Fishing with Dad

The small Barnegat Bay charter boats and tackle shops are reporting lots of light tackle opportunities in the bay with a variety of fish. Fluke and snapper blues are the most abundant and consistent, but there were catches this week of striped bass, blowfish and a handful of weakfish in the bay.

On the Barnegat Inlet rocks, jetty hoppers have been finding triggerfish, blackfish, sea bass and occasional porgies.

Chris Oehme at Better Bait and Ice in Toms River said the snapper blues are all over the bay and in the lagoons. Spearing rigs with bobbers and small metal lures are catching them. Oehme said some people are using light trout rods to have fun catching them. The best time to catch the little blues is early morning to about 11 a.m. and then again in the evenings.

“At night you can see them around the dock lights. Cast a small metal lure over them and retrieve it through the light and they will bite,” Oehme said.

Sometimes you can pick up the silvery flash of the snappers underneath the tiny schools of spearing.

Dave Hughes at Grizz’s Bait and Tackle reports the blowfish have started to show up. Anglers are finding them around the BB-BI buoys in the Barnegat Bay on the outgoing tide when the water is warmer.

“The trick is to anchor up and use a chum pot. You will catch the fish right around the pot,” Hughes said.

Dennis Palmatier of Murphy’s Hook House added that along with the blowfish, anglers are hooking a few kingfish, croakers, snapper blues and spots.

The fluke bite in the bay has been off the wall all summer but catching keepers has been tough. Capt. Jack Shea of the Rambunctious called it the Barnegat Bay Fluke-a-thon.

Shea had Kevin and Liz Broderick out looking to get in on the action and reported they absolutely bailed fluke from start to finish before heading in at mid-day. Shea estimated they released close to 200 short fluke during the fast paced action.

Capt. Dave DeGennaro of the Hi Flier said they have been catching a crazy amount of stripers on 10-pound spinning outfits in the Barnegat Inlet. The fish are mostly schoolies and they are catching them chumming the water with grass shrimp. Also getting drawn into the chum slicks are blackfish, sea bass and some big porgies.

If you can’t get on a boat or kayak out on the water, try the Barnegat Inlet jetty rocks. There have been steady reports of blackfish and triggerfish hitting crab baits. The current daily bag limit for blackfish is one fish at 14-ounces. There is no limit on the harder to catch triggerfish. Anglers are also catching sea bass and a few porgies on the inlet rocks.

The knack to catching these fish is to bring a couple different size hooks with you and tie up with hi-low rig. Then you just have to fish around until you start getting the bites and hope your quick enough to get them on the hook.

Dan Radel

To see where Barnegat Bay’s troubles start, look 20 miles inland to Jackson.

The tiny streams that eventually comprise the Toms and Metedeconk rivers flowing into Barnegat Bay begin inside Jackson. At 100 square miles, it is the third-largest municipality in the state, with a population that has more than doubled to almost 60,000 people since 1980. And there is still room for a lot more people, houses and businesses.

“The Metedeconk River needs to be protected because it flows into Barnegat Bay and its a public water supply,” said Dan Burke, Jackson’s municipal engineer, who says new conservation zoning will control growth: “That protects the environment because you’re getting lower (housing) density overall.”

Next door in Lakewood, a young and increasingly urban population has swelled from 60,000 in 2000 toward an estimated 100,000. With population growth come more houses, more cars and inevitably more pollutants: Excess lawn fertilizer, oil dripping from cars and animal waste.

Four thousand children were born in Lakewood last year. The town’s planners forecast an urban center of up to 230,000 inhabitants in the 2020s, living next to the Metedeconk and Kettle Creek bay tributaries. If Lakewood is indeed built out in 10 years, it will be home to almost as many people as the state’s biggest city, Newark.

“Lakewood’s birth rate is the highest in the state by far,” said Stan Slachetka of T&M Associates, Lakewood’s planning consultant. Large families are driving the growth, unlike most towns, where new residential development attracts new residents, Slachetka said.

