The Difference Between False Albacore and Bonito

Not many anglers in Florida or the Gulf coastal states will go out of their way to target bonito (often pronounced “bonita”). Sure, the small tunas put up a good tussle, but it’s a rare angler indeed who would call up his bros to say, “Hey, let’s go out tomorrow to see if we can catch some bonito!”

It’s a damned shame though that false albacore aren’t available to anglers in Florida. One seldom hears of those small tunas being caught south of the Carolinas. But you know they’re really great game fish because light-tackle and fly anglers go nuts when the false albies are running, and will enthusiastically plan a day to go out and target them. So, I guess the takeaway is: Bonito kind of suck, but false albacore are fabulous little gamesters.

But wait — the two “species” are actually the very same fish, properly called the little tunny, Euthynnus alletteratus. If a rose by any other name still smells as sweet, you’d have to figure a false albacore by any other name fights as hard.

And the fact is, little tunnies fight as hard as bluefin, pound for pound, giving it all they’ve got. When matched to suitable tackle, they’ll make a drag sing and an angler dance to keep up with a fish running this way and that around and under a boat.

Don’t Miss Out on Jacks and Sailcats

Another Rodney Dangerfield is the jack crevalle. They assault plugs and flies with thrilling belligerence and then battle with the stamina of the Energizer bunny. While anglers would likely agree they’re fun to catch, not many go out of their way to find them. These jacks are in fact a smaller version of the giant trevally, yet the GT is revered as an awesome game fish for the very qualities of the undervalued crevalle.

There are lots more examples. One that I feel is decidedly underrated is the gafftopsail catfish. Yeah, they do leave a bit of slime on one’s leader, but they are tremendous fighters and will hit lures (I’ve caught many on topwaters), plus are one of the coolest-looking catfishes. I’ve watched seasoned anglers happily assume they’re fighting a good redfish, only to be disgusted when it turns out to be a sailcat. What? They didn’t just enjoy an exciting battle?

Of course, edibility is often cited as a reason these fish don’t enjoy more respect. I’ve heard it said more than once that if bonito or jacks were good eating, everyone would love ’em. But with so many anglers these days declaring their focus largely on catch-and-release fishing, more for sport than food, that’s a bit hard to figure.

I suspect that anglers who don’t get overly hung up on the prestige of a given species are probably having a lot more fun than those hunting only glamour fish and trophies. I’m fishing not to impress others, but for the sheer pleasure of it. I respect any game fish — including bonito, jacks and sailcats — that can put a tight bend in my light spinning rod and make my drag sing. For that kind of action, I say without shame: Deal me in every time.

The post Three Underrated Sportfish You Should Target appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Since the term paradox defines a statement or condition likely self-contradictory and contrary to any logic or reason, labeling red snapper management in the South Atlantic as a paradox is on the money. The South Atlantic federal red snapper season this year is one day — July 12, 2024. Clearly, any reasonable person would assume, red snapper are an endangered species to engender such draconian regulations.

Matter of fact, both scientifically via stock assessment data and empirically via captains on the water almost daily, there’s widespread agreement that there are more red snapper in the Atlantic from Florida to the Carolinas than at any time in recent memory.

“They’re everywhere! You can hardly catch anything else!” says longtime sportfishing-industry veteran Dave Workman at Strike-Zone Fishing in Jacksonville, Florida. And they’re spreading. Historically, to catch red snapper, anglers fished roughly 100 to 300 feet of water. Now, as their populations snowball, reds have also moved into shallows, often caught in just 50 feet, and much deeper, even in 600 feet.

Why the Short Red Snapper Season?

So why in the world would the feds have a 1-day season for 2024? Warning: Trying to understand any explanation is not unlike trying to make sense of one’s situation when lost in a house of mirrors.

But, at least as best I can figure it, NOAA Fisheries insists red snapper are “overfished and experiencing overfishing.” Never mind that no one is actually harvesting them. According to fishery managers, the primary culprit is discard mortality from red snapper caught during the year as bycatch by anglers after other species.

That’s hardly unlikely given that red snapper are decidedly aggressive and can show up anywhere in the water column at any time. Since snapper are so widespread, only by closing the ocean to all reef/coastal fishing could they be protected. (Shh! Don’t even say it!) There’s a tendency of snappers brought to the boat to experience barotrauma. And that can make their successful release difficult, although the odds go up considerably for anglers using required descending devices.

