West winds did their job and knocked down a big swell. That should set up a good shot of blackfish not too far offshore plus a shot at some cod and ling. The Ocean Explorer from Belmar had poor fishing Sunday when there was a big ground swell, but they’ll be sailing into probably calm seas with northwest winds at 15-20 knots. Light winds dominate the rest of the week.

The Canyon Runner Seminar on Feb. 1 in Atlantic City is almost sold out. Adam La Rosa had reports from Oregon Inlet that bigeye, yellowfin and bluefin tuna have all arrived in their offshore waters where La Rosa will be booking charters this winter on a 55-foot custom Carolina. Charters start at $2,295, and open boat fares at $699. Call 732 272-4445 for tickets and info.

 

Small craft warnings remain up through the afternoon, but better days are coming. Monday’s forecast is for west winds at 15 knots with gusts to 20 and flurries.The Big Mohawk from Belmar is waiting for better blackfishing conditions, and will wait until Thursday and Friday before sailing reservation trips. Call 732 974-9606 to secure a spot.

The weather is fine in Palm Beach as I get ready to give my youngest daughter, and former mate on my charter boat, Cyndi away to Luis Gonzalez at their wedding in St. Ann’s. Luis is also an avid angler and boat owner.

Small craft warnings are up through late tonight in NY/NJ Bight, but will then shift to a calming west at 15 knots plus gusts to 20 tomorrow.

The Fisherman magazine will be hosting the last three winners of their annual Dream Boat contest from 1-2 p.m. in the Steiger Craft booth at the New York Boat Show. Included is Garrett Weir, who lost the 2018 contest on a tiebreaker, but went on to run way with last year’s Dream Boat.

After a period of fishable weather, a small craft advisory is up from late tonight through late Saturday night.

Saturday starts with east winds at 20-25 knots with gusts to 30 — and 6-8-foot seas plus rain. A west wind Sunday will knock down that sea a bit as it blows at 15-20 knots with gusts to 25 as seas drop to 4 to 7 feet.

Monday may be fishable for the Mimi VI blackfish special from Point Pleasant which is limited to 15 fares at $120 for a 6:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. trip. See photo below along with a used surf shot that got attached to it.  Call 732 370-8019 for reservations.

The New York Boat Show at the Convention Center, and the Fly Fishing Show at the NJ Convention & Expo Center in Edison, continue their runs through Sunday.

Looking ahead, The New Jersey Boat Sale & Expo will move into the Edison facility from Feb. 13 to 16.

Calm seas should prevail tomorrow morning as the forecast is for just northeast at 5-10 knots before it goes to east at 10-15 in the afternoon with gusts to 20 in the afternoon. A small craft advisory goes up late Friday night through late Saturday night.

Not only should blackfishing be possible, but there’s an opportunity to release a 50-pound striper at Cape Charles, Va. on a last minute opening aboard Sho-Nuf Sportfishing Charters. Call 757 710-0098. The Fisherman magazine also reports that codfishing has finally broken out at Montauk.

The Ocean Explorer from Belmar reports the ocean was flat calm Wednesday and there was lots of life on bottom — though it was mostly short blackfish. Some keepers plus cod and ling were boated. The Big Mohawk will also sail open from Belmar for tog at 7 a.m.

Though the weekend looks poor at this time, the next two days appear to be ideal for blackfishing which is still holding up inshore due to the lack of very cold water.

The  forecast for Thursday is just west at 5 knots with seas of one foot or less. Getting set on anchor may be the biggest problem for blackfish boats.

At Belmar, the Ocean Explorer reported good Tuesday blackfishing (see photo below) with many of the tog in the in the 5-8-pound class and some limits along with a few keeper cod and ling. The Big Mohawk will also be sailing open tomorrow at 7 a.m.

At Point Pleasant, the Mimi VI is sailing open Mondays and Fridays in January from 6:30 to 4 with a maximum of 15 passengers for a fare of $120 that includes all crabs. Thursdays and Saturdays will be limited to 25 at 7 a.m. with green crabs provided for an $80 fare. Call 732 370-8019 for reservations.

The Jamaica from Brielle is hoping for weather good enough on Saturday when they’ve scheduled a trip to offshore wrecks for jumbo porgies, cod and pollock at 1 a.m.  Call 732 528-5014 for reservations.

