An angler on an overnight tuna and swordfish charter out of Narragansett, Rhode Island, caught the largest mahi-mahi the state has ever seen in late August. Fishing with Maridee Charters, angler Karl Mohr, of New York, battled the 37.56-pound, 59-inch dolphinfish to the gaff.

“We were pumped. I’ve never seen one that big,” said AJ Dangelo, who was running the deck for his father, Capt. Andy Dangelo. “It’s not typical to see mahi in our area over 10 pounds. You see a few big ones every year, but nothing that big.”

Juvenile mahi move into the waters off New England with warm Gulf Stream currents in summer. They congregate around “high flyers,” which are tall buoys with radar reflectors to help lobstermen find their pots. The mahi are a popular plan-B target when the tuna fishing is slow.

Doubled Up on Big Mahi

During Mohr’s trip, Capt. Dangelo had taken them about 85 miles offshore to an area known as Fishtails. They were trolling over about 700 feet of water, right on the north edge of Block Canyon.

AJ said Capt. Andy was pushing to see how close he could pull his spread to the buoys when they doubled up on mahi.

“The first one we got to the boat was a nice cow, maybe 15 pounds,” AJ said. “And I told the angler it was a good fish. I didn’t think the other one we had on was a mahi, because it wasn’t coming in like one.”

When AJ gaffed the second fish and brought it over the rail, he knew they had caught something special. The big mahi should replace a record that has stood for nearly 30 years. Although Rhode Island doesn’t officially recognize dolphinfish for state records, it does list a 32-pound, 4-ounce, 58.5-inch mahi caught in 1995 as a “Notable Catch.”

With this fish, AJ thinks he’s found a lucky combination for Meridee. Two years ago, Mohr caught a giant wahoo that would have been a record if they had documented it properly. The big wahoo and the record mahi both came on the same Sterling Tackle spreader bar—same lure, same angler.

Mohr’s wahoo weighed 91 pounds, “with the guts out,” AJ said. Also listed as a “Notable Catch,” the largest Rhode Island wahoo on record was caught in 1998 and weighed 80 pounds.

In case you’re curious about what an overnight trip out of Rhode Island looks like, AJ said they troll for yellowfin and big eye tuna during the day and spend the night swordfishing.

“It’s a blast,” he said. “They look like zombies when they get back to the dock. They’re all delirious. People try to get some sleep here and there, but everyone’s so excited that it’s hard to sleep.”

The post Huge Mahi Tops 30-Year-Old Record appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Normally, harvesting 108 red snapper from the South Atlantic might be enough to earn you some jail time. Not if you have Florida Exempted Fishing Permits (EFPs).

Studies being conducted on Florida’s east coast right now are allowing recreational anglers to catch and keep red snapper, and there’s still plenty of opportunity to put your name in the hat for a chance at an EFP.

Team Buck Rogers Charters out of Jacksonville got their hands on four of these golden tickets known as EFPs, and they are busily cashing them in. With an allowance of 36 red snapper per trip, six lucky anglers likely have sore arms from pumping and reeling.

“We’re piling them up. We’ve got four permits and 36 snapper per trip, and we’re 100 percent so far,” said Capt. Chad Starling. “It’s not hard. We did it in 45 minutes. That’s what happens when it’s been shut down for 14 years.”

Fishing with an Exempted Fishing Permit

EFPs allow the take of out-of-season fish for scientific research. Team Buck Rogers is participating in one of three red snapper and grouper studies being conducted right now by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). With a captain, a mate, six anglers and an FWC representative onboard, they have fished three of these fast-paced meat runs on September 18, 19, 20. Starling is confident they’ll boat their 36 snapper a fourth time on Oct. 1.

“Every fish gets harvested,” Starling said. “I mean, you go out and fish for 45 minutes, keep everything you catch and then come back.”

In a social media post on Sept. 23, Team Buck Rogers said their captains have carpal tunnel syndrome from filleting fish and that they’re running through their Ziplock bags. The anglers get to keep the meat and FWC keeps the carcasses for study.

In a press release, FWC indicated these studies are intended to collaborate with anglers to collect data on red snapper and test ways to reduce red snapper discards. Starling said he hopes they’re looking at the fish from his boats and seeing all sizes and ages of red snapper, which would be evidence of a population that’s healthy enough to allow more regular harvest opportunities.