Of course, that takes us back to another paradox: If release mortality accounts for decimating the species, how can the South Atlantic be so full of red snapper? Chris Horton, senior director of fisheries policy for the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, says if the government’s “stock/recruitment model is correct, this fishery should be collapsing. The numbers just don’t add up.”

Similarly, the numbers for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico were “not adding up” only a few years ago, such as in 2017 when NOAA Fisheries offered red snapper anglers a three-day season for the year. Here, too, the uproar was mighty since the Gulf was absolutely teeming with red snapper.

But the past few years have seen seasons for Gulf snapper get longer and longer. This year, while South Atlantic anglers get one day to catch the super-abundant red snapper, their Gulf of Mexico counterparts will likely enjoy fishing for red snapper for more than 100 days, stretching selectively from June through November.

The difference has little to do with abundance of the fish. Quite simply, a few years back, the feds allowed Gulf states to begin managing the recreational red snapper quota off their shores on their own. In essence, Gulf-state fishery managers, politicians, and anglers had no trouble proving to the feds that its numbers were totally out of whack, and that state management could and would do a much better job of accurately estimating how many red snapper were being landed by anglers, and managing accordingly.

Finally, NOAA Fisheries said in effect, okay, if you can do it better, go ahead. State fish managers did go ahead with their own, more robust yet more nimble systems to collect recreational-landings data. The result showed that anglers could be fishing more days while not exceeding red snapper quotas. At about the same time, an unrelated but independent Great Red Snapper Count showed — guess what? — at least three times the number of snapper swimming in the Gulf versus federal estimates.

Fixing the Red Snapper Season

So therein lies the primary reason for 100-plus days of snapper fishing for Gulf Coast states and a single day of snapper fishing in the South Atlantic. Put simply, it’s state management of federal quotas versus federal management of federal quotas. As you might guess, there’s increasing pressure on Georgia and the Carolinas to take over management. Florida has a head start for its Atlantic coast fishery thanks to its experience managing the state’s Gulf-side snapper.

But, Horton points out, all four South Atlantic coastal states will have to develop their own recreational data collection programs and divide up quotas equitably as was done by Gulf states. And there’s still pushback, with some at the state level citing the cost of taking over management of snapper. But it’s worth it, in the opinion of Horton (and many others): “It’s a great thing to get out from under the constraints of poor federal catch data in favor of more accurate and timely state data-collection programs,” he says.

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Fifteen years ago, Western Atlantic bluefin tuna stock assessments reported that total numbers of bluefin were down about 90 percent from 1970. The number of giant bluefin, estimated to be more than 1 million fish in 1960, was estimated to be about 100,000 fish, possibly half that number. At that time, some experts said that bluefin could be so reduced that they might need endangered species status. Today, the big tuna are back.

The current rebound in Western Atlantic bluefin stocks is one of the greatest fishery success stories of this century. From a point near depletion a decade ago, their stocks have improved to a level of sustainability that seemed unimaginable back then.

“For me,” says John Walter, “it’s one of those amazing career arcs to have started with bluefin tuna in 2007, at literally the worst point in bluefin tuna management, and now have this success.”

Walter is the Deputy Director for Science and Council Services at NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center and Chair of the Western Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Committee at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).

“Back then,” Walter says, “we were talking about endangered species listings for bluefin, CITES listings, a catastrophe in the global stocks. We have now turned the corner to where bluefin is so abundant that it’s a sustainable fishery and we’re recommending people to eat more bluefin.”

According to ICCAT estimates, three key metrics of the species’ sustainability have all improved in recent years: total biomass, recruitment, and fishing mortality as a percentage of the total stock.

Total Biomass Gains of Bluefin Tuna

Total Biomass is an estimate of the size of the entire stock. For Atlantic bluefin, that includes a combination of both western and eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean stocks. The fish mix together in the Atlantic Ocean, and American fishermen catch a lot of eastern bluefins. That mixing of the stocks has been documented by satellite tagging and backed by genetic testing.

Prior to 2006, the fisheries were catching way above the eastern Atlantic quota. “We think that the catches may have been nearly double the quota,” says Walter. “Without the greatly improved reporting measures that we have today, it was much harder to track catches. Fisheries in the Mediterranean also targeted a lot of younger bluefin. That wasn’t very sustainable, nor did it achieve the yield that one can get from allowing the fish to grow.”