With 71 percent of Ocean County’s 600,000 residents, the northern part of the bay watershed has the most intense storm water pollution washing off the suburban landscape.

Barnegat Bay has earned the dubious distinction of second-worst place among America’s estuaries overloaded with dirty runoff, right behind the vast and deeply troubled Chesapeake Bay.

“The problem is the number of people moving to the Shore goes up every year,” said Stan Hales, executive director of the Barnegat Bay Partnership, a federally funded effort to coordinate research and conservation work in the bay watershed.

Meanwhile it is difficult … especially in this economy … to get “people to invest enough so we can get enough scale to move forward” with efforts to clean up the watershed, Hales said.

Downstream in the Toms River, people are feeling the pain of pollution – quite literally.

Bill MacCormack’s daughter came out of the water one day covered with scarlet welts. A gelatinous sea nettle, a stinging jellyfish, had gotten under her shirt and attacked her like a nestful of angry hornets.

“I’ve seen my daughter with stings on her back that looked like they were from a cat-o’-nine-tails,” said MacCormack at the Toms River Yacht Club, where he helps stage youth sailing events on the river. “You pull in your anchor line, and jellyfish are on the anchor. God forbid you forget and wipe your brow. Your head feels like it’s on fire.”

Laura Feaster, of Island Heights says it was not this way 30 years ago: “I grew up sailing here since I was eight years old and never saw them. Now they’re all over. They wrap around your leg. It’s disgusting.”

Scientists think the swarming jellyfish are a result of polluted storm water flows changing the bay’s basic ecology.

There are some late-starting projects to clean up the watershed, like a Metedeconk restoration effort sponsored by Brick Utilities and funded with $666,000 from the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Jackson and Lakewood officials say they are trying to balance community development with protection for the bay. Engineer Burke says Jackson shares its storm water plans with Brick Utilities, but he points out that older communities need to fix their pollution problems too.

“We don’t mind doing the right thing environmentally. But what are you doing for the bay right there in the towns that are already built?” he said. “That’s not as hard for a town that’s in the building phase.”

Jackson’s master plan, revised last year, reduced the township’s future residential growth to 5,650 additional homes … a 29 percent increase in housing, but a 10 percent reduction from the old “build-out” projections. But the master plan also seeks 65 percent more commercial and industrial development – and the property tax revenue and jobs that can come from that.

Lakewood’s new master plan aims to provide enough housing and infrastructure to meet population growth by becoming a designated regional center under DEP rules for coastal zone development.

It includes more than 1,000 additional acres of parks and open space, and stream buffer protections for bay tributaries like Kettle Creek, along with clustered developments to save open space, Slachetka said. The plan impressed the New Jersey Planning Officials group so much it gave Lakewood an award.
Environmental activists are not reassured.

“Lakewood wants to (extend sewers through) the whole township and build out to 230,000 people,” said Helen Henderson of the American Littoral Society, a nonprofit environmental group. “We can’t do that and save Barnegat Bay.”

The environmental changes are most profound where the Toms and Metedeconk rivers feed fresh water into the bay … flush with high levels of nutrients that wash off the neighborhoods and streets of inland municipalities many miles from the bay.

Nutrients are nitrogen and phosphorus compounds … the same ingredients in lawn fertilizer, one of the sources that flood into the bay’s freshwater tributaries when it rains. In the bay, nutrients fuel blooms of microscopic plants, slimes and sea lettuce that foul fishermen’s lines. It also kills eelgrass beds, the underwater meadows that shelter crabs, grass shrimp and fish.

A 1990 Barnegat Bay Study Group report commissioned by the state warned of the impact of suburbanization and increasing storm water runoff. A year before, DEP water experts began checking for nutrient levels.

In 1996, a DEP summary paper warned: “The northeastern portion of the watershed, especially in the back bay, is highly stressed by the population densities, land-cover types and cumulative contamination.”

