What has happened to the fluke

[Bassmaster]

I usually don't post a report like this one but I just wanted to get this out. What is going on with the fluke. I go party boat fishing and I always ask the head count and the keepers on board. 61 people 3 keepers 55 people 0 keepers. 21 people 5 keepers. Goes on and on. If your out there to have a great time and meet people and chat with the mates then disregard this article. I am looking to catch dinner I enjoy eating fish especially sea bass kingfish cocktail blues fluke. I have 2 short fluke this season. To me its not worth it. Sea bass season can't start soon enough.

 

[pequa1]

Bassmaster,
Not sure where you are going out of, but those are obviously party boats of substantial size. Can you or have you considered surfcasting, kayak fishing or, God forbid, owning one of those motorized contraptions with four walls and a hole in the bottom that you throw money through ? Depending on location, there are places to park without parking fees and used kayaks can be had this year since many of the people that bought them during the 2020 summer of the china virus realized that it can actually be a bit of an effort to paddle against a chop or wind. Facebook Marketplace is loaded with them. Adding on rodholders is a snap. People that know me know I will not clam belly for schoolies, or stay at a fluke bite when they are all under 17". If after a couple of hours with nothing but shorts, I thank my lucky stars for being able to enjoy Mother Nature, but cut my losses and mow the lawn or hit the pool.

 

[OVERBORED]

I see alot of kayaks on Jamaica bay........They certainly catch their share of fish!

 

[pequa1]

Don't get me started on how I would rather kayak fish than use my boat !

 

[Bassmaster]

Bassmaster,
Not sure where you are going out of, but those are obviously party boats of substantial size. Can you or have you considered surfcasting, kayak fishing or, God forbid, owning one of those motorized contraptions with four walls and a hole in the bottom that you throw money through ? Depending on location, there are places to park without parking fees and used kayaks can be had this year since many of the people that bought them during the 2020 summer of the china virus realized that it can actually be a bit of an effort to paddle against a chop or wind. Facebook Marketplace is loaded with them. Adding on rodholders is a snap. People that know me know I will not clam belly for schoolies, or stay at a fluke bite when they are all under 17". If after a couple of hours with nothing but shorts, I thank my lucky stars for being able to enjoy Mother Nature, but cut my losses and mow the lawn or hit the pool.

 

[Bassmaster]

The water temperature is still cold in the ocean and the boats are fishing in the back bays and have to move around because if they stay in one spot they will fish it out for the next trip

 

[pequa1]

I guess I am fortunate in that, besides professed ignorance for never having been on a party or head boat, its been decades since there were any docked closer to "my fishery" than Freeport or Babylon.

 

[Bassmaster]

I had my own boat I used to do great with the fluke on the diamond jig. I had 50 fluke on one drift. Had 26 inch fish on party boats. Had a 10 lb fluke. I used to do great now I am lucky if I get one. The other day i used a 6 ounce jig a one ounce with a green trailer bait gulp. Fluke belly. Nothing at all. I did get hits especially on the jigs.

 

[pequa1]

and I remember my first boat, a 14" limit, and bailing them. Several years ago I was lucky to get four keepers all summer, but the last three years have been doing much better, backbay off the yak at least. I went to much lighter setups but for the last 14 or so years only Gulp for bait.

 

[george]

I had my own boat I used to do great with the fluke on the diamond jig. I had 50 fluke on one drift. Had 26 inch fish on party boats. Had a 10 lb fluke. I used to do great now I am lucky if I get one. The other day i used a 6 ounce jig a one ounce with a green trailer bait gulp. Fluke belly. Nothing at all. I did get hits especially on the jigs.

Are you fishing the north or south shore? I think we can all agree that fluke fishing is a lot tougher these days. But at the same time there are sea bass everywhere. I think this is part of what NMFS officials see as a huge change as more fish head north and further out to sea.

 

[longcast]

Fluking has been tough. Would usually "walk" away from bluefish to catch more fluke, but have found myself interested in keeping the rod bent as the fluke bite has been far from great. At least in Moriches.

 

[george]

@longcast I kept a boat at the Alma Dock for 6 years. This is back in the eighties. Huge flounder at the Brown House would start the season and it was a fishing bonanza for fluke, striped bass, bluefish and winter flounder. Then little at a time the winter flounder all but disappeared. Fluke stuck around throughout the days where you could walk across the boats in the bay targeting fluke. Those days are now gone. Striped bass was plentiful. Back in those days, you could use flounder for bait and it worked great. Now you're better off getting outside of the bay. Provided of course you can safely get through the inlet.