In response, ICCAT took dramatic action to lower catch quotas from a high of 32,000 metric tons (t) as late as 2006 down to 13,500 t in 2010. They also put in size limits to protect smaller fish. The fishery changed from focusing on small fish to targeting large fish fattened in open-ocean farms for the sushi market. Scientists estimate that the eastern population size is much larger than the western population, so what happens in the east deeply affects the western Atlantic populations.

Tuna Recruitment to the Stock Increases

Having stricter ICCAT regulations has played a big part in bluefin’s comeback.

“We talk about good and bad years of recruitment of fish to the stocks,” Walter says, “and 2003 was a really good year. Subsequently, there were other good years where we’ve seen strong year classes of fish born in the western and the eastern stocks. Concurrent with that, it seems that there have been favorable environmental factors that enabled those recruits to survive. U.S. fishermen are often the first ones to see these good year classes and they have been great at providing their knowledge and data.

“The most basic reason for the increase,” Walter says, “is that if you allow the fish to survive, grow, and spawn they’re going to make more babies. That’s the basic story here. It’s fisheries 101—stop catching them at age 2 and let them get big and fat out in the Atlantic where all the food is and let them come back at age 9 and spawn.”

According to recent ICCAT estimates, there was a big spike in the recruitment of fish to the stocks after 2015, with more fish surviving per year to spawning age, and it’s still on the increase.

Tuna Fishing Mortality Decreases

Fishing mortality is the fraction of the stock removed from the fishery. It’s a measure of the number of fish caught versus the entire stock, and it’s dropping, another indication that the stock is increasing.

“Mortality is about 8% to 10% of the total fish and that’s down from about double that figure—which was unsustainable,” says Walter. “Now we’re in a sustainable rate of removal, which means that the population is self-reproducing. That’s the goal. Now we need to fish them at ages that provide better fishing opportunities and the ability for the stock to reproduce.”

Bluefin’s Slope Sea Spawning Location

Along with the increased numbers of bluefin, recent documentation of another spawning area for Western Atlantic bluefin, in addition to the Upper Gulf of Mexico area, has researchers like Walter intrigued and curious. It’s called the Slope Sea spawning area, located about 100 miles offshore of Long Island, and both eastern and western fish spawn there. Researchers have collected eggs and larvae.

“We don’t necessarily think it’s a new location,” Walter says, “but when the populations were lower, perhaps we lost sight of it. Now that we have a larger population, we’re seeing the fish there. Recently we’ve received funding from Congress for a survey of that area that we’ll be doing in 2025, a dedicated scientific survey to document the importance of that area to collect larvae and spawning adults.”

There has been other good news, as well. Recently, the U.S. government implemented several measures that have dramatically reduced bluefin mortality, including requirements to use “weak” hooks that bend to allow spawning giants to go free on pelagic longlines in Gulf of Mexico waters and an individual bluefin quota program, which reduced bluefin tuna bycatch by 65% fleetwide. There’s also now incorporation of Ecosystem Reference Points in the management of menhaden, a primary forage fish for bluefin. That provision is a specific consideration to allow for predation of menhaden, essentially leaving more for bluefin to eat. All these factors combined mean good news for Atlantic bluefin and for the anglers who love them.

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This month marks the 39^th anniversary of Les Anderson’s world record king salmon catch on Alaska’s famed Kenai River. On May 17, 1985, Anderson, an auto dealer from nearby Soldotna, hooked the salmon fishing from his boat, then took to shore to land the 97-pound, 4-ounce Kenai king. Though bigger king salmon have reportedly been caught and released by anglers since then, Anderson’s world record stands. It also stands for a magnificent fishery now gone. These days, the fight for kings is to save them.

“We’ve seen a severe decline in the king salmon stocks in the Kenai and in other Alaskan river systems,” says Shannon Martin, Executive Director of the Kenai River Sportfishing Association (KRSA). “We’ve had complete closures to sportfishing for kings on the Kenai and other rivers. On some rivers, only hatchery-raised king salmon may be harvested. These days, I won’t target kings anywhere,” she said.

Chinook (King) Salmon See Major Declines

Called kings around the Kenai, the species is commonly called Chinook across its range in the North Pacific. In many locations in Alaska, Chinook’s decline has been so severe in the last 30 years that the wild fishery is in peril. The stocks are diminished by all measures, including the numbers of fish returning to rivers each year, the size of those individual fish, and the seasons to catch them.

 “I remember the Kenai,” says Peter Westley, an associate professor in the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “You could put your head into the mouth of one of those big fish. People are feeling pretty pessimistic, saddened, depressed, longing for the good old days.

