44th season of Salt Spray comes to close

Now that November has arrived it is time to put the cap on my 44th season of writing the Salt Spray column. I’ll go over the rapidly ending season at the end of the report.

Saturday, two fellows returned to my dock with one of the best varieties of fish I have seen in a long time. All they would say is they were fishing one of the artificial reefs, but they would not say which one. My guess is Atlantic City or Ocean City, but that’s all it is, a guess. Anyway, their catch consisted of bluefish, weakfish, triggerfish, taug, black sea bass, sheepshead, bergals, spiny and plain dogfish. They told me it was an almost immediate hit every time they dropped down a line.

Striped bass are continuing their slow swim in this direction from up north where there has been a pretty consistent bite this fall. The waters off Long Beach Island really are starting to come alive with stripers reported up to 51 pounds. Most of the fish south of LBI so far are quite small. But, there was a 43-incher taken off the north end of Brigantine. It weighed 27 pounds and it fell for a bunker chunk.

Taug fishing in around our inlet jetties is going great guns. But, if you are not a fan of casting from a jetty, you probably would also do well around bridge pilings and docks. Green crab will be the key to your success.

There has not been very many opportunities for the trolling fans to get offshore. When the weather does allow there has been a fair bite on football bluefin, dolphin, bluefish and false albacore. Quite a few sharks also are around.

The 51st Ocean City Fishing Club Invitational Surf Tournament was held on the Ocean City sand last Saturday. A great crowd of 190 anglers participated and there was plenty of action. Unfortunately, or fortunately, most of the action centered around spiny dogfish. A total of 124 of them made the register book, but because they were so abundant, catching anything else proved difficult. There were some bluefish entered and a few short stripers.

One more note about the Ocean City Fishing Club, members keep a meticulous log on the number and type of fish they caught from the club’s pier at 14th Street. This season the numbers were impressive. For example, there were several thousand more kingfish caught than came over the railing in 2018.

The OCFC is the oldest continuously operating fishing club in the United States.It has been going strong since 1913.

This past week I came across a tear sheet of a Salt Spray column I wrote for October 5, 2008. It said scientists at the Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences “question the wisdom of having a minimum size on summer flounder rather than the other way around. Their reasoning is that the female flatties, which tend to be larger than the males, don’t reproduce until they reach desirable dinner table fare size. If that is true...it might make the various federal regulators rethink their way of allocating the flounder take.”

Well, that was 11 years ago and still we continue taking the breeding females. Obviously, the wheels of fishery management turn very, very slowly. ACROSS THE BAY >> We have seen a slight increase in the number of keeper rockfish in the upper Delaware Bay, Miah Maul and the Crossover. The big Stretch lures seem to be working best. There also are some good sized rocks around the Indian River jetties.

If taug, triggerfish and sheepshead are more to your liking there are several spots to try. Head for Bowers Beach, the Outer Wall, the Ice Breakers and IRI.

Well, this week’s column brings to a close my 44th year writing Salt Spray. Overall, 2019 proved to be a better than decent season. All summer the weather was very cooperative. Enormous schools of bait congregated in the back waters and that really kept the predators happy.

We had one of the better bluefish runs in recent times and weakfish perhaps showed some signs of a resurgence. There were loads of summer flounder just about everywhere, but finding one of legal size proved difficult.Taug provided more action but anglers were put-off by a convoluted on and off season for them. On the beachfronts, kingfish hung out all summer. Old timers said it was one if the best kingie runs in memory. Black seabass anglers also had to deal with an over regulated season. It really gets to you when you keep catching one fish after the other but you can’t keep any because the season is closed.

There was a lot going on out in the deep. South Jersey and Delmarva big boats had some excellent times fishing for the various tuna family members, blue and white marlin and dolphin. Big swordfish also made a late season appearance and more and more anglers started targeting tilefish in the really deep water.

Finally, personally for me it was my saddest season ever because I lost my fishing partner of 47 years, my wife Gwen, on August 10. Her father taught her to fish at a very early age out in Cincinnati and she remembered those lessons well. Treasure those times together on the water with your family and friends.

So, even though we have not had anything resembling a spring mackerel run around here in decades, I always like to wrap-up by saying “I’ll see you in the spring...when the macks are back”!

Thank you everyone.