As the world turns?

[backman]

Sitting at the dock today, having fished and caught yesterday in a polite crowd of 6 or 8 boats; I wonder how the battle lines are being drawn on the fields of conflict.

Who gets in the 1st shot in the Bay; the little guys, the charter men or the stick boaters?

Who wins the skirmish at Peaked Hill Bar? Ballooners or trollers?

Will there be shots fired at the SWC?

Enquiring mind wishes to know.

[bluefintuna1945]

Larry, that’s a good morning laugh. Looking at all the posts about more or less fish out there right now how about looking at the facts?

As of 7/8 NMFS reports 26.7MT landed in the General and 12.6MT in harpoon.
Last year as of 7/19 it was 37MT and 11MT; looks like the general is tracking about the same as last year with harpoon running ahead.

Average weights last year for June were 249 pounds in the general and 258 harpoon.
Very few reports of big fish coming in so far this year, most seem to be Large Mediums, 7-8 year olds, 73-81 inches. These weigh 230-310 in the round so sale weights are about the same as last year.

Here are the stats from last year for the General:

June
17MT
Avg 249 pounds
About 150 fish or 5 a day

July
33MT
Avg 360 pounds
About 202 fish or 7 a day

August
58MT
Avg 301 pounds
About 423 fish or 14 a day

September
224MT
Avg 429 pounds
About 1,150 fish or 38 a day
Most of those came in after 9/10-15, you know where and what the story was.
That rate kept up until about 10/10 when it ended “out younder”.

[scottne]

Larry, that’s a good morning laugh. Looking at all the posts about more or less fish out there right now how about looking at the facts?

As of 7/8 NMFS reports 26.7MT landed in the General and 12.6MT in harpoon.
Last year as of 7/19 it was 37MT and 11MT; looks like the general is tracking about the same as last year with harpoon running ahead.

Average weights last year for June were 249 pounds in the general and 258 harpoon.
Very few reports of big fish coming in so far this year, most seem to be Large Mediums, 7-8 year olds, 73-81 inches. These weigh 230-310 in the round so sale weights are about the same as last year.

Here are the stats from last year for the General:

June
17MT
Avg 249 pounds
About 150 fish or 5 a day

July
33MT
Avg 360 pounds
About 202 fish or 7 a day

August
58MT
Avg 301 pounds
About 423 fish or 14 a day

September
224MT
Avg 429 pounds
About 1,150 fish or 38 a day
Most of those came in after 9/10-15, you know where and what the story was.
That rate kept up until about 10/10 when it ended “out younder”.

I would think this should be a very good year for the commercial fleet in general as there aren't a lot of shorts around to make their lives more difficult north of Chatham...yet. The harpooners seem to be doing really well... it's their turn at that year class finally. Good luck in a year or two as we fish through these few classes.

[twofinbluna]

Cheer up, Scott. There are many places tuna go in the NE other than within 15-20 miles of Cape Cod...

[scottne]

Cheer up, Scott. There are many places tuna go in the NE other than within 15-20 miles of Cape Cod...

I know where plenty of our NE tuna are right now...Tokyo



Good luck out there Chris.

[100 % commercial]

news flash for u scott - it use to be a rare event to ever see a small fish in cape cod bay.As a matter of fact, never 20 yrs ago.We never had the fleets with outboards chasing them with spinning rods because they werent here then. you had to go south behind the islands to see small fish back then.Patterns change and cycles happen/ always have and always will.They have tails u know and just because you dont see them doesnt mean they arent flourishing somewhere else .

[scottne]

news flash for u scott - it use to be a rare event to ever see a small fish in cape cod bay.As a matter of fact, never 20 yrs ago.We never had the fleets with outboards chasing them with spinning rods because they werent here then. you had to go south behind the islands to see small fish back then.Patterns change and cycles happen/ always have and always will.They have tails u know and just because you dont see them doesnt mean they arent flourishing somewhere else .

Up until Manny Phillips and later the Japanese boats came into CCB there were enough for Manny to net hundreds of thousands of small fish IN CCB in the 50s and 60's. It wasn't until the seiners picked it clean that the tuna became less frequent.

There's documentation elsewhere of where some of his best sets were in the Bay and it's right where we all would see the schools of little ones a few years ago.

"Since 1958 in Cape Cod Bay a small seiner called the Silver Mink, captained by Manny Philips, had been netting 500 to 600 tons of school bluefin tuna per season. "A thousand metric tons of 80 pound bluefin is 27,500 fish...landings coninued at 4,000 to 6,000 metric tons." "As the schools thinned out he larger seiners left." In 1968 unable to find enough school bluein tuna to support the
crew they agreed to catch two loads of giant.."They worked with Frank Mather in his tagging studdies, in 1970 they caught two of five school bluefin tuna that had been tagged in the Bay of Biscay in 1968,1969. The tag retrievals and the improved fishinged seemed sure evidence that there had been a major transatlantic migration of the fish they were working.

For those that haven't read that book and others it puts into persective just how many small tuna were in the Bay until they got wiped out. When pressure eased on them they would blip back up, only to get wiped out again. Boom/bust. The cycle you describe seems much more like the boom/bust reported through the years than a natural progression. The fish they tagged coming west even back in the 60s/70s. were taking 2-4 years to do it. It was 06/07 were the overfishing out way east was worst...it would be 09/10/11 that we saw the consequences on little fish here.

Within about 6-7 years of the heavy seining in the Bay the fish vanished off the GOM. They vanished further up the coast towards Newfie too at about the same time. Boom/bust...their northern extent was cut severely as they were overfished. The same thing happened on the northern end out east over in Europe. It wasn' a natural cycle, hundreds of tons of fish were taken from the stock and when the population was down the fish didn't have to spread out as much for food/just weren't around. Kind of hard to deny really.

http://books.google.com/books?id=cci...%20bay&f=false

09 started to see a dropoff, 2010 definitely did, 2011...bank/bay are really limited on little fish most days. Huge drop from a couple of years ago and it all coincides with the massive overfishing in the Med in the 05-07 period. If it's under control there it will probably rebound in the next year or two.

[LeeG]

Larry,
Just like setting out a chum line! They can't help themselves.

[backman]

Scott is there anything about any fishery you will let pass without citing someone else's research as the definitive answer.

I'd suggest if you look past the end of your keyboard there are more than a few 30-80 pound bluefin in New England waters right here; right now.

Amazingly in the same place they were last year; the year before and 10 years before that.

[scottne]

Scott is there anything about any fishery you will let pass without citing someone else's research as the definitive answer.

I'd suggest if you look past the end of your keyboard there are more than a few 30-80 pound bluefin in New England waters right here; right now.

Amazingly in the same place they were last year; the year before and 10 years before that.

Larry I'm well aware of where the fish have been for the last 2-3 weeks and where they've been the last ten years. That's the same spot the seiners went after they wiped them out in the Bay in the late 50s and 60s.

The other point about the SM...most of the fishing they did on the little ones was after about 7/15-20...mainly late July into August as that's when the little fish were most abundtant. Maybe your're little fish will be up north soon.

Good luck out there Larry.