From 1995 to 2006 the percentage of land in the watershed covered by development increased from 25 percent to 30 percent … meaning runoff rates had to increase as well, according to a report by the Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis at Rutgers University.

Woodlands along the freshwater streams help filter out nutrients and pollutants before they get into the water and head downstream to the bay.

But when researchers mapped around streams in the Toms and Metedeconk watersheds, they found the ideal 300-foot buffer zones have lost between 20 percent and 50 percent or more of their area to clearing and development.
It is a trend poised to accelerate in the northern watershed.

“There are clearly higher levels of nutrients coming out of the Toms River and Metedeconk River. The nutrient levels are highest toward the northern parts of the bay,” said Bob Schuster, a supervising environmental specialist with the Bureau of Marine Water Monitoring, an arm of the DEP.

On an 18-foot outboard boat, Schuster and captain Keith Murphy stop at a couple of the 50 or so Barnegat Bay locations where the bureau tests water quality. Their primary mission is ensuring that consumers do not get sick from shellfish harvested in waters where bacteria levels are too high.
But over the past 20 years, water testers have made the health of Barnegat Bay itself their other mission.

In the late 1990s they added tests for chlorophyll … an indicator of phytoplankton that harms bay life – and phosphorus, a powerful fertilizer that boosts phytoplankton growth. Other nutrient tests check for various forms of nitrogen, by far the major fuel for phytoplankton.

Biologists say slime growth and ever more numerous sea lettuce simply smother the eelgrass, an essential shelter for crabs and fish.

“It used to be full of eelgrass here. Now it’s barren like a desert,” said Murphy, who grew up in the Forked River section of Lacey.
The U.S. Geological Survey revised its nutrient estimates last December. Now, the estimates say two-thirds of nutrients come off the suburban landscape.

“We have the data already. We’ve had it for years,” said Michael Kennish, a research professor who heads Rutgers University efforts to study Barnegat Bay’s pollution problems. “We know what the problems are. We need to have big stuff done, mandates and requirements imposed by DEP.”

The jellyfish showed up early this summer, when bayside homeowner associations closed their swimming areas … kiddie beaches used since the 1950s … because of stinging sea nettle jellyfish that scientists link to declining water quality.

“There’s been less water-skiing and tubing in the bay and (Metedeconk) river because of the nettles,” said Edward Harrison, who owns Baywood Marina, one of 24 marinas in Brick alone. “People aren’t swimming. So it’s a huge problem.”

America’s recreational boating industry goes back to 1871 here, when the Toms River Yacht Club was organized, second only to the New York Yacht Club in pedigree. Then, the opening of the Garden State Parkway in 1955 and mass-produced fiberglass boats got blue-collar fishermen and families out onto Barnegat Bay from cottage colonies and beach clubs.

The northern third of Barnegat Bay, from Bay Head to Toms River, was an epicenter for that life … and for the burgeoning suburban growth that now threatens to overwhelm it.

Joe LaCava, who lives along a man-made lagoon in Lacey, said a couple neighbors told him they are going to give up boating and are selling their boats. There’s very little return on the investment and time, and “more and more people (are) just backing away,” LaCava said.

“Let’s remember why people moved to Ocean County,” said Gef Flimlin, a Rutgers

Cooperative Extension marine agent with 30 years of experience on the bay. “People moved here around the natural resources of the bay. That’s the drawing card. That’s a big drawing card, and they came here to go fishing, clamming and boating. The clamming part has gone down steadily.”

Marina owners say today’s economy is their most immediate problem, with dock vacancies up to 20 percent in some locations this summer.
But even before the recession, the industry saw a long-term decline in Ocean County, home port for nearly a third of New Jersey’s recreational fleet. Boat numbers peaked in 2000 at 243,281 and the fleet declined to 176,631 vessels at the end of 2009, according to state Motor Vehicle Commission registrations.

