2008 New Jersey Flounder regs

[Harry]

Well I attended the 3 hour meeting last night in Galloway and the hammer came down.

The 2008 Flounder season is as follows.

May 24th - Sept 7th
8 fish bag limit
18" size limit

You can now use flounder belly for bait and it must be of a legal sized fish within your bag limit. The Carcus must be kept on board.

[Dave]

I feel for ya Harry. How do those numbers/dates stack up compared to last year?

Also, what are your thoughts about the 18" size limit. I know you've caught some big flounder, just wonder how common 18+" fish are in your area, on a catch to keeper ratio. Am also curious how many times (say you and one other in your boat) went out last year and caught a limit of legal flounder. Same questioin for the fishermen you might know about

Dave

[TooTall]

1st Sgt,
Just up the road is Lond Island i know that you spend alot of money on gas and bait to catch 4 or 5 keepers at 16 1/2" and then they are thin and wonder if you should keep them.

A couple of years ago out at the end of the Island there was some great fishing with 18" being average, but It only lasted one season.

To catch those big doormats you have to be fishing your waters.

Chaz

[TooTall]

Well I attended the 3 hour meeting last night in Galloway and the hammer came down.

The 2008 Flounder season is as follows.

May 24th - Sept 7th
8 fish bag limit
18" size limit

You can now use flounder belly for bait and it must be of a legal sized fish within your bag limit. The Carcus must be kept on board.


What about sea robin belly???
That's one of my killer baits
006 006 006
charlie

[Dave]

Belly from the common dogfish shark, when I can catch them, is my favorite strip bait. I've heard lizardfish belly is good also and they seem always present.

Dave

[Fillet1]

It sucks they start the season on Memorial Day weekend again!!!!!!!!!!! Gotta put up with every soon to be drunk knucklehead on the water that weekend. I'm taking off that tuesday and maybe wednesday to go. Saturday will be a 4 am to 1030 am affair.

[Dave]

Yep, the whole idea about a open/closed season on salt water fish is foreign to my (NC) way of thinking. Maybe it's not as bad as I'm thinking 006 Do those dates happen to coincide with the natural migration (ie. availability) of flounder into that area, up north?

Dave

[Harry]

I feel for ya Harry. How do those numbers/dates stack up compared to last year?

Also, what are your thoughts about the 18" size limit. I know you've caught some big flounder, just wonder how common 18+" fish are in your area, on a catch to keeper ratio. Am also curious how many times (say you and one other in your boat) went out last year and caught a limit of legal flounder. Same questioin for the fishermen you might know about

Dave



Well we only lost 1 day compared to last season and the size minimum increased 1", so it's not that bad.
Only trouble is a 17" fish last year would be an 18" fish this year. (according to the scientest who was at the meeting)
So we will most likely be doing this all over again next yaer and it will be a 19" limit . clonk

Since the ultimate goal is to reduce tonage in NJ to stay in lines with the Magnuson/Stevens act,
These were the options that were given

* 17.5" Min, 2 fish bag limit, June 28 -Sept 8th

* 17.5" Min, 8 fish bag, July 4th - Sept 2nd

* 18" Min, 2 fish bag, May 24th - Sept 8th

* 18" Min, 8 fish bag, May 24th - Sept 7th

* 18.5" Min, 8 fish May 17th - Oct 6th

My thoughts are this,
Give me the longest season possiable, and a bigger fish. While larger fish have been on the increase (due to the size limit increase every year) your not going to limit out on (8) 18.5" fish or larger. I would sacrifice 8 18.5" fish for 2 or 3 and the longer season. I had a good year last year and gave a lot of fish to friends & family.

Just for example,
What if the size limit is set at 24" ? but you can fish 5-6 months for them ? Surely your not going to be landing a lot over that mark, but you have a long fishing season to try. You would be reducing the tonage for sure.
The arguement to that is you are killing bigger females, plus you have a lot of dead gut hooked under sized released fish.
Good or bad those dead fish are not included in the tonage count.... ::)

There were a LOT of charter guys speaking at the meeting, and there livley hood is on the line here.
There is a lay over between the time flounder season ends and the stripers show up.
I think everyone of them choose the red option ( the one that passed)

The best back bay time of year for me is late April, thru May. June they water warms and fish move to the deep.

To answer your other question,
18" fish have become more common ( I believe because the size limit is increased every year) 10 years ago you never saw an 18" fish and the size limit was 15". There were a lot of fish at 14.5" then.

Every year they increase it a half inch or an inch, and every year there are a lot of fish caught a 1/2 or 1/4" short of the mark. This year should be no different and there will be a lot right at 17 3/4" .

Last year I limited out once by myself and once with my son, we both had 8 fish.
The size limit was 17" in 2007
heard a lot of chatter on the radio of guys saying the fish were just under the limit.

On the other side of the coin one guy had two monsters on one trip, 15 and 18 pound fish !!!
Monica Oswald caught a potential world record just north of me only to have it dis-quilfied because in her interview with the IGFA offical she said she had rested the rod on the gunwhale.
That fish weighed in at OVER 24 POUNDS !! :o 018

I wish I had the answer. The one thing I do think needs to be looked at, is the science that goes into studying how many fish are really out there.
When the Magnuson/Stevens act was introduced they projected that in the year 2000 whatever, we should be at "X" amount of tonage of fish. If not we need these cut backs to get us there.

Well it's been years since that act was set in affect and needs to be updated with more available, accurate science.

The state sends a trawler out and takes a catch sample of the bottom at random sites. If it's a bad day, it will reflect in the numbers. Since were all fisherman we know that happens.
The one's doing these tests are NOT professional fisherman, which I think is foolish. Which I also feel is part of the reason the data is so inconsistent.

I could go on and on ........ ::)

Anyway this is just my opinion which with that & 50 cents could get you a cup of coffee .... ;D
009
Sorry,
With my long wind bag of a post, you guys got in before me. ...

[Dave]

I completely agree with both your primary points. Of the shamefully little I know about the science and arguments of the flounder fishery, I do believe it makes better sense to decrease the bag limit if you are truly going to increase the number of surviving fish.

I doubt many anglers are going to increase the number of days they fish (in any significant way) in order to be able to harvest a greater annual number of flounder. I’d much rather take home a few larger fish than more smaller fish. And if fishermen are not catching, with any regularity, at or close to the bag limit, then the authorized high bag limit should reasonably be known to the experts to be an artificial number, for what purpose I'm not sure. Maybe it is feared that diehard flounder fisherman might go elsewhere to spend their vacation dollars, were they to know that the effort and expense is not justified in the number of fish they might be allowed to possess and bring back home. Of course, that all seems counter-productive to flounder conservation efforts, IMO.

You make a very good point about the science also. I would hope the number crunchers have enough smarts to know that fish of any species will be in certain areas, not simply by date, but rather by the complete environmental conditions that are prevalent on any particular day.

Dave

[Fillet1]

The real problem is that the enviros hired their own "independent" scientists to give them result oriented science. They are hired to give them a study that says that the NMFS is not enacting appropriate quotas to ever meet the unrealistic mandate of Maguson Stevens. Once armed with that science - the sued the Fed arguing that the Act is not being complied with. That resulted in the unbelievable present regs and a questionable future for fluke. This is despite the fact that we are all catching tens of throwbacks that would have been keepers in earlier times. Much larger body of fish around.

The point of this is that some NY city "environmentalists" (know as "PEW") who never experienced fishing want fishing to end completely are using the law and junk science against us to reach their goal. Time to fight back.