Where are the Flounder?
After reading all the posts for the last hour, I think it's safe to say that everyone and everything from commercial to recreational fisherman, seals and stripers, global warming, El Nino, the Yankees losing the World Series, has played a hand in the demise of the winter flounder fishery. I've worked as a deckhand and part-time captain on party boats in the early to mid 1980's and I remember what flounder fishing use to be like. We would sail 2 half-day trips a day and catching several hundred fish a trip was fairly common. Sometimes over 1000 fish would come over the rails. Customers would keep almost everything they caught because no one saw this coming, and at the time they probably wouldn't have believed it considering the amount of fish available. For the most part, only very small fish were thrown back, so part of the blame goes to us, the rec guys. However, I feel the commercial guys are just as much to blame. I don't know the exact numbers, but I recently read somewhere that while recreational catches of flounder have taken a nosedive the last few years, commercial catches have actually gone up. With rec catches so low the last few years, and people losing interest, (I know I have and I love flounder fishing) I find it hard to believe that at the present time the rec guys are hurting the fishery as badly as the commercials are. A lot of party boats don't fish for flounder anymore, or if they do they have cut their seasons short to concentrate on fish they can put their customers on.(fluke, blacks, bass, etc...) Then we end up putting more pressure on those fisheries...it's a vicious cycle. There are so many factors involved, I don't know what the answer is. From what I've seen the last few years, things have not improved very much. What it may come down to, and I hope it doesn't, is a complete moratorium on the winter flounder fishery for a year or two. I understand that that is easy for me to say...the stakes aren't the same for me as they are for people in the industry who need to make a living, but we've pushed the flounder to the limit. Something needs to be done to give these fish a chance to recover. I'm not trying to blame any one group or thing in particular...I think we've all had a hand in it. If anything I've said angers anyone, it wasn't my intention. I'll get off my soapbox now, thanks for hearing me out.
Tom
After reading all the posts for the last hour, I think it's safe to say that everyone and everything from commercial to recreational fisherman, seals and stripers, global warming, El Nino, the Yankees losing the World Series, has played a hand in the demise of the winter flounder fishery. I've worked as a deckhand and part-time captain on party boats in the early to mid 1980's and I remember what flounder fishing use to be like. We would sail 2 half-day trips a day and catching several hundred fish a trip was fairly common. Sometimes over 1000 fish would come over the rails. Customers would keep almost everything they caught because no one saw this coming, and at the time they probably wouldn't have believed it considering the amount of fish available. For the most part, only very small fish were thrown back, so part of the blame goes to us, the rec guys. However, I feel the commercial guys are just as much to blame. I don't know the exact numbers, but I recently read somewhere that while recreational catches of flounder have taken a nosedive the last few years, commercial catches have actually gone up. With rec catches so low the last few years, and people losing interest, (I know I have and I love flounder fishing) I find it hard to believe that at the present time the rec guys are hurting the fishery as badly as the commercials are. A lot of party boats don't fish for flounder anymore, or if they do they have cut their seasons short to concentrate on fish they can put their customers on.(fluke, blacks, bass, etc...) Then we end up putting more pressure on those fisheries...it's a vicious cycle. There are so many factors involved, I don't know what the answer is. From what I've seen the last few years, things have not improved very much. What it may come down to, and I hope it doesn't, is a complete moratorium on the winter flounder fishery for a year or two. I understand that that is easy for me to say...the stakes aren't the same for me as they are for people in the industry who need to make a living, but we've pushed the flounder to the limit. Something needs to be done to give these fish a chance to recover. I'm not trying to blame any one group or thing in particular...I think we've all had a hand in it. If anything I've said angers anyone, it wasn't my intention. I'll get off my soapbox now, thanks for hearing me out.
Tom
Anyway, this was back in the early to mid 80's. I don't know how much things have changed since then.(except there being a lot less fish) We would see fish that were "residents"...fish that seemed to stay in the back bays year round. For the most part, these fish tended to be big females loaded with roe. So this is why I don't really by the two stock theory too much. There are fish that migrate offshore in the late fall/winter, and fish that take up residence in our bays year round, and I do believe they intermix with each other. The fish the Commercial guys are netting never have a chance to make it into the back bays to spawn. The same thing happened with the fluke in the 80's. That fishery was nearly dead. There would be a line of draggers working a few miles off the beach and the new bodies of fluke working their way inshore never made it into the bays. What's the answer? I suppose moving them offshore and giving these fish a chance to move into the bays would be a start. I'm sure there are many other factors involved, (global warming, predation, etc...) but we need to start somewhere. K, I'm off my soapbox. 