The Feb. 1 Canyon Runner Seminar in Atlantic City is almost sold out, but they still have five free tickets for active or retired military. Adam La Rosa is also offering $50 off on tickets for First Responders. Call 732 272-4445.

Rio Zancudo Lodge in Costa Rica recently had a group from White Water Marine on Long Island at the camp to enjoy a run of yellowfin tuna in the 80-110-pound class plus a 180-pounder. They also caught blue marlin and the range of inshore species from snappers to roosterfish.

The New York Boat Show drops anchor in the Convention Center tomorrow and continues through the weekend. Weekday show hours are from 4 to 8:30 p.m.  Admission is $16, but you can get a discount by buying in advance. Military and First Responders receive a $3 discount on Wednesday by showing ID at the box office.

Light winds bode well for anglers the next two days. It’s northwest at just 5-10 knots Wednesday and north at 5 knots Thursday. The Big Mohawk from Belmar will sail open tomorrow for blackfish at 7 a.m., and reservations for Thursday can be made by calling 732 944-9606.  The weekend looks like a blowout, and Friday may also be out due to an expected “giant” swell which is a killer for tog fishing.

It wasn’t any bargain in Florida this morning as temperatures dropped to the 30s and northwest winds produced a chill advisory. I had to switch to “big boy” pants,  and my hands were cold for only the second time ever in Florida as I briefly fished a pond in Ft. Myers to catch a small bass on Gulp in order to keep alive my streak of not getting shut out any morning since coming down in November.

There are only a few days left in which to bid on everything from fishing tackle to dream trips throughout the world in the 36th  IGFA International Auction. Don’t hesitate to check out all that’s available by visiting info@igfa.org.

Capt. Jim Freda of Shore Catch Charters will be among those providing seminars at the Fly Fishing Show being held this weekend at the N.J. Convention & Expo Center in Edison.

The Canyon Runner Seminar in Atlantic City on Feb. 1 is almost sold out. In addition, there are 10 tickets still available for active duty and retired military. Call 732 272-4445.

Capt. Paul Eidman of Anglers for Offshore Wind Power will be presenting a free 6 p.m. seminar regarding that situation on Feb. 6 in the Forked River Tuna Club at 10 Bay Avenue.   Call Eidman at 732 614-3373 for additional info.

Chuck Manny continues to enjoy great catch and release striper action at Cape Charles, Virginia on his Ty Man. When some friends had to back out of a half-day trip last week, Manny trolled by himself to release seven of the roe-laden bass from 35 to 51 pounds. That brought the boat’s 50-pound bass total up to 17 this winter.

Light west winds should provide great fishing conditions in NY/NJ Bight this week. The forecast for tomorrow is northwest at just 5-10 knots.

There’s a lot of speculation as to the rather sudden virtual disappearance of bluefish over the last few years, but it’s pretty sure that they didn’t swim overseas.

Martin Smith of Sea Bright brought up that subject in a reply to my last blog by mentioning that he saw 10-12-pound blues in fish stores at Cadiz, Spain. He noted that they were highly regarded as food there.

Actually, bluefish are found in widely separated areas of temperate and tropical waters worldwide. The IGFA world record when I was growing up was a 24 3/16-pounder from the Azores in 1953. It seemed impossible that we’d ever see anything like that in the U.S., but the upcycle of blues in the 1960’s concluded when James Hussey trolled a 31 3/4-pounder in Hatteras Inlet on Jan. 30, 1972.

I’ve caught bluefish in such unexpected areas as the Florida Keys, Trinidad and South Africa — though they were all small blues caught on the bottom with bait. Obviously, such populations are isolated, and I’ve never heard of cyclical abundance in those areas.

Though there have been signs of a bluefish problem for a few years, there was a good sign last spring. We had been getting great inshore runs of jumbo blues in early May for several years, but the 2018 run consisted of little more than some smaller choppers. Yet, the big blues returned last May to provide great popper fishing at times in areas such as Barnegat Bay.  On May 7 I had my best ever popping plug action for large fish in Point Pleasant Canal one morning with mostly 8-to-10-pound blues blasting an old single hook Gibbs Pencil Popper with no paint left on it almost every cast for some time even though nothing was showing.