“Across the entire North Pacific region, Chinook are not doing well,” he said. “The story is told river by river, but there are big patterns, and Chinook salmon in lots of places are circling the drain.”

Threats to Chinook

The threats to Chinook are multifold, complex, and many decades in the making — commercial trawling, degraded habitat, dams, rising sea temperatures, and increasing predation by protected sea mammals. Add to all that fishing pressure and hatchery-raised salmon that compete with native fish. Westley says, “Unless something fundamentally changes with how we interact with them, the future for Chinook is really grim.

“On some level,” he adds, “there are Chinook, but they’re hatchery fish. The habitat is so messed up that there wouldn’t be Chinook without those hatchery fish. The evidence is saying that the hatchery fish diminish the wild fish though. In places like the Kasilof and Ninilchik, you can fish for hatchery Chinook, but the problem is that no one can distinguish what gets caught.”

Westley presents a comprehensive vision of the threats facing Chinook when he says, “The ocean has always been dangerous and risky, but in recent years, it has become even more dangerous for fish. The Chinook’s life-history strategy of growing slowly and being in the ocean most of its life isn’t benefitting the species lately.”

The Future of Alaska Fishing

Both Westley and Martin suggest that anglers shift their expectations of Alaskan fishing and realize that the kings need help and that there are plenty of other incredible fish to go for across the state and the region.

“We need to do our part to take the pressure off Chinook salmon,” says Westley. “If they want Chinook, people should go to places where the fishing has as little impact as possible on the wild stocks, places like Ship Creek, where it’s all hatchery fish,” he says. “There are also some healthy fisheries for wild sockeye. That’s a different ball game.”

Martin, from KRSA, said she is seeing a change in mentality in many anglers.

“Anglers are looking for other species, trying to protect that run of kings returning from the ocean. At the same time, our organization advocates for fishery managers to implement paired closings with commercial fisheries to include additional restrictions and protections. This would share the burden of conservation amongst all user groups. What matters is to get eggs in the gravel and that’s what we’re looking for.”

An Uncertain Future

The fight will be long and hard to help protect Chinook, one of the Western World’s totemic sport fish, food fish, and a lynchpin of Alaska’s coastal ecosystem. Only recently, in March, the State of Alaska Board of Fisheries voted to lower the spawning escapement goal for the late-run Kenai River king salmon to support additional commercial fishing opportunities for other salmon, a decision that Martin and the KRSA lamented, painfully. Martin called it a “dark day for conservation in Alaska.” She said, “We’re essentially signing off on the managed decline of a species that has defined our region.”

Anyone who’s ever seen the broad, pink-green back of a Chinook salmon rising in a turquoise-colored, glacial river’s flow, while connected to that fish only by a thin line, knows the fear and the heartache that the fish might just break off and be gone, forever.

The post Alaska’s Kings in Peril appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Catch, Cast, Release follows Marina Gibson’s obsession with fishing from her earliest days plodding along the river with her mother to her current role as the head of her own fly fishing school. Along the way, we follow her as she sheds the trappings of city life for a more fulfilling life on the water, fly rod in hand.

Like so many in their early twenties, Marina found her life lacking direction. She was living in London, carrying on as many of that age do. But she found that lifestyle lacking, and she needed a change. That change would come in the form of a 21st birthday gift from her parents. Given the choice between a fly rod and jewelry, she chose the fly rod and rekindled the love she had for angling as a child. This thoughtful gift kicked off an epic adventure.

Soon, Gibson found herself completely immersed in fly angling. She takes this calling with her across continents and through a few serious relationships, finding peace in fishing when things start to go sour. As her marriage failed, she found solace in the rhythms of fly casting. She found sanctuary in rivers. She hit the road in pursuit of the next big fish.

Gibson does an excellent job comparing the ups and downs of her life with the struggles faced by salmon on their journey home. She uses this metaphor to illustrate the hardships that she, and so many others, experience. Her writing draws careful parallels, without it being over the top. The text is descriptive without being flowery; an easy read for those looking to share in the adventure or figuratively escape their commute home.

If you came here for angling action, you won’t be disappointed. Gibson has traversed the globe in pursuit of some of the most exotic fish that swim, such as bumphead parrot fish off the Farquhar Atoll, golden dorado in the jungles of South America, and giant salmonids in Iceland’s wilds. In addition to the ever-present salmon in this book, she also covers permit, redfish, bonefish, and plenty more in salt and fresh.

