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 […]
Category Archives: Recreational Fishing
Rebuilding Striped Bass
Photo by Kyle Schaefer In April 2019, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board (Management Board) accepted a benchmark stock assessment that found the striped bass stock to be both overfished and subject to overfishing. The Management Board acted quickly to reduce fishing mortality and end overfishing, but was much […]
Representation Matters in Fisheries Management
Science-based fisheries management has been the key to maintaining long-term healthy and abundant fisheries upon which coastal and Indigenous communities depend. The law that ensures the successful and sustainable science-based management of U.S. federal fisheries is the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which has been evolving since it first passed in 1976 to end […]
Watch: Fishing Guide & AFFTA Executive Director Lucas Bissett Joins Tom Sadler for a Waterside Chat
Capt. Lucas Bissett joined host Tom Sadler on September 28, 2022 for latest of the Network’s monthly Waterside Chats (now available as a podcast). Lucas is the executive director of the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, and he’s also an award winning saltwater fly-fishing guide, a member of the Marine Fish Conservation Network’s National Policy […]
NMFS Seeks Angler Input on Recreational Fishing Policy
Photo by John McMurray Most anglers probably don’t realize that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has a policy that addresses recreational fisheries management (Recreational Policy). Most anglers have probably never even considered the issue. Yet it’s an issue that deserves some thought for, as the introduction to the Recreational Policy notes, “The purpose of […]
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 […]
Saving Southern Appalachian Brook Trout
For many Americans, summer offers a chance to get away and recreate outside. That was the case for me at the beginning of August, and off my wife and I went in search of cooler temperatures. We found what we were looking for in a little 100-year-old cabin, loaned to us by friends. It lies […]
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 […]