Since 2011, NOAA has managed South Atlantic red snapper under an intense rebuilding plan with extremely limited federal seasons and bag limits. It has worked well, according to the many captains and recreational anglers who say they are seeing more snapper than ever. Continued strict regulations are a source of building frustration. This summer in the Atlantic from North Carolina through Florida, NOAA—through the South Atlantic Marine Fishery Council—allowed recreational anglers just a single day to harvest one snapper per person.

“Like you, FWC is frustrated with the current state of Atlantic red snapper management,” said Jessica McCawley, director of FWC’s Division of Marine Fisheries Management. “We recognize that people are seeing more red snapper than ever on the water. These particular EFPs try to turn discarded fish into landed catch and improve angler satisfaction by testing different management measures.”

How to Get an Exempted Fishing Permit

The trips Team Buck Rogers Charters takes with its clients are part of a program called FWC Study Fleet. FWC selects five charter captains every three months to participate by fishing Atlantic waters off northern Florida. To get in on one of these trips, private recreational anglers must likely be preferred clients of one of the captains selected.

For private recreational charter captains who want to get involved, eligibility details and enrollment information are available at myfwc.com. For instructions on how to apply watch this video.

There are also two programs that allow private recreational anglers to keep a few red snapper. The FWC Hot Spot Fleet program is for private Florida anglers who fish north of the NASA Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral. The SE FL Snapper Grouper Fleet program is for private anglers who fish south of that point.

“For years, FWC has heard that anglers want to directly provide data to improve the management of Atlantic red snapper,” said FWC chairman Rodney Barreto. “This is your opportunity to do so. Your participation is not just desired; it’s essential for these studies to be a success and improve management.”

Up to 200 private anglers will be selected for each fleet every three months by lottery. Each selected angler will be randomly assigned to a group, either experimental or control. There are different requirements for anglers fishing the two groups, and experimental group anglers will be allowed to harvest three snapper per day during official fleet trips.

All three fleet programs have three remaining application periods: Oct. 4-14, Jan. 3-13 and April 4-14.To learn more about these programs go to myfwc.com. For instructions on how to apply watch this video.

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The introduction around two decades ago of small, live croakers as summertime spotted seatrout bait forever changed Texas coastal fishing and ruffled a lot of salty feathers. Croakers breathed fresh life into a formerly rough patch of hot-season trout fishing one livewell or yellow wading bucket at a time. That pulse has grown stronger with every subsequent season. And now, as gauged by the length of pre-dawn lines at bait camps, it may well be a majority of fishermen who proudly embrace their designations as “croaker soakers.”

And why not? They’re the ones catching the most fish through the hottest months. And they were catching all the more spotted seatrout, prime spawners, when the daily limit on trout was still 10 statewide. So many, in fact, that a sagging trout population in the early 2000s, as measured by annual gillnet surveys conducted since 1974, was attributed by many anglers as primarily the fault of little croakers on big hooks.

Finger-pointing occasionally turned into dockside shouting matches and sometimes worse between those who did and those who would never use croakers as bait. That level of confrontation has subsided, thankfully, mostly because the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) enacted countermeasures to repair a substantially broken population.

Texas Trout Numbers Aren’t What They Used to Be

As a test, in 2007, TPWD rolled out a five-fish limit along the lower Texas coast. It worked. In 2014, perhaps a little late, that five-fish bag was extended northward roughly to Matagorda. And in 2019, five fish daily became the rule along all 700-plus miles of Texas coastline.

The latest reduction, to three fish daily statewide against a 15- to 20-inch slot (with a special annual license tag for one over-slot fish that won’t be used often by Texas’ conservation-minded anglers), started this past spring. It came none too soon. From inception, croakers replaced light stringers with easy limits of prime, spawning-class trout. So easy, in fact, that many guides did and still do book two trips daily — sometimes with guaranteed limits. Croakers are that irresistible to speckled trout.

The fate suffered by spawning-class croakers was worse. There are enough, as we see by how many are caught and sold for bait each summer, but relatively few if measured against previous counts. Yesteryear’s croakers routinely weighed 2 pounds. In the dawn of summertime croaker soaking, in 2002, Texas even produced a new state record for the species. That beauty of a beast was 29 inches long and weighed 5.47 pounds. The record stands today, and I’ve neither seen nor heard of a croaker heavier than 3 pounds since.