 

[Capt Richie]

only way were going to see regular quality fluke fishers here is..to change Federal Commercial winter /spring fishing reg's..

Mid Atlantic drag boats fish NY/NJ area canyons over the winter taking the fluke that we fish..changes to water Temp I'm sure has something to do with it also...

I hear how the water is cold that's why we dont see fluke,,Than why does Nantucket have great fluke fishing right now ..You should see the pictures Im being sent by my client's ..so many fish over 6lbs & many ten plus !!!

 

[longcast]

@longcast I kept a boat at the Alma Dock for 6 years. This is back in the eighties. Huge flounder at the Brown House would start the season and it was a fishing bonanza for fluke, striped bass, bluefish and winter flounder. Then little at a time the winter flounder all but disappeared. Fluke stuck around throughout the days where you could walk across the boats in the bay targeting fluke. Those days are now gone. Striped bass was plentiful. Back in those days, you could use flounder for bait and it worked great. Now you're better off getting outside of the bay. Provided of course you can safely get through the inlet.

My time was from 1990 - 1997 when I had a regular ride in Moriches. And boy do I remember clearly what you are describing! Miss it greatly!

 

[Bassmaster]

Are you fishing the north or south shore? I think we can all agree that fluke fishing is a lot tougher these days. But at the same time there are sea bass everywhere. I think this is part of what NMFS officials see as a huge change as more fish head north and further out to sea.

South shore fishing. I enjoy fishing in the ocean. At least you can get a variety of fish for the dinner table out there.

 

[BoatGuy]

I asked someone I know who is a Charter Captain. His reply showed lots of thought and I will share it here. Remember these are not my words.

Well, there are some evident reasons, and some ideas. And there are things we won't know for a while.

The thing is, we explain fish behaviors based on a handful of parameters that we can readily measure, and that we are cognizant of. They react to scores of conditions, many of which we have no idea about, and most of which we cannot measure or quantify.

Sea surface temperature- Big deal to most anglers, but how much does the surface temp actually effect most fish? Not much at all, really. What is going on at the bottom, or near the bottom, where most species spend their lives and make their migrations and shifts? Are there slugs of cold water sitting in their path that will divert them?

The presence, concentration, and movement of forage species. We only have anecdotal data of this, at best.

Plankton- types, concentrations, and changes of these, are extremely important to the forage species.

Turbidity. A timely storm or swell can tear up the bottom and fill the lower water column with sand, mud, and other irritants. This can certainly divert or mitigate a stereotypical movement.

Short-term climate. A winter with heavy snow can result in heavy freshwater run-off from many rivers. This change in salinity effects fit movements, and in another aspect, can effect spawning success (striped bass spawn is heavily predicated on the salinity of the Hudson in April).

Major storms. These have hallmarked significant changes to historical behavior. For a quick example, did you notice how the sea bass population in the Sound exploded after Sandy? Not a coincidence at all, just another clear example of the effect of major storms.

Climate change. Yes, certainly a factor. So many uneducated, self-centered people blame draggers for the disappearance of whiting, cod, weakfish, etc. Whiting and cod are most probably classic examples of climate change. Fluke also have seen a clear, significant shift to the east. They love Georges Banks now. The lobster population has certainly shifted, and the center is now closer to the Canadian border than it is to southern New England, where it was fifty years ago.

Loss of/change of habitat. Weakfish and winter flounder are fair fisheries offshore now, where fifty years ago they were by-catches. The most weakfish landings I have seen in the past ten year commercially have come from four hundred feet of water. They never used to go there. Ever!. Winter flounder are caught year-round in the waters south of Long Island in good numbers by both draggers and fishing boats. A couple of head boats to the west are angry that they can only keep one a man, and when they are catching a hundred or more a day (in well over a hundred feet of water), the season is closed. Striped bass swim with bluefin tuna now, forcing clunkers to move areas because they eat all of the bait. This, in my opinion, is clear evidence of human effects (combined to some extent with climate change) on the environment. DEC put out a study showing that the phosphates that Suffolk County banned in the seventies were still leaching into Great South Bay forty years later. That's how long it takes for many pollutants to leach from cesspools up island into our estuaries. So what we did forty years ago is still coming back to haunt us. The hardening of shorelines from west to east is significant in effect. Centered maybe around Bay Shore and diminishing as you go either way, there is a major loss of tidal wetlands that cannot be discounted when it comes to forage production, pollution filtering, and protection for spawn. Jamaica and Raritan Bays are so productive lately because they are subject to heavy regulations in NYC, abundant wetlands in and adjacent to them (the NY harbor abandoned piers are deteriorating into a type artificial wetland), and the benefit of a wide-open inlet that runs from Breezy Point to Sandy Hook (providing massive turn over of ocean water) and the Hudson River (providing great fresh water flush and nutrients).