Kirk Moore

The Mid-Atlantic $500,000 is shaping up quite nicely according to tournament director Bob Glover. “The way people are signing up and calling with inquiries leads me to think we’re going to have a bigger event than last year.” Some exciting changes for 2010 include the Mega Marlin Raffle which will now benefit the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation. According to Glover “Guy has been with us since the beginning and having his foundation benefit from the raffle is a perfect fit. The prizes will be better than ever and we may even change the raffle format a bit to make it more exciting.” Other fun things are being planned as well, said Glover and he encourages anyone who may need a transient slip in Cape May for the event to contact him. Those needing a slip in Ocean City, MD should contact Brian Tinkler at Sunset Marina (410-213-9600), the official tournament headquarters in OC.
This year’s Mid-Atlantic will run August 15-20 and can be fished out of Cape May, NJ or Ocean city, MD.

Just a little information about the Jamaica which sails out of Brielle, New Jersey. One of my favorite party/charter boats.

The Jamaica offers a variety of fishing experiences throughout the year, catering to first time, novice and expert fishermen.

Bluefishing trips typically start in mid-May and run every day and night till early September. Bluefish, pound for pound the best fighting fish on the East Coast, offer a thrill and fight that cannot be equaled in a day or night trip environment.

Tuna season begins the beginning of September, overlapping with bluefish season, and we run 7 days a week through the fall out to the canyons for Yellowfin, Longfin, Bigeye and Bluefin Tuna as well as Swordfish, Mahi Mahi and Tile Fish. Our Canyon tuna trips will typically continue through the end of November most years, depending on how long the tuna stay within our range. These 22 Hour trips provide access to some of the largest fish caught on rod and reel and allow even the most novice fisherman to experience a thrill and fight of a lifetime.
During November & December the Jamaica will also sail for Striped Bass. Check our “Schedule” for days and times.

The winter time brings us into offshore wreck season. Our offshore trips typically start in late November, overlapping Tuna season, and run all winter long right into the Spring time. Trips will typically sail 4 times a week throughout the months of December, January, February, March and April. These 18 Hour excursions provide Cod, Pollock, Hake & Jumbo Porgies in sizes and quantities not found on inshore wrecks with any regularity.

At the end of the municipal pier in Ocean Gate, the summer scene is as it has been for generations: Children splash in the shallows, fishermen’s skiffs swing on their moorings and sailboats race in the distance.
Yet the reassuring scene at the confluence of the Toms River and Barnegat Bay hides the arrival of a new and dangerous creature under the pier.

Almost as long as your arm, the stinging sea nettle jellyfish showed up in the Toms River in force during the summer of 2004. Since then, they have made parts of northern Barnegat Bay unswimmable. The creatures, whose multiple stings can be as fierce and painful as an attack from a nest of wasps, have made Barnegat Bay home as they feed on the pollution generated by a rapidly growing population.

The warning signs have been there for almost 30 years, described by dozens of scientific studies. Until now, the bay’s fish and wildlife have quietly paid the price.

But with the arrival of the jellyfish, Barnegat Bay and the estimated $3.3 billion that it brings to the regional economy every year, is finally at risk.

Government agencies have studied Barnegat Bay as residents and conservation groups clamored for action. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has spent up to $1 million a year for the last 15 years to fund scientific studies, public education and grants for local conservation projects through the Barnegat Bay Partnership.

Yet an EPA spokesman said that “additional actions are needed to fully restore and protect the Bay.”

By the end of August, the state Department of Environmental Protection is expected to issue plans for restoring the bay, such as controlling fertilizer and fixing aged storm water drainage systems.

DEP Commissioner Bob Martin said “We’re going to have a plan, and work to the plan.”

The Legislature could act on its own to pass laws to protect the bay, but there is no clear timetable for when, or if, that will happen.

Yet if inaction remains the norm, scientists say that in less than a generation, the bay’s ecosystem could collapse.