It’s trout that rule in Texas, though, and the sinking of the croaker population hasn’t drawn many tears. So long as there are enough spawning croakers — perhaps opening a fish-farming opportunity — there will be buyers at any price. Early on, live croakers fetched maybe a quarter each, a little less if you wanted to load the well. Today, with demand on the rise and no comparable alternative, the little baits fetch as much as a dollar per croak.

Bait trawlers love their pay raise. Shorter drags, necessary to keep juvenile croakers alive, burn less fuel. Similarly to how Paul Prudhomme buried a leather-tough bull redfish fillet in rich spices, shrimpers have found a way to turn low-value bycatch into a high-profit commodity.

Refreshed Texas Trout Regulations

Instead of banning the popular bait, as suggested routinely in recent years, TPWD is rebuilding its trout population — in quantity and quality — by common-sense harvest reduction. No closed season, thankfully, but a shorter stringer that shifts from reactive to proactive on enhancement of this precious fishery.

There was a halfway organized movement to have croakers declared gamefish in Texas, the same status enjoyed by trout and reds. It got exactly as far — nowhere — as the idea of banning croakers as bait. Worth noting, requests for input from guides and recreational fishermen prior to writing this story fell mostly on deaf ears. Common goals heal many wounds, especially since Texas trout appear to be on a good track.

The focus now, with a no-nonsense limit in place that can’t help but improve this fishery by every measure, is on enhancement and on an excellent path to success. Even with croakers on every other boat, nearly every boat on some bays, the three-fish daily limit enables Texas trout to increase their population overall, and that top-end slot of 20 inches gives bigger fish the chance to become giants. Collectively, Texas trout fishermen are on board and eager to reap the benefits of their sacrifice.

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Dan Caricaburu-Lundin, of Anchorage, Alaska, launched his kayak on Montana’s Ackley Lake with a mission to break IGFA’s all-tackle length world record for tiger muskie. In a Facebook post the morning of May 20, he wrote “I’m not looking for a fish today; I’m looking for ‘the fish.’” The accompanying photo showed a large, trout-patterned glide bait and an official IGFA measuring device.

Sometimes things do go as planned. A few hours later, he found himself posing for photos with a 115-centimeter (45.28-inch) tiger muskie that beat the previous world length record by about 6 inches. IGFA officially approved the new record in August.

“I’ve fished [Lake Ackley] a lot, and the biggest one I’ve caught was 44 inches,” Dan said. “So, catching one that big is pretty cool.”

Montana Tiger Muskie Fishing

Tiger muskellunge are a hybrid cross of true muskellunge (Esox masquinongy) and northern pike (Esox lucius). They inherit traits from both sides of their parentage, which makes them ferocious and toothy ambush predators. They are an awesome game fish with record weights heavier than 50 pounds.

Lake Ackley’s tiger muskie are no accident. Dan said he’s fished the small 226-acre lake a good bit and has seen a number of big ones. Ackley has long been a trout fishery, and about 10 years ago, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) began stocking tiger muskie annually to counter out-of-control populations of less-desirable longnose and white suckers. The resulting tiger muskie population is well-fed.

Catching The World Record Tiger Muskie

Dan said his fish was easily heavier than 30 pounds. He spotted it on Garmin LiveScope cruising about 3 feet deep over deeper water and cast an 8-inch-long, 2.5-ounce custom kokanee salmon glide bait that he made himself in his garage. He was in the process of turning his kayak when the fish ate.

“I wasn’t ready for the bite, so I made kind of a half-a**ed hook set and he jumped like 5 feet out of the water,” Dan said. “I was kind of panicking a little bit. I was kind of under-gunned for it. I mean that fish barely fit in my net.”

Dan made his way to the bank, where he was able to subdue the fish from shore. Fishing guide Boone Tullet just happened to be driving by and saw Dan fighting the fish. He pulled over and helped get photos and an official IGFA measurement before releasing the fish. The previous length record measured 100 centimeters (39.37 inches). It was caught at Blue Water Reservoir, New Mexico by Joshua Daniels in 2022.

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The Difference Between False Albacore and Bonito

Not many anglers in Florida or the Gulf coastal states will go out of their way to target bonito (often pronounced “bonita”). Sure, the small tunas put up a good tussle, but it’s a rare angler indeed who would call up his bros to say, “Hey, let’s go out tomorrow to see if we can catch some bonito!”

