My term as President will end as of 12/31/15. There were a lot of controversial issues that occurred during my two year term such as a change in the striper regulations, forced regionalization for fluke, jetty notching, beach replenishment, mining of our offshore lumps, bunker battles and more. These issues required a lot of my time but still it was a pleasure to serve our fine organization. I would like to thank everyone involved with JCAA for their support.
Our next general meeting will be held on 12/29 and we will once again be having a dinner buffet that will begin at 7PM. This is for all of the club representatives so please do not bring any guests to this meeting. We will also hold our election for new officers at this meeting. At this point we really need someone to step up to be President and we also need a recording secretary. Please consider running for one of the positions.
The MRIP numbers for Wave 5 (September - October) recently came out. The numbers continue to show that our state, as well as our region (Connecticut, New Jersey and New York), along with most of the east coast, significantly underfished their quotas for fluke. As reported previously, this should offset the mandated 29% cut in the coastwide quota for next year and result in similar regulations as we had in 2015 for 2016.
I only glanced at the MRIP numbers for sea bass but I am cautiously optimistic that our regulations won't become any more restrictive for 2016. Hopefully, they will be relaxed somewhat but I have not studied the numbers enough to determine if that is a possibility. I do know that the recreational harvest limit (RHL) has been increased from 2.33 million pounds in 2015 to 2.88 million pounds for 2016. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!
There has been a truly magnificent run of stripers along our coast this fall. Earlier today (12/17) there was one of the best bass blitzes in over 40 years at Island Beach State Park. Blitzes have also been occurring from Sandy Hook to Cape May on a regular basis as well. Recently there has been a tremendous amount of bait including herring as well as adult and peanut bunker right in the surf. Apparently, this has kept the migrating stripers in close to the beach rather than migrating offshore as many of them did in recent years. Earlier this year there were quite a few avid striper fishermen who would have us believe that our striper population was in free-fall. Where did all these bass come from? It seems to me that our striper stocks are healthier than we thought though they are significantly under their peak period of abundance. Regardless, though, please keep only what you need and use care in releasing the rest.
Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and fish-filled New Year to all!