It’s happened elsewhere.
Perdido Bay on the Florida-Alabama Gulf coast is about the same size as Barnegat Bay and is protected by barrier islands. But similar pollution … overuse of fertilizer, nutrient pollution from a paper mill and stormwater runoff from homes and streets … wiped out much of Perdido Bay’s native fish and sea grasses in the last decade, in an ecological shift disturbingly similar to Barnegat Bay trends.

Runoff pollution also has affected parts of Monmouth County, where the coastal lakes such as Wreck Pond and Sylvan Lake … once centerpieces and prides of their communities … have turned into storm basins filled mostly with slime and bacteria.

By 2000, Barnegat Bay showed alarming symptoms of rapid decline. The major problems, according to interviews with dozens of experts and reviews of scientific studies, are:

Overdevelopment. More than 30 percent of the bay watershed has been paved and built over, to accommodate a population in search of coastal living and affordable housing. That growth also is rich revenue for property-tax-hungry local governments. The less open space in the watershed … where fresh water flows to the bay … the higher the stress on the bay.

Loss of wildlife. Clams declined by two-thirds from the late 1980s to 2001 in the bay’s southern end, while native eelgrass beds throughout the bay have shrunk by 60 percent since the 1970s. The annual die-offs pile stinking masses of grass and seaweeds on the bayshore. Vast underwater meadows that once sheltered baby crabs and fish near Barnegat Inlet have disappeared in the last three years. Low dissolved oxygen levels in the northern bay during summer 2008 were a warning sign of dead zones. Fish kills could be coming due to higher water
temperatures and decaying algae.

Land-borne pollution. Some 1.4 million pounds of nitrogen compounds … enough to fill 70,000 20-pound bags of fertilizer … flow into the bay every year, feeding algae and slime that smother and kill eelgrass beds. Two-thirds of the nitrogen comes from an increasingly suburban landscape in Ocean County, according to a December analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey. All that nitrogen is food for massive algae blooms … which over time can kill almost everything
else in the bay.

Oyster Creek. The nuclear power plant’s cooling system draws in more than 1 billion gallons of bay water daily, destroying tiny fish larvae and eggs that cannot be stopped by the intake screens. The DEP has said cooling towers are the solution to reduce water demand, but plant owner Exelon insists the cost would be $700 million to $800 million. The owner said rather than build the towers, it would close the plant … which could put hundreds of people out of work.

Inaction. Stormwater basins … giant holes in the ground near homes and roadways … were installed decades ago to catch tainted water and keep it from the bay. But many are in disrepair and no longer can do their jobs. Only a few repairs are funded each year, with just $2.3 million in federal and state grants in the last few years. There are about 2,700 storm water basins in Ocean County, but no one knows how many need renovation … or what repairs ultimately will cost.

“Barnegat Bay is dying,” said Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society, a coastal conservation group on Sandy Hook. “All the signs are there that the life which has defined the bay, both environmentally and economically, is dying because of the pollution and misuse of the bay.”

Polluted storm water, which carries everything from fertilizer residue to animal waste up to 60 miles downstream, flows freely into the bay with each heavy rain. Woodlands and natural stream banks that once purified fresh water flowing to the bay have fallen to new and old construction.

As the nitrogen-rich pollution hits the water, the bay actually undergoes a massive and remarkable change. The nitrogen causes certain microscopic plants to grow out of control. In turn, ctenophores … small jellyfish that graze on the plankton … grow in numbers, along with swarms of sea nettles that feed on the smaller jellyfish.

Native plankton, the life blood of the bay that fed once-enormous shellfish beds, are crowded out by their ever-expanding competitors. The bay’s signature species, from sea grass to clams to fish, eventually die off, starved by the lack of food from the chemical brew and smothered by nitrogen-fed algae.
Scientists think this is what has led to the stinging jellyfish population explosion. Now the worry is that the animals have established permanent homes in the northern bay, aided by the long-term warming of the waters.

Sea nettles are just one of the visible changes happening throughout the bay today. The bay is fighting for its life at the microorganism level, scientists and government regulators say. When the bottom of the food chain deteriorates, the whole bay can change.