It’s a damned shame though that false albacore aren’t available to anglers in Florida. One seldom hears of those small tunas being caught south of the Carolinas. But you know they’re really great game fish because light-tackle and fly anglers go nuts when the false albies are running, and will enthusiastically plan a day to go out and target them. So, I guess the takeaway is: Bonito kind of suck, but false albacore are fabulous little gamesters.

But wait — the two “species” are actually the very same fish, properly called the little tunny, Euthynnus alletteratus. If a rose by any other name still smells as sweet, you’d have to figure a false albacore by any other name fights as hard.

And the fact is, little tunnies fight as hard as bluefin, pound for pound, giving it all they’ve got. When matched to suitable tackle, they’ll make a drag sing and an angler dance to keep up with a fish running this way and that around and under a boat.

Don’t Miss Out on Jacks and Sailcats

Another Rodney Dangerfield is the jack crevalle. They assault plugs and flies with thrilling belligerence and then battle with the stamina of the Energizer bunny. While anglers would likely agree they’re fun to catch, not many go out of their way to find them. These jacks are in fact a smaller version of the giant trevally, yet the GT is revered as an awesome game fish for the very qualities of the undervalued crevalle.

There are lots more examples. One that I feel is decidedly underrated is the gafftopsail catfish. Yeah, they do leave a bit of slime on one’s leader, but they are tremendous fighters and will hit lures (I’ve caught many on topwaters), plus are one of the coolest-looking catfishes. I’ve watched seasoned anglers happily assume they’re fighting a good redfish, only to be disgusted when it turns out to be a sailcat. What? They didn’t just enjoy an exciting battle?

Of course, edibility is often cited as a reason these fish don’t enjoy more respect. I’ve heard it said more than once that if bonito or jacks were good eating, everyone would love ’em. But with so many anglers these days declaring their focus largely on catch-and-release fishing, more for sport than food, that’s a bit hard to figure.

I suspect that anglers who don’t get overly hung up on the prestige of a given species are probably having a lot more fun than those hunting only glamour fish and trophies. I’m fishing not to impress others, but for the sheer pleasure of it. I respect any game fish — including bonito, jacks and sailcats — that can put a tight bend in my light spinning rod and make my drag sing. For that kind of action, I say without shame: Deal me in every time.

The post Three Underrated Sportfish You Should Target appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Three anglers were standing in neck-deep water off a beach on the Florida panhandle, being circled by a 12-foot shark—the kind of shark that makes its living attacking swordfish, tuna, and other sharks. It was the next-to-last moment in a beach-fishing adventure none of them will forget, and it ended safely for all of them, including the shark.

On November 12, Travis Lucas and friends Joshua Smith and Ben Brandner caught and released a very large shortfin mako shark from the beach. It’s exceedingly rare to catch a mako from shore; they prefer deep water and the larger prey that live there. This was the first confirmed shore-caught mako at Cape San Blas, about an hour east of Panama City. The shark was released per the rules; harvesting Atlantic mako sharks has been prohibited since 2022 due to overfishing.

Lucas, Smith, and Brandner never expected to catch a mako, let alone one that’s about as big as they get. “We usually just target big species, like bull sharks,” Lucas recalled. A week earlier, they had caught a 12-foot dusky shark and a 13-foot great hammerhead.

The Hometown Sharkers Score Big

The group, “Hometown Sharkers” on their social media, specialize in overnight beach outings.
Lucas was set up with an Okuma Makaira 130 reel spooled with 200-pound Reaction Tackle braid, a 300-pound mono top shot, and a homemade 800-pound leader on a 7-foot Rainshadow rod. The 24/0 circle hook was baited with a chunk of a blacktip shark caught earlier in the day.

Lucas had dropped the bait from a kayak about 1,000 yards offshore at sunset and paddled back to camp. During the evening, “we ended up catching a smaller bull shark on another rod,” he said. After that, it was a calm, cool night on a quiet beach—until it wasn’t.

“We had actually dozed off,” Lucas said. “I woke up to the 130 screaming.” He got into his harness and immediately knew the fish was heavy, perhaps a tiger shark. “It started pulling pretty significant drag pretty effortlessly,” he said.