Angler Extraordinaire

Gibson’s angling resume is impressive. She is a certified Fly Fishers International Casting Instructor, which in and of itself is an accomplishment. But Gibson’s skills go far beyond her casting abilities, having pursued a variety of species across the globe, including the saltwater brutes that frequent the Seychelles and the golden dorado of South America’s jungles. Of course, she can swing a Spey rod with the best of them on Europe’s toughest rivers.

Gibson has made quite the career of her angling prowess, serving as a brand ambassador for such companies as Orvis and YETI. She has guided trips for a variety of species across several continents. Time will tell, but I would wager that Gibson will continue to host trips all over the globe.

She founded the Northern Fishing School at Swinton Estate in North Yorkshire in 2019, teaching over 400 people a year how to cast, mend, and everything else involved in catching fish on the fly. And at the beginning of 2024, she fulfilled a lifelong dream by taking over the lease of Bywell beat on the River Tyne.

Gibson is also a passionate conservationist, using her substantial social media presence to address environmental issues, including but not limited to those faced by Atlantic salmon. She serves as ambassador for the Atlantic Salmon Trust and the Angling Trust, as well as a trustee for River Action UK, which combats water pollution in the United Kingdom. And as co-founder of the Cancer and Pisces Trust charity, she helps cancer sufferers find peace through fly fishing.

Final Thoughts

Catch, Cast, Release is a wonderful tale of one woman’s love affair with fly fishing, initiated by her mother on the banks of a salmon river. She turned that love into a lifelong adventure, fly rod in hand. Along the way, she used the mindfulness afforded by the rhythmic casting to ease her through life’s rough patches. Available on June 4.

The post Cast, Catch, Release: A Review appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

While federal and Florida state officials come to terms on this year’s Gulf gag grouper season, an announcement of the dates is expected any day. Anglers in the Southeast are hoping for a season longer than last year’s. That drastically reduced season scuttled trips, cost businesses revenue, and frustrated many anglers, especially along Florida’s west coast, where gag grouper holds high status among anglers.

“Last year, reducing the gag grouper season from 6 months to 45 days was a detriment to not only myself and many other guides in the area but also to our tourism industry as a whole,” said Capt. Katie Jo Davis of Yankeetown, Florida.

Capt. Davis runs a Young Gulfshore 22, perfect for shallow water grouper out of her home marina, Fisher’s Marina and Campground in Yankeetown. Her home waters are known for hot gag grouper fishing. With her vessel, she can fish inshore shallows for trout, reds, and other species and go up to 25 miles offshore to target fish, including gag, on rockpiles. In the Crystal River area where she often fishes, 25 miles out puts anglers over 30-foot depths.

“I’m able to catch gag grouper year-round in this area,” Davis says. Most often she’ll fish with a Shimano Twin Power 8000 spinner on a Shimano Trevala rod and use live pinfish or frozen herring on the bottom.

“Water temperatures play an important role in determining exactly how far the gag grouper move in and out from shore,” Davis says. “If the water temperature is still too hot, many of those fish will stay a bit offshore where the water is cooler,” she says. “However, there are always gag grouper around to catch.”

Shorter Gag Grouper Season, Less Tourism

Davis says the shortened gag grouper season last year caused trip cancellations by anglers who target gags, especially for charters out to the Middle Grounds. She expects the same this year if the season comes up short on dates to fish.

“I have not noticed a decline in our gag grouper population here,” Davis says. “For myself, should gag grouper be shortened or closed, I will have to focus on targeting other fish such as hogfish and mangrove snapper. Fortunately, I can always switch to inshore fishing, which is always great in our area.”

Federal fishery managers consider gag grouper in the Gulf to be overfished based on a 2022 stock assessment. Any overage to the annual catch limit (ACL) is deducted from the following year’s ACL. By this means, federal officials plan to rebuild the stock to more sustainable levels.

Gag Grouper Numbers Revised

The good news is that the magnitude of the payback applied to the 2024 annual catch limit is much smaller than the 2023 overage that was first calculated. That bit of good fortune happened after a loud public outcry over last year’s shortened season and the Gulf Council’s request that NOAA Fisheries review the landings estimates.