And change can be catastrophic.

No more crabs. No more fish. No more birds. No more carefree swims in the warm, shallow waters. Bayside homes could eventually sit on the edge of brownish alien tides, putting more than $20 billion in property values at risk.

This is not to say Barnegat Bay is lost.

While its ecosystem has been stressed for decades, people also have fought to save it as long. Everyone from fishermen to students has tried to pump new life into the waterway.

The gurgling at the end of the Ocean Gate pier is one sound of hope.

Bay water circulates through a tank on the pier, where volunteers nurse a crop of baby oysters and talk to visitors. Their goal: to show people that the bay needs to remain clean and that it can be repopulated with shellfish.

The contrast of breathing new life into the bay and fighting off the invading sea nettles is not lost on the town’s mayor.

“I saw five of them out here the other day,” Ocean Gate Mayor Paul J. Kennedy said of the stinging jellyfish, as he tended the oyster tank in mid-June. “They had to be two feet long with the tentacles. The residents say they’re already bad this year, and it’s early.”
Economic backbone

Barnegat Bay is a geological and ecological wonder.

Forty-two miles long and up to four miles wide in some parts, it is a playground for 1.4 million visitors in the summer and the backbone for the regional economy, worth more than $575 million to the recreational boating industry alone.

It starts at Bay Head to the north and ends at Little Egg Harbor to the south. To the east are Long Beach Island and the Barnegat peninsula. To the west is most of Ocean County and its 600,000 residents.

Barnegat Bay is also the second-worst estuary in the United States in terms of stormwater-borne pollution, just behind the Chesapeake Bay, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It’s an insidious process that allows nutrient-rich pollution … usually ordinary lawn fertilizer overused by homeowners … to kill off native species.

There is no single factor one can point to as the source of the bay’s pollution. The bottom line is this: The health of the bay depends on the health of the land … the bay’s watershed. The watershed covers Ocean County and a sliver of southern Monmouth County.
From 1960 through 2000, Ocean County’s population grew by at least 80,000 every decade … the rough equivalent of a new Brick Township every 10 years.

With the county’s population estimated to grow to 800,000 by 2030, pressure is building this summer for federal, state, county and local governments to take decisive action to protect the bay.

“The county wants to promote the place as a good place to visit and a good place to live,” said Stan Hales, executive director of the Barnegat Bay Partnership, a federally funded program that coordinates efforts to save the bay. “And by and large, it has been a good place to live.”

But the bay can take only so much, Hales said.

The largest enclosed tidal waterway in the state is a harbinger for the rest of the
coastline. “These problems are common everywhere, but New Jersey is facing them before anyone else because development and population are so dense here,” he said.

“Probably the biggest things, I think, are the water quality and the issues it has on the wildlife,” said Jeff Makowski, 35, a veterinarian who lives along a creek near the bay in Berkeley. “I’m hoping it’s just a natural cycle, but I’m concerned it’s something more.

“You see a lot less ducks than we used to see … the decline in fish: That’s a tough thing. Whether that’s from overfishing or water quality is tough to say,” Makowski said. “As far as the crabbing and stuff, seems like in the last couple years it’s been fantastic. What the quality of those crabs are, I hear a lot of different things from people. The clams, obviously, back in the day they used to be extremely plentiful, and now they’re hard to find.”
Said Hales of the Barnegat bay Partnership: “We’re at a place now where most people recognize there have been losses in resources they are familiar with.”

‘Not a comfortable place’

It is not just scientists who witness change.
“I’ve been here since the ’60s, and it’s not what it used to be in the ’60s,” said Les
Figular, a retiree who lives along Silver Bay in northern Toms River. “The jellyfish now bother my grandchildren or anybody who wants to go in. With the jellyfish, it’s not a comfortable place for them.”

As early as 1987, conservationists, boaters and fishermen were concerned about trends in the bay, and legislators created a Barnegat Bay study group. One of its primary recommendations called for a comprehensive monitoring program to watch the bay’s health.