Ten minutes in, the fish “woke up” and began leaping in the moonlight, “pretty much back-to-back for three or four minutes in one position, and then again in the next,” Lucas said. Eventually, the acrobatics ended. The fish ran toward shore a couple of times, which made life easier for Lucas, and the fight was over in 35 minutes.

As the fish neared the beach, the anglers still didn’t know what they had caught. Maybe a hammerhead, they thought. When it reached the wash, they thought it may have been a great white. When they finally got a light on it, “there was a lot of screaming,” Lucas recalled.

Team Release

“Releasing that fish was one of the most memorable situations I’ve had,” he said. “We realized it was a mako. Josh runs out with the tail rope. I come out with bolt cutters and the hook remover. We get out there, assess the situation, get it unhooked, get the leader off of it. It was about 49 degrees, it was cold.”

Lucas’s wife, Flower, and the other guys’ girlfriends watched and held flashlights from the beach. The group began moving the mako to deeper water to ease its release. “So it’s pitch black outside. We get out past the sandbar, so we know she can swim off. She swims out 10 or 15 feet and comes back at us. She made three full circles around us before thrashing at the surface and then swimming off. It was definitely nerve-wracking.”

The group saw for themselves why makos are sometimes confused with, blue sharks. “They are in every sense of the word ‘blue sharks’,” Lucas said. “When the light hits them they’ll go from deep purple to blue, and it’s a color you’d never expect to see from an animal. It almost seems like it’s a holographic. They’re pretty wild looking. It’s definitely a once in a lifetime fish.”

The post Massive Mako Caught on Florida Beach appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

I watched a National Geographic documentary recently on the African savanna, highlighting the typical predator-prey encounters that the landscape is famous for. A wildebeest was at a watering hole and, predictably, its day was ruined by a pack of gnarly hyenas. I always felt sorry for the big beasts as they tried to fend off attacks from every quadrant. Sometimes the beasts get away, but many at least suffer wounds that eventually finish them off.

Which reminds me of the current state of Florida waterways, besieged by repeated thrashings from a pack of hyenas, in the form of ancient and inadequate sewer infrastructure, failing septic systems close to the water, heavy residential and corporate agriculture fertilizer runoff, stormwater runoff, freshwater herbicides and more. That’s a formidable, destructive pack of attackers.

And it’s all happening at once. The causes and consequences have been relatively ignored for years, and if these attacks do not stir panic in the hearts of Floridians who fish, boat, love the water, or care about their health — maybe they’re not paying attention.

The Real Culprit

Lack of political will and urgency — plus inadequate funding — is at the heart of the failures. It’s too easy to chalk it up to too many new residents coming in or too many tourists. The reality is Florida’s office-holders at every level, and the agencies they oversee, are stuck in a time warp. They seem to think you can still use 1950s technology and approaches that worked for a 1950s population, and somehow protect the resource that is suffering much greater pressure today.

Not to mention that development permitting is way too easy in the Sunshine State. If you fish in Florida, you’ve likely seen the bumper sticker that reads “Leaving Florida? Take a developer with you.” That attitude likely sprung from the over-development of the woods, freshwater springs, lakes and salt waters that long-time Floridians consider “True Florida.” And True Florida is rapidly disappearing.

Sewer, Septic and Stormwater Pollution

The Everglades water crisis — and efforts to restore the natural system — is the center of attention (even internationally) for good reason. But that’s just one part of the massive Florida water problem — local point-source pollution throughout Florida is worsening rapidly.

Florida’s sewage infrastructure is ancient (as old as 80 years) and simply inadequate in places, where development is off the chain and natural habitat loss is shocking. Aside from age, performance of sewers is inhibited by Florida’s heavy rain, and of course, tropical storms. The regular rainfall and common deluges basically guarantee major spills. Sewage lift stations without generators shut down. Untreated sewage backs up and overflows, usually through simple manhole covers. It all ends up in our favorite waterways where we swim, fish and boat. Many expect rising sea level to exacerbate this problem.

Heavy and repeated nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) loading from septic leeching and large-scale sewage system spills fuel the harmful algal blooms (HABs) that cloud both fresh and coastal salt waters, shutting out sunlight that is vital to seagrass health. And all of Florida’s marine fish and other organisms depend on seagrass, and to a lesser extent, oysters and other shellfish. Not to mention sky-rocketing fecal bacteria levels that make people ill, and often prompt no-contact health warnings on the water.