There are all kinds of studies and observations that need to be pieced together for the larger view.

There's a study that shows historical success of winter flounder in Narraganset Bay was due in part to flounder larvae maturing before the grass shrimp spawn, providing an important source of forage for them. With climate change, now the grass shrimp are eating flounder spawn.

I run a charter boat from Manhattan for striped bass. Two or three years ago, my standard progression of following the fish from the bottom of the Hudson River, around the Battery, and up the East River was derailed when they came down the river and ran into a huge mass of bunker. The fish dropped into the Lower Bay and sat on these fish for a couple of weeks, and when the bunker pushed offshore for whatever reason, the bass went with them, then down the beach to Jersey. Bass didn't make it into the Sound that year until the end of June, because they came from the East End.

A study was undertaken to investigate how human birth control medication washing into Great South Bay from cesspools (many medications do not change when they do their work, they simply are removed from the body by our kidneys and liver, then passed intact) was effecting the fecundity of winter flounder. I never followed up on the results of that study, but it gives us pause to thinks about why many fish are not frequenting the bays and inshore waters.

Long Island Sound has over seventy (and that's an old statistic) municipal sewer districts that treat waste with chemicals or other various methods, and release a range of chemicals, nutrients, hypoxic/anaerobic bacteria, etc., into the estuary. With limited flush points and currents that mostly move east and west without exiting, this has serious effects of change.

As specifically speaking to fluke in the Sound, I have to cite several points... The forage is still there, but not the same way. Squid go into the Sound every spring, I know people that catch them in the west end for weeks. Problem I think is that they swim right past you, or bed down in the deep where there is no executable hook and line fishery for the species that are with them (fish don't bite hooks under a lot of conditions, and enemy opinion the cold of this deep early in the year immunizes them from biting a hook). Sand eels still spawn in the Sound. That's one reason the scup go up there, in my opinion. There aren't enough draggers in the Sound to effect any fishery, and that is my opinion, but I have no doubts in that statement. It does seem that a lot of those bigger fluke just push through to the west, when you look at fishing reports from the end of May through July. But as I mentioned earlier, some things have happened to make the area between Montauk and Georges Banks proper very attractive to fluke, and water temps are a big part of it. Cormorants are a bit mom an issue, but that is an overall-population issue, not a regional issue. If the cormorants ate every fluke under ten inched in the Sound, that wouldn't stop the two to seven year-olds from going in the next spring. Same with seals, although their population seems to be growing, there just aren't many numbers of them to be effectual on populations. Doc Muller is still around? Interesting. More interesting that he mentions the anecdotal lack of squid. Squid fishing in the area from Fishers Island tp Buzzards Bay to Block Island is better than ever. NYS corporate Food Fish Permits doubled in value because out-of-state boats want to get in on that spring fishery. But maybe not as many go into the Sound... But by his logic there should be metric tons of fluke in Block Island Sound.

There's a lot more to be discussed on this vast topic, but time to go to work. We will carry on another time.

Here's some reference sources:

Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council — Northeast Regional Habitat Assessment

Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council — Habitat

Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council — Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management

And some deeper, thought-provoking documents. Read behind them, since they aren't specific studies, they don't speak to effect conclusion of the discussed activities in many cases. But it gives you an idea of what we are looking at:

Policy_CoastalDevelopment_2015-12-15.pdf

Background_Coastal+Development+.pdf

 

[Bassmaster]

Great article. Last several years the sea bass fishing has been incredible. The fishery has provided us several great meals for the table. For now on I am going striper fishing from the start of the season to june 23rd then sea bass going forward. It's not worth targeting fluke at this point.