The DEP samples regularly for bacteria levels and swimming-water quality, but it was only in the past couple years that dissolved oxygen sensors have been in the bay full time, with help from Monmouth University, Hales noted.

In late summer 2008, they detected very low oxygen levels, below water quality standards … an early warning sign of the potential for fish kills. Low dissolved oxygen for fish is like placing a plastic bag over your head. In a very short time, you will be gasping for air.

In a series of public meetings hosted by the DEP this spring and summer, people who have pushed for 20 years to clean up the bay vented outrage.

“Someone’s got to start making some tough decisions, I’ll tell you,” said Michael
Kennish, a research professor who heads Barnegat Bay efforts at the Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. “I’m not seeing the management and leadership consummate with what the scientists have been putting out.”

“This cycle of evaluating the science and coming up with a list of actions has been going on forever,” complained Cynthia Zipf of the environmental group Clean Ocean Action. “The people who live on Barnegat Bay have been expecting these actions, decade after decade.”

Kirk Moore
Todd B. Bates
Courtesy of APP.com

The nation’s top fishery managers met Tuesday with industry leaders from California to Maine to discuss ways to improve the troubled fishery law enforcement system amid findings of mismanagement, misspending and questionable fines.

The summit at a Washington hotel, broadcast on the Internet, followed months of revelations about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s law enforcement division that have fractured relations between the agency and fishermen and have prompted lawmakers to call for the resignation of NOAA head Jane Lubchenco.

Recent findings by U.S. Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser described the misspending of millions of dollars in fishing fines and showed heavier fines for Northeast fishermen, who have long complained of unfair treatment. Zinser also said the head of the law enforcement division, Dale Jones, wrongly ordered dozens of files shredded during his investigation.

Jones has since been replaced and NOAA has made various changes to better track fines and mend relations with the industry. NOAA hopes to have broader changes in place by October 2011.

“We know we must earn the confidence of the public,” Lubchenco said in opening remarks. “We seek to be good partners, accessible and open, as well as tough, but only when necessary.”

Vincent O’Shea, head of Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, said with only about 170 agents to enforce the law in an area 1.5 times the size of the continental U.S., both law enforcement and the fishing industry must cooperate with each other. NOAA is charged with enforcing the nation’s fisheries laws, aimed at protecting species through such measures as closing sensitive fishing grounds or mandating gear that allows smaller fish to escape.

Maggie Raymond, co-owner of two fishing boats and head of Associated Fisheries of Maine, urged enforcement officers to understand the burden that complex regulations place on the average fisherman. She showed a multicolored map illustrating the numerous regulations and urged officials to educate fishermen before punishing them when they spot consistent violations. “I would suggest that signals confusion and not intent,” Raymond said. “Some outreach on the docks may be a way to get people into compliance quickly.”

Tuesday’s summit included about 60 attendees, including recreational and commercial fishermen from both coasts, academics, environmentalists, regional fisheries managers and fisheries attorneys.

Lubchenco ordered Zinser’s investigation last year after fishermen complained that they were being assessed five- and six-figure fines for minor violations by investigators who viewed them as criminals. Fishermen also claimed the fines amounted to a sort of bounty since NOAA kept the money.

In January, Zinser’s office released a report that said Northeast fishermen have been fined more than double the amount levied against fishermen in other regions and said there was no process to review if the fines were fair. It also criticized the disproportionate number of criminal investigators in an agency where most violations are non-criminal.

In addition, findings from an audit conducted by Zinser’s office and released last month showed that money collected from fines was poorly tracked and misspent on items such as a $300,000 luxury boat for undercover work. NOAA’s comptroller now controls revenue from the fines.

In calling for Lubchenco to step down last month, congressmen including Reps. John Tierney and Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Walter Jones of North Carolina cited the problems with NOAA’s law enforcement office in describing what they said were the agency’s broader troubles with fishermen. Frank said the White House told him replacing Lubchenco wasn’t the answer.