Perfect examples of nutrient hotspots on the Atlantic coast include the upper St. John’s River, the entire 156-mile-long Indian River Lagoon, the St. Lucie estuary, Lake Worth Lagoon, and Broward and Dade county’s heavily urbanized waterways. On the Gulf coast, the west central region accounted for over half of all spills from 2009 to 2020. Southwest Florida accounted for over 15 percent. In contrast, the Space Coast on the Atlantic side accounted for 25 percent of all sewage spills. Not surprisingly, the heaviest population density regions fared the worst.

Sewage spills get the most media attention, and are more shocking to see than the continuous polluting inflows of stormwater. Florida’s copious annual rainfall used to seep into the ground surface and into Florida’s “honeycomb” aquifer. Now, rooftops, streets, parking lots and other impervious, developed surfaces prevent much of this. There is instead a quick shunting of this rainfall, and the pollutants it picks up, directly into lakes, rivers and coastal bays, in most cases, without any degree of treatment.

Everglades Restoration Sputters Along

Long before Florida saw today’s rampant development and sprawl, early settlers envisioned making a “worthless swamp” a money-making landscape. They blindly drained the wetlands of South Florida which was ruinous for the natural water flow that once trickled over land and in the porous ground year-round from today’s Orlando region to Florida Bay in Everglades National Park. Three major roadblocks interrupted the natural flow of the River of Grass:

• 1) Herbert Hoover Dike (which today is essentially a hardened dam)
• 2 and 3) Alligator Alley and Tamiami Trail cross-state highways that intersect the southern Everglades

The highways greatly impede the wet season bounty of fresh water which naturally spilled over the southern rim of the Lake Okeechobee. In time, the lands were drained by canals to accommodate corporate agricultural operations, mainly sugar growing and some row crops which needed drier fields in summer and fall, and ample irrigation during winter drought.

In the 1950s, the agriculture industry grew with dairy farms, cattle ranches and citrus groves. Unfiltered and unmonitored, nutrient runoff from these farms caused eutrophication of Lake Okeechobee. Increased phosphorus levels fed cyanobacterial blooms, also known as blue-green algae, on Lake Okeechobee. The harmful blooms and sediments flowed unimpeded to outlet valves such as the St. Lucie River to the Atlantic and the Caloosahatchee River to the Gulf. Florida basically destroyed three estuaries, and the dependent coastal economies, to support an agriculture industry that belongs elsewhere. (Note: Florida sugar is subsidized.)

The big hope in 2000 was the signing of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) by the Clinton administration, a complex suite of 65 water projects designed to right the Everglades ship, to basically restore the natural hydrology of the vast wetland. It was to take 20 years, with costs shared by the federal government and the State of Florida.

CERP is in year 24 with less than 10 percent of the work completed. A vast reservoir and stormwater treatment area (STA) is finally under construction south of Lake Okeechobee. It will supposedly take 20 percent of the polluted water from Lake Okeechobee that currently trashes the coastal rivers. Its size was shrunk by over 70 percent during land-acquisition negotiations — the state of Florida failed to find enough willing landowners to sell for the project footprint. The water-holding area might be completed and operational by 2035 if there’s enough money allocated in each budget year.

Take Real Action

Too many Floridians are not especially enamored with the outdoors, and too many seasonal visitors seem to accept the declining natural resources because, well, at least it’s not snowing outside. All anglers and outdoorsmen should engage with those who are paid by state and federal taxes to fix this mess.

Too few realize they can speak their displeasure directly to Florida’s branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the state’s handful of water management districts (St. Johns, Southwest and South Florida), the governor, senators and representatives, county commissioners, mayors — all of them. You can even take part with public comment on those monthly water district meetings. Hate to say it, but anglers are too often missing from the discourse. Same goes for the recreational fishing tackle companies, boat-makers and tourism businesses who stand to lose their shirts if this continues.

Responsibility Starts at Home

In the case of point-source pollution, you can change a few things you might be doing at home. Do you fertilize your yard and landscape? Consider stopping altogether, or at the least, choose low-nutrient products. Slow release, too. And never apply fertilizer, herbicides and fungicides during the wet season. It all ends up in the storm drains and public waterways. Floridians are increasingly eliminating turf grass, replacing it with native ground covers and plants. It’s a great move to make.

