Fluke are beginning to edge their way into Long Island Sound as they spread out of their early season fishing areas around Long Island, the south shore of Fishers Island and the Rhode Island beaches. At this point, anglers have been targeting and catching fish as far west as Niantic Bay.
The hottest areas are the Rhody Beaches and Montauk Point into Peconic Bay and Long Islands north shore. A few of the local "flukemeisters" are catching some keeper fish in Niantic Bay, an easier chore in Connecticut waters with an 18-inch minimum length, than across the "pond" off Long Island or off Fishers Island in New York waters, where the minimum length is 1 1/2 inches or along the Rhode Beaches it's 19.
Herein lies the regulatory mess that mobile boat fishermen who cross state borders face every year.
Connecticut recreational anglers made out the best year in the fluke regulation lottery, which is what fluke regulation has amounted to over the past few years.
Recreational fluke fishing has undergone a constant ratcheting down on the rules that control this sport as a result of computer-generated options that are based strictly on catch numbers with no ability to respond to the dictates of common sense. It's a point Zach Harvey so aptly pointed out in his excellent article on the breakdown of fluke management in the April 26 edition of Fisherman Magazine).
This travesty is twofold.
The fluke management plan set goals to restore stocks that were depleted severely, hitting all-time low levels in the early 1990s that now appear to be overambitious. The fluke catch has been controlled by quotas imposed on both sport and commercial fisheries.
The commercial fishermen had seasonal quotas with specific trigger points in landings that slowly reduces the catch, so last-second pushes to fill boats don't take place in order to attain their target-catch quota numbers. Recreational fishermen also had quotas to meet that were adjusted via changes (which amounts to regulatory options for various states) in minimum length limits, daily catch limits and fishing seasons.
All the regulatory options are generated by mathematical statistics based on landings from commercial fishing, which is dominated by landings from trawlers that don't reflect anywhere near the numbers of fish they remove from the population through a common practice of "culling" or "high grading" catches.
High grading is a totally unethical practice they have been forced to do in order to make ends meet financially and it involves catching a ton of fluke, picking out the largest doormats to fill a 400-pound trip quota with high-value jumbo fish and shoveling the rest over the side dead and wasted.
The men who fish the oceans to make a living perform one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet and are good, hardworking people. It is easy to can understand the reasons for such behavior. But there's something wrong with a system that forces this kind of waste to take place without any checks or means of policing the regulations that are in place with the intent of conserving the resource.
What really bugs me has been the constant increases in legal length limits without regard to the nature of the recreational fisheries they are designed to regulate. Computers have no common sense and this is an issue that requires some sensible input besides simple catch figures to work effectively.
Recreational fluke size limits has increased from too small at 14 inches and no creel limits in the early days of fluke management, to realistic and practical size limits of 16 to 17 inches to this season in New York waters this year with a 1 1/2-inch minimum length and a four-fish per-day catch limit.
What the computers don't know is at 19 inches, rod-and-reel anglers who fish hard all day long to cull out a limit of keeper fish might actually kill as many or more fluke because of delayed mortality from hook damage, than this large size will ever protect.
There will be a percentage of those fish I don't believe anyone has a good handle on at this moment that will be gut- or gill-hooked and probably die as a result. This waste is not even close to the incredible numbers a trawler will kill during a year, but it is still unacceptable in my opinion. Every fisherman who has to release a hurt and bleeding fluke that may be a half-inch under the limit abhors wasting that fish. Unfortunately, over the past few seasons this waste has been on the increase, because of the increase in minimum length limits.
A few years back when fluke limits were 16 or 17 inches, my log books seldom showed a day of fluke fishing with more than a total catch of 30 or 40 fish. Most days a couple hours and 20-something fish caught and culled for legal size fish was all it took for two or three experienced anglers to catch a limit. (I don't always fish for limits, but rather for three or four fluke to cook fresh).
The trips with higher catches, in the 30-40 fluke range were usually occasions when we saved a couple spots in our catch for a big one and released everything else as long as the fish wasn't hurt. However, if a legal, but smaller fish was deep-hooked, we would put it in the live well and quit -- end of story.
Last summer, with a 1 1/2-inch limit in Rhode Island and an 18-inch minimum in Connecticut, we had to cull through more fish. The log has entries for three consecutive trips during the peak of the fluke fishing season with total catches of 57, 64 and 76 fluke.
Those trips with three anglers on board and a potential maximum catch combined of 18 fluke, we didn't catch more than 12 or 13 fish during any of those trips. One of those days when 1 1/2-inchers abounded but couldn't be taken back to Barn Island, we had to throw back four damaged fluke.
With a 16- or 17-inch limit and a reasonable limit of four or five fish, those damaged fluke either would have been taken home and filleted or we would have been casting plugs for stripers somewhere else.
This year, with larger limits in adjacent states, how many fluke do you think anglers will cull through to catch or even come close to a legal limit?
The problem with fisheries management on the East Coast, according to Captain Don Cameron of Captain Don's Tackle in Charleston, R.I., who fished commercially in the waters of Alaska, said: "In Alaska, the fish come first -- here people come first."
Based on the healthy fisheries they have in that state, the fish-first philosophy appears to be working better. (Bob Sampson)
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