-shells eaten whole when moulting.

And that seems to be the issue in Chesapeake Bay with the crabs at present. Crabbers there are having a down year, and they say it’s because the striped bass, on a comeback thanks to tight harvest regulations, are eating up all the crabs. They want to see regs relaxed so the stripers can be harvested big, “saving” the crabs-for the crabbers.

But here’s what Brenda Davis, director of Maryland DNR’s blue crab program, says:

“There are no scientific data to support a supposition that striped bass predation is causing a significant depletion of the Chesapeake Bay blue crab population. In fact, studies performed in Maryland and Virginia to assess the diets of striped bass indicated that blue crabs make up a small percentage of the average striped bass diet. According to an intensive study in 2000, fish, particularly menhaden, account for 94 percent by weight of the striped bass diet.

“In fact, other studies have shown that cannibalism by large crabs was a major cause of juvenile crab mortality, accounting for 75 percent to 97 percent of the loss of juvenile crabs in certain locations. Juvenile crabs find protection in grass beds, which is also where striped bass and other predators find the best opportunities for catching them. Nonetheless, crab survival is best in vegetated habitats, where they can hide. Any effort to boost crab survival needs to look toward improving habitat and the protection of sea grass beds.

“There was a combination of environmental factors contributing to the high mortality of juvenile crabs in 2012 including Tropical Storm Sandy, abnormally warm and salty water, decreases in submerged aquatic vegetation coverage, a large influx of red drum into the Maryland portion of the bay, density-dependant mortality, and a large 2011 year class of striped bass.

Striped bass readily eat crabs, but food studies have shown by far the bulk of their diet is baitfish. (Photo Credit Yamaha Marine.)

“We don’t have a lot of data on impact of most of the factors on that list. However, we do have solid data that the Bay-wide harvest of spawning age female blue crabs has been at or below the 25.5 percent harvest target for five consecutive years. The ability to keep harvest in the safe range puts us in a much better position than we’ve been in the past (specifically 1992 and 1997) with similar abundance declines,” Davis said.

To be sure, there’s more than a little evidence that terrestrial prey species with a low reproduction rate and slow rates of reaching maturity can definitely be severely impacted by predators-that’s the reason that elk herds are declining in many areas where grey wolves have been reintroduced in recent years.

But for most saltwater fish, crustaceans and shellfish, where the survival strategy is to produce millions of young that grow up fast, biologists have thus far found it pretty much unheard of for a single type of predator to wipe out a prey species.

Bottom line is that if we do our best to maintain a healthy environment for all ocean species-and don’t overharvest any of them ourselves-nature will find a balance that creates a livable abundance for all.