Don’t blow turf grass clippings onto streets where they end up washing into storm with the next heavy rain. They decompose and add phosphorus to lakes and streams, plus cause algal blooms in summer.

If you live where there’s sewage infrastructure, and you still have a septic tank, consider hooking up to sewer. There are cost help programs in some municipalities and communities. Conversion to sewage is finally gaining traction. Be part of the solution. At the least, keep your septic system in good working order.

Speaking of flushing, please never dispose of outdated or extra pharmaceuticals that your doctor prescribed. Researchers are finding massive amounts of human drugs in our fish and other wildlife. Some of the compounds do enter the waterways through human urine, but flushing old pills can and should be stopped.

About the Author: Mike Conner is a lifelong Florida fisherman, specializing in fly and light tackle angling. He has worked as a guide in South Florida, as a staff editor at magazines such as Florida Sportsman and Shallow Water Angler, and as executive director of the Indian Riverkeeper.

The post How Florida’s Water Woes Affect Anglers appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Recreational anglers are applauding progress by the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission (GSMFC) to improve the quality and timeliness of recreational fishery dependent data gathered by the Gulf states. With the ongoing turmoil in federal recreational data collection efforts, anglers are optimistic that the states will be in position to break from the federal data system, as other regions have done, and assume management of red snapper and other species in the Gulf of Mexico in the near future.

David Donaldson, executive director of the commission, recently reported to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council that more than $6.6 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding is being applied to:

• Improve state and commission data management systems;
• Develop better methods of quality control;
• Establish GSMFC as centralized warehouse for state fishery dependent data;
• Evaluate ways to validate state-based recreational fishing effort estimates;
• Evaluate ways to improve recreational discard data

Progress at the commission can’t come too soon as it is becoming apparent that the federal management system is struggling to function due to uncertainty in the federal recreational data. Continued cooperation by the Commission and the Gulf states is critical to provide a viable alternative to the current federal system, which is anchored in decades of questionable data, uncertain conversions and outdated management models. It has become almost impossible for fishery management councils to make timely decisions.

In just the last few months, the following developments have highlighted deep-rooted problems in the federal management system bringing trust in that system to the lowest level possible:

Fishing Effort Survey Errors

Last August, NOAA Fisheries announced that errors in its recreational data program — the Marine Recreational Information Program-Fishing Effort Survey (MRIP-FES) — is causing the over-estimation of recreational harvest by up to 40 percent for some species. This error was believed to be caused by the order of questions in the survey; moving them around yielded more accurate results.  Despite that rather small change that led to exceptionally spurious findings, managers will be forced to use the flawed data for management for several years as the system is analyzed. The recreational data program will once again go back to the drawing board — now looking at the third major change since the last reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. This certainly does not instill in recreational anglers any trust in NOAA management.

Red Snapper Numbers Remain Unclear

In January 2024, it was announced that SEDAR 74 — the current Gulf of Mexico Red Snapper Stock Assessment — was unable to produce a viable stock assessment for the most studied species in the Gulf reef fish complex. The stock assessment model contains more than a jaw-dropping 2,900 parameters, each with its own level of uncertainty and bias. Even a casual observer would not expect robust management advice to be produced by such a convoluted process. A new assessment is not expected for at least two years. Moreover, due to the model’s instability, reviewers recommended not including findings from the Great Red Snapper Count (GRSC), a $12 million independent stock assessment of the Gulf red snapper population funded by Congress and conducted by 12 leading marine science institutes and more than 100 of the top scientists around the Gulf and beyond. The GRSC was finalized in 2021 and found a red snapper population at least three times larger than NOAA’s estimates. As it stands, that $12 million effort has been largely ignored by NOAA Fisheries.

Conflicting Gag Grouper Numbers

NOAA Fisheries recently released its initial recreational harvest numbers for Gulf of Mexico gag grouper, which were seven times higher than results generated by the State of Florida Reef Fish Survey (SRFS). The findings included 106,000 pounds of gag grouper harvested from shore based on a single intercept on a bridge. Taken as presented, those findings would indicate the recreational sector is more than four times over its annual catch limit and would necessitate severe management actions, including possible bottom closures. NOAA officials have laid out a plan to go back and determine where these incredible numbers came from and how to deal with them.

What’s the Next Step?