At their meeting this April, the Gulf Council received notice that NOAA revised their initial recreational landings data for gag grouper. According to the presentation, the estimates were lowered due to three main data collection factors: additional responses to catch surveys, a reweighting of highly influential catch interviews, and changes to fishery survey intercepts. The revisions were all part of the transition from the federal data collection program to the Florida state data collection system. With the revised data, the 2024 overage adjusted annual catch limit for recreational anglers is 163,376 pounds gross weight. This overage, lower than expected at the start of the year, is being used to calculate the season dates. That curious twist in fisheries statistics might result in a longer season than many anglers expect.

With that glimmer of hope and the recently announced 103-day season for Gulf red snapper set to open June 1, anglers and charter captains like Katie Jo hope they can target both species at least some days this coming fall. The margin of chances for a longer season may be slim, but that doesn’t stop anglers passionate about gag grouper fishing from hoping for the best.

Atlantic Gag Grouper Season

On the Atlantic side, gag grouper season along with other shallow-water grouper species opened on May 1. However, the gag season is slated to close on June 15 because NOAA Fisheries estimates that the recreational landings will reach the annual catch limit (ACL) of 133, 075 pounds gutted weight by that time. NOAA Fisheries reduced the length of the season because recreational landings in 2023 exceeded the set recreational catch limits. The way things are lining up, boating a keeper gag grouper off Florida this year might be far more difficult than ever before.

The post Gulf Gag Grouper Season Hangs in the Balance appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

An 80-foot Viking yacht, a network of fish-attracting structures, SONAR technology, and the last bait on the boat combined to help a group of Florida men catch the fish of a lifetime.

The six-person crew of the Flat Dangerous were just out for a shakedown cruise on April 24, and thought they would try for blue marlin in the Gulf waters off Destin, Florida. The shakedown was a good idea — the group lost three fish to old mono on their reels before re-spooling with fresh. The new stuff held up well enough for the crew to christen the boat with a massive 888-pound bluefin tuna.

“It took every single one of us to pull it into the boat,” said John Balters of Destin, a mate on the boat and sophomore at the University of Miami. “Once we got it in, there was just a bunch of cheering and photos. It was just incredible.”

Aboard were the boat’s owner, Warren Wlliamson, Capt. George Gill, first mate Eddy Griffith, friend Kole Melancon, Balters, and Dennis Bennett, who knows a bit about catching big tuna. Bennett had a hand in Rick Whitley’s 2017 catch of an 827-pound bluefin, the current Florida record. (The Flat Dangerous fish was fought by multiple anglers, disqualifying it from eligibility. The International Game Fish Association all-tackle world record bluefin is 1,496 pounds, caught by Ken Fraser in Nova Scotia in 1979.)

Fish Aggregating Devices Produce Fish of a Lifetime

Capt. Gill took the boat out to the Capt. Kelly Windes FAD Buoy Network, a string of fish aggregating devices installed in 2020 60 miles off the Destin-Fort Walton Beach area. The group began looking for blue marlin in about 2,000 feet of water at about 8:30 a.m. They caught small yellowfin, skipjack, and blackfin tuna, which went into the boat’s tuna tubes to stay frisky for the real fishing.

Soon Bennett, on the bridge with the captain, noticed marks on the sonar similar to those he saw back in 2017. It was time to get a bait in the water. “It gets maybe 30 yards behind the boat and probably about 20 feet under water, and I just see this huge flash in the water,” Balters said. But they barely had the first angler sat in the chair when the first fish was gone, hook and all.

The group swapped in another Shimano Tiagra 80 Wide reel and continued patrolling the FAD. Another mark, another bite, and then this fish too was gone. And then another. The anglers switched to a Shimano Talica 50 with fresh mono, caught another small tuna, and got a bite with an explosive rise in shallow water. But 30 minutes into that fight, “this one just pulled the hook. Nothing we could do on that one,” Balters said. He began to worry aloud: “We missed our shot. We had three hookups. That’s all God’s giving us.”

They were down to one blackfin tuna, and it wasn’t all that frisky after several hours in the tuna tube. The crew stripped one of the Tiagras and re-spooled with fresh line. Eventually, there was yet another mark in the fish-rich water around the FAD. In went the bait.

“It just kind of laid sideways,” Balters said. “I’m like, ‘Oh man, we’re not gonna get a bite.’” And soon after came a strike that “looked like someone dropped a car in the water.” This was the big one. “We’re having to follow him a little bit. He goes straight down and strips us of all the mono we had just put on and goes into our braided backing.”