Despite that, there were only brief flurries in the rivers further north. Striper fishermen in Raritan Bay used to have to fight through blues with bunker baits shortly after the bass got started. Capt. Sal Cursi would go through hundreds of hooks cut off from mono leaders, but there that was almost unheard of last spring. There used to be fleets of party and charter boats fishing for blues day and night, but now there are only a few still trying — and the night fishery is almost a dead issue. From abundance to almost nothing in a couple of years!

Nothing much changed the rest of the year as even the fall run was a disaster. It used to be hard to catch a striper under diving birds in the fall. Now it’s the blues that are unusual. I only caught a couple of small blues while casting small poppers for stripers in the summer and fall Jersey surf. Ironically, while there were also very few blues in Shark River during the summer, I  ended up having my best shore casting there ever on Sept. 3 while releasing 17 blues from about 3 to 7 pounds on poppers. Unfortunately,  that lomg-awaited “run” only lasted a couple of days.

We can only speculate how much of this dismal situation was due to NOAA transferring the blues released by anglers to commercial interests for years, but there’s no question that those tons of bluefish could have reduced the impact on recreational fishing while providing a great deal of reproductive potential. We had a good fishery management plan, but NOAA chose exploitation rather than conservation.

Monday’s forecast is for northwest winds at 20-25 knots before dropping to 15-20 in the afternoon. The rest of the week looks good with light west winds through at least Thursday.

Following up on yesterday’s blog about how bluefish have been going downhill, there are a few historical facts to be considered.

When I was growing up in Merrick, Long Island during the post WW II era, there were virtually no adult bluefish being caught. Yet, they must have been somewhere because there were lots of snappers to be caught from local docks late in the summer with my cane pole. It was the same thing with weakfish, as I could only read about earlier times when those species were abundant and big.

It was the thrill of my young fishing days when a neighbor who kept a boat in Peconic Bay took me out there where a few 2-3-lb. blues could be trolled. Hal Lyman, publisher of Salt Water Sportsman wrote “the” book on bluefishing which detailed the great runs in previous decades and speculated there was a seven-year cycle.

When blues started coming back they were all small at first, but everyone was thrilled to be able to catch some — and they got steadily larger and more abundant every year.  I fished hard for them while figuring that the seven-year cycle was running out. However, it never ended even as there were ups-and-downs along the way plus disappearances at the northern and southern ends of their normal range.  What we see now would still be considered great bluefishing by the standards of my youth.

Ironically, bluefish management started during a period of abundance. Despite all the overfishing waste going on, blues just continued to flood into the prime area of NJ-NY Bight every year. Their built-in protection against excessive exploitation was the fact that a fine eating fish when fresh becomes very poor when frozen. That fact made it a poor target for large scale commercial fishing. Too much going to the market in a day would drive the price so low that it might not even cover the cost of shipping — and there were no foreign markets developed for the frozen product. Purse seiners and pair-trawlers could catch unlimited quantities, but there was no money in it plus costly repairs in chewed up nets.

As a member of the original Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, I had a hard time convincing many other members to even bother producing a management plan for such an abundant species that was primarily of interest to recreational fishermen, but the possibility of improved freezing techniques and development of a foreign market couldn’t be overlooked.

Everything has changed with scarcity. Blues have always been a popular restaurant fish, but commercial fishermen were lucky to get a quarter a pound for them. Now that they’re hard to come by, the price has shot up and there’s lots of pressure to continue getting more recreational quota shifted by NOAA as was detailed in yesterday’s blog.  I’ll continue with this topic tomorrow.

Since anglers are being reduced from a bag of 15 blues to just three (five on for-hire boats), you might think that there would be a similar reduction in commercial quota. Wrong! The commercial quota was reduced by a mere 18%.

With rain and snow being a complication, there’s a small craft advisory up from 4 p.m. through Sunday morning — with south gusts to 25 knots this evening. Sunday starts with west winds at 20-25 knots plus gusts to 25.

Surfcasters Journal presents Striper Day V tomorrow at Ward Melville H.S., 380 Old Town Road, East Setauket, Long Island. No hours were given in the release, but seminars start at 9:45 with a presentation by Al Albano. Admission to Striper Day V is $15.

Vinnie D’Anton broke the ice on spotted seatrout at Sarasota yesterday as he caught an 18-incher along with ladyfish on a Mirr-O-Lure while wading.