These are just a few of many findings and outcomes of what continually appears to be a flawed system of exceptional reactive vs proactive resource management. These events are part of a crisis management pattern that has undermined the effectiveness of NOAA Fisheries as a viable management entity. Constantly unwinding errors from the past and eliminating unexplainable outliers leaves no room for forward-thinking — only reacting. The fishery management councils and staff are doing the best they can, but the federal agency has painted itself into a corner and the system is staggering under its own weight. Trust is so low that there are reports of private marinas beginning to block NMFS access to their docks. This crisis of confidence in MRIP needs to be addressed by turning the data collection over to the states.

Comparing West Coast to Southeast States

The Gulf Coast states are following a path taken by the West Coast states, which opted out of the federal data system in 2002. This follows a long-held management paradigm that fisheries management is most successfully accomplished at the most local level reasonable. For example, Oregon, Washington and California reached an agreement in which NOAA takes the funding it was using to collect recreational data and gives it to the states, and those states collect their own data and supply it to NOAA Fisheries for management purposes. No calibration, no trying to tie it back to NOAA’s inexplicable MRIP numbers — a clean cut. The West Coast states broke with NOAA due to frustration with the same problems that are plaguing the Southeast. States in the South Atlantic are also currently exploring options after ongoing data debacles in the red snapper, reef fish and Spanish mackerel fisheries, among others.

Recreational data problems in the federal system aren’t going away — they’re getting worse. Fortunately, there is a path forward in the Gulf, and we believe it is time to embrace a cohesive state-based management program that utilizes timely, current data and produces information managers can use today. We must get down to the business of properly managing our fisheries rather than wasting time explaining the mistakes of the past.

About the Author: Ted Venker is the Vice President and Conservation Director of the Coastal Conservation Association.

The post Give Power to the States appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

The sport and the science of sport fishing lost a hero, an advocate for science as a tool for better fisheries management in the Gulf of Mexico, and (in the best sense) a true fish nerd — Bob Shipp, who died on Jan 25.

I make the latter claim because I’m also a total fish nerd, which helps explain my friendship with Dr. Bob for more than 15 years. Besides often comparing notes with Shipp about fishes and their world, as editor-in-chief of Sport Fishing magazine, I edited a ton of content submitted by Shipp all of those years.

The scientist — who earned his PhD in biology and served for years as chair and professor of the Marine Science Department of the University of South Alabama in Mobile — was my go-to guy among a panel of Fish Facts experts who wrote for that ever-popular department in Sport Fishing. No kid in a candy store was ever more enthused than Shipp whenever I challenged him with a reader’s what-the-heck-is-this? fish photo and question.

Of course, he always knew the answer, and always promptly submitted a response in his down-home style — informative yet folksy and never pedantic. Such was his style in general, in a lab, on the docks, and on the water. I had the pleasure to fish the Gulf of Mexico a time or two with Bob, and it was evident that he rejoiced in walking the walk.

Bob wrote the authoritative Dr. Bob Shipp’s Guide to Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico, a real bible for all things piscatorial concerning the Gulf. For every species, his information included but transcended the scientific to include interesting tidbits and often amusing anecdotes by the guy who had “been there” for many species.

Shipp also authored an article in the March 2016 issue of Sport Fishing titled “The Great Gulf Red Snapper Train Wreck.” He did a remarkable job of explaining that wreckage and how we got there, during the height of federal regulations that nearly caused a revolt among Gulf anglers. His research was instrumental in disproving the theory (among some large environmental NGOs particularly) that the thousands of oil rigs in the Gulf were bad for the Gulf’s ecology, only aggregating fish such as red snapper where they could be easily overfished. His data showed that to be the nonsense it was, as he proved that juvenile red snapper flock to the thriving coral habitat covering rigs to grow and spawn. That data showed what anglers knew — that “threatened” red snapper in the Gulf were abundant and increasingly so, which he directly attributed to the astounding amount of habitat these rigs provided in an otherwise mostly barren Gulf.

In nearly every issue of Sport Fishing for many years, Shipp answered at least one inquiry submitted along with a photo in the magazine’s popular department, Fish Facts. Check out some interesting photos and IDs here. I often recognized even obscure species from the photo, but I always learned from the man’s answers.

To have known and worked with Bob Shipp was certainly a privilege.

The post Bob