Perhaps an hour into the fight, the fish became entangled and died. Then began several hard hours of pulling the dead weight to the boat. The crew had to bend its fins flat along its body to get it to fit through the tuna door.

They got back to Destin after 9, welcomed by a small crowd of well-wishers, and got the triple eights on the scale at Boshamps Seafood and Oyster Bar. They saved the filleting for the morning.

“I was sore the next day for sure,” Balters said. “When it was all said and done, it was four huge tubs of just pure meat. It all went quickly, but probably all of Destin got some.”

The post Massive Bluefin Caught in Florida appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Recent emergency regulations from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources have canceled the striped bass trophy season in 2024, affecting the Maryland portion of Chesapeake Bay. Currently, anglers can continue to catch-and-release fish for striped bass in Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries until the end of March. From April 1 to May 15, fishing for striped bass is now prohibited.

The changes, approved by the Maryland General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive, and Legislative Review, were made to bolster striped bass spawning populations. Chesapeake Bay is a crucial spawning and nursery area for 70 to 90 percent of Atlantic Coast striped bass, so the emergency measures aim to safeguard mature fish during their spring spawning migration.

More Striped Bass Changes

These Maryland-specific actions are in addition to coast-wide recreational measures set by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). In January, ASMFC approved an addendum (PDF) to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass that aims to reduce fishing mortality in 2024. For Chesapeake Bay anglers — which includes charter boats — the addendum implements a 19- to 24-inch slot limit and a bag limit of one fish per person, per day. For anglers fishing in the ocean, the addendum implements a 28- to 31-inch slot limit and a coast-wide daily bag limit of one fish.

What Caused the Emergency Striper Closures?

To be blunt, five years of below average spawning success for striped bass has been disastrous. In 2023, Maryland’s annual striped bass young-of-year index had a value of 1.0. That’s significantly lower than the long-term average of 11.1. This key index measures reproductive success. Unfavorable environmental conditions, such as warm winters and low water flows, were identified as contributing factors to the decreased spawning rates.

“The recent recruitment numbers of juvenile striped bass show that additional management efforts are necessary to protect the overall population,” said Lynn Waller Fegley, Maryland’s DNR Fishing and Boating Services Director.

The repercussions of these lowly spawns are expected to really show in the adult striped bass population over the next few years, as the juveniles mature, leading to reduced abundance of legal-sized fish. A comprehensive striped bass stock assessment is scheduled to be released in 2024 to determine how the species responded to previous management actions made by Maryland and other coastal states.

What’s the Future Hold?

Don’t be surprised if the emergency trophy season closure becomes an annual occurrence. Maryland is considering establishing these new rules permanently. In past years, the striped bass trophy season has taken place during the first two weeks of May. This is when large female striped bass typically make their way up the Chesapeake Bay to spawn in the same rivers where they hatched.

Maryland is also considering extending the recreational and charter boat summer closure by an extra week — from July 16 to Aug. 7 — and closing the commercial hook-and-line season during the recreational and charter boat summer closure. Data show this period is the hottest part of summer when striped bass are most vulnerable to dying after being caught and released. 

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New regulations for snook fishing in Florida, effective January 1, 2024, establish nine snook management zones around the state along with seasons and slot limits for each zone. The new zones, like those established by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) for redfish in 2022, allow for a more regionalized and responsive approach to managing snook fishing in Florida’s waters, FWC officials say.

“These regions and regulations are part of our holistic management approach for Florida’s most popular inshore fisheries,” said Emily Abellera, FWC’s Public Information Specialist. “Through this approach, seven metrics are used to evaluate the snook fishery by region, which adds a holistic perspective to management decisions and allows our fisheries managers to be more responsive to regional concerns.”

Those considerations for management of snook include fishing pressure, relative abundance, habitat, stakeholder feedback, spawning potential ratio, air temperature, and harmful algal blooms in local waters. Assessments of these factors will be registered in the annual review of the fishery, which is available for each zone on the FWC’s website.

These localized annual reviews contain vital information about snook in each management zone in a brief, condensed, and graphic format. If an angler wants to know more about a local region’s fishery — possibly their home waters — these reviews are a terrific place to learn. They’re also available for redfish.

The FWC’s approach reflects the increasingly important role of habitat quality in fisheries management in contrast to the overwhelming importance of population assessments that dominated management policy in past years.

“It’s good to see FWC is managing snook through specific regions,” said Giles Murphy, owner of Stuart Angler Bait and Tackle in Martin County. His local waters of the southern Indian River Lagoon are known to produce some of Florida’s biggest snook. “In our area, the seagrass is extremely vital in our ecosystem, and it’s been dying off for 20 years. Now it’s completely gone. The redfish and seatrout fishing has suffered because of it. The snook can adapt and live through it, but that might not last forever with development increasing faster every year,” Murphy said.

The new zones will provide geographic boundaries for any urgent regulation changes caused by local conditions. In 2018, snook and redfish were declared catch-and-release only along parts of the west coast due to red tide. Extreme cold weather has also caused emergency closures to snook seasons in parts of Florida in the past.

Years ago, Ron Taylor, the snook researcher who helped guide the FWC’s snook management for decades, told me that management aimed to produce consistent numbers of all size classes of snook including slot-sized fish for anglers to keep and over-slot, trophy fish that anglers can brag about.

“Those goals haven’t changed,” Abellera, of the FWC, assured me recently. “What’s new with the holistic regional management approach is that we are judging whether our regulations are meeting those goals using more metrics, and we’re evaluating our success on a smaller scale that better reflects the anglers’ experiences,” she said.

At this time, the main change to last year’s regulations in the new management zones affect two areas on the Gulf Coast.

“For the Charlotte Harbor and Southwest snook management regions, the summer closure now includes the month of September,” said Abellera. “This is one month longer than the other Gulf Coast management regions. Extending the summer season closure provides additional protection for snook during a portion of their spawning period that overlaps with the typical occurrence of red tide in these regions.”

Snook season opens Feb. 1 in the three east coast zones (Southeast, Indian River Lagoon and Northeast) and snook season opens March 1 in the rest of Florida’s zones. Slot and catch limits remain the same. The slot limit is currently 28 to 33 inches across the state, except for the three east coast zones that have a limit of 32 inches. Check the FWC website to see descriptions of the nine zones.

The post New Florida Snook Zones in Effect appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

The sport and the science of sport fishing lost a hero, an advocate for science as a tool for better fisheries management in the Gulf of Mexico, and (in the best sense) a true fish nerd — Bob Shipp, who died on Jan 25.

I make the latter claim because I’m also a total fish nerd, which helps explain my friendship with Dr. Bob for more than 15 years. Besides often comparing notes with Shipp about fishes and their world, as editor-in-chief of Sport Fishing magazine, I edited a ton of content submitted by Shipp all of those years.

The scientist — who earned his PhD in biology and served for years as chair and professor of the Marine Science Department of the University of South Alabama in Mobile — was my go-to guy among a panel of Fish Facts experts who wrote for that ever-popular department in Sport Fishing. No kid in a candy store was ever more enthused than Shipp whenever I challenged him with a reader’s what-the-heck-is-this? fish photo and question.

Of course, he always knew the answer, and always promptly submitted a response in his down-home style — informative yet folksy and never pedantic. Such was his style in general, in a lab, on the docks, and on the water. I had the pleasure to fish the Gulf of Mexico a time or two with Bob, and it was evident that he rejoiced in walking the walk.

Bob wrote the authoritative Dr. Bob Shipp’s Guide to Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico, a real bible for all things piscatorial concerning the Gulf. For every species, his information included but transcended the scientific to include interesting tidbits and often amusing anecdotes by the guy who had “been there” for many species.

Shipp also authored an article in the March 2016 issue of Sport Fishing titled “The Great Gulf Red Snapper Train Wreck.” He did a remarkable job of explaining that wreckage and how we got there, during the height of federal regulations that nearly caused a revolt among Gulf anglers. His research was instrumental in disproving the theory (among some large environmental NGOs particularly) that the thousands of oil rigs in the Gulf were bad for the Gulf’s ecology, only aggregating fish such as red snapper where they could be easily overfished. His data showed that to be the nonsense it was, as he proved that juvenile red snapper flock to the thriving coral habitat covering rigs to grow and spawn. That data showed what anglers knew — that “threatened” red snapper in the Gulf were abundant and increasingly so, which he directly attributed to the astounding amount of habitat these rigs provided in an otherwise mostly barren Gulf.

In nearly every issue of Sport Fishing for many years, Shipp answered at least one inquiry submitted along with a photo in the magazine’s popular department, Fish Facts. Check out some interesting photos and IDs here. I often recognized even obscure species from the photo, but I always learned from the man’s answers.

To have known and worked with Bob Shipp was certainly a privilege.

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