This article is reprinted with permission from the latest edition of the Wild Oceans Horizon newsletter. For the past year, Wild Oceans and a core group of partners built a coalition of more than thirty recreational fishing, watershed, and environmental organizations to bring about a new action to develop near-shore protections for Atlantic herring, river […]
Category Archives: Forage Fish
Real World Striped Bass: Part II
Read Part I of this series. Top photo: striped bass with a catch-and-release scar On and Off the Water Observations of 2023’s Fishing Season Last go around, we detailed some relevant on-the-water/real-world observations regarding last season’s striped bass fishery. Primarily how the new 3″ slot limit likely increased dead discards, ahem, a LOT. This go-around […]
Real World Striped Bass: Part I
Read Part II of this series On and Off the Water Observations of 2023’s Fishing Season There aren’t many anglers around who wouldn’t agree that the striped bass run in the New York Bight this fall was downright EPIC. And the spring/early summer? ‘Twas really good too. Indeed, I said similar things last year, but […]
A Fall Harvest…less?
Top photo: Panoramic shot of the “Ghost-Town-Hole” with just 4 boats plying the waters for salmon on Sunday, October 16th, 2022 It’s as if Mother Earth knows, fall is for putting away a cache of food for the long winter ahead, and rarely does she disappoint, at least until this year. In my 26 years […]
Thoughts on Climate Change Planning, Resilience & Forage Fish
Managers Take Up Next Phase of East Coast Climate Change Scenario Planning This article was originally published in Wild Oceans’ The Horizon newsletter and is reprinted with permission. View the latest issue and past issues of The Horizon. Top photo: Atlantic menhaden. After the East Coast Climate Scenario Creation Workshop (held June 21-23), I left […]
The Bluefish Conundrum
It’s difficult to describe what fishing for bluefish was like in Long Island Sound forty or fifty years ago. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and for a while after that, bluefish defined the summer fishery along the Connecticut shore. Every morning, in at least one local harbor, untold hundreds of bluefish, many of them […]
When Sharks [Don’t Really] Attack
Top: Sand tiger shark, photo by D Ross Robertson via Wikipedia For some reason, the summer of 2022 has seen an unusual number of people being bitten by sharks off the beaches of Long Island, New York. According to the International Shark Attack Files, a comprehensive aggregation of all known shark attacks dating back to […]
Court Vacates Atlantic Herring Buffer Zone
Midwater Trawling Resumes Near Shore This article first appeared in the Wild Oceans Horizon Newsletter. Top photo by John McMurray. On April 21st, NOAA Fisheries announced that the Atlantic herring buffer zone, also called the inshore midwater trawl restricted area, would no longer be enforced as a result of a District Court ruling to vacate […]