On Tuesday, fisheries attorney Eldon Greenberg said recent steps to ensure high-level NOAA review of all proposed charges and penalties was a good first step to ensure fairness. But he urged various other measures, including reopening some closed cases and releasing to the public the resolution of cases so the rules are better understood.

Cameron Kerry, general counsel for the Commerce Department, which includes NOAA, said fair and vigorous enforcement is key to protecting the fish and fishing communities, even if some bristle under it.

“We can’t make everyone happy,” Kerry said. “A law without enforcement is just an aspiration.”
Courtesy of APP.Com

Bass fishing represents one of the most popular fishing sports practiced today. Its popularity has yielded a multi-billion dollar industry unto itself, aside from the business of other modes of sport fishing. There are boats on the market designed specifically for bass fishing. Clothes and gears are also very popular.

Bass habitats include a variety of environments, from rivers, lakes, streams, and even ponds. Rivers provide one of the healthiest habitats, due to the highly oxygenated waters from the rapid current. In order to fish bass from rivers, it is best to seek out breaks in the current, perhaps from a fallen tree, a stump, or rocks. The fish that bass feed upon will normally school below a dam, thereby making these spots ideal for bass fishing.

There are at least 32 species of fish commonly caught in the numerous lakes, ponds, canals and rivers throughout Southwest Florida. The anglers pursuing the most popular of these freshwater game fish are locally referred to as either bass fisherman, “perch jerkers”, pan fisherman or catfishermen, depending upon the object of their pursuit.

The most common and popular of these are Largemouth Bass, Catfish, Panfish, Chain pickerel and Crappie.

Largemouth Bass without a doubt is the most sought after game fish in Florida. It is the main target of the majority of anglers. Many of these lure busting monsters in the 10 to 12 pound range are taken every year in local waters.

The yellow and brown bullhead, followed by the channel catfish, is the most abundant in the area. They are favored by sportsman for the delicious table fare that they provide. Also harvested commercially, mainly on Lake Okeechobee, and their tasty fillets are served as an “all you can eat” favorite in most area restaurants. But it is still the bass fish that promises the challenge of the sport.

Every freshwater river, canal, lake and pond in South West Florida is abundant with what is locally referred to as “panfish” for the thick tasty fillets they provide. The term actually covers a wide variety of pan sized fish in the sunfish family. These include, but are not limited to, the following: bluegill, bream, warmouth, and the most sought after, redeared sunfish, locally referred to as a “shellcracker” for its diet of aquatic snails. Another favorite is the exotic oscar, which has flourished in the hundreds of miles of canals in the area.

An angler needs only to arm themselves with a cane pole and a can of worms or crickets for guaranteed success in catching supper. However, most anglers opt for the ultra-light spinning outfits with tiny spinners and spoons, or the fly rod with popping bugs. Catches of fifty or more a day are common.

While not particularly sought after, the pickerel must still be considered a game fish for its savage attacks on the lures most commonly thrown by bass fisherman. They are fast, tackle busting acrobatic fighters. While edible, they are usually released due the many pesky little bones in their fillets.

Also locally called speckled perch or “specks” and considered as the favorite of the “perch jerkers” or crappie fisherman that pursue them. These quick striking fish fall for a variety of lures. They congregate in large schools and once located, provide the angler with plenty of action and a great fish fry.

There are innumerable techniques and types of tackle available to practice the sport of bass fishing. For a beginner, it is advised to gather some more basic tools to get started. Some suggestions point towards acquiring a 10-pound line, suitable for the average sizes and weights of this species. Also, it is suggested to start with artificial bait until the angler has a better understanding of the unique characteristics of the bass fish. The Spinnerbait is common artificial bait used by both amateur and seasoned anglers.

The catch and release method was first introduced in the 1950s. It was designed to reduce the rising costs of restocking hatchery-raised fish, and was normally used for fish not meant for consumption. Popular consensus does not consider bass as a food fish, and thus this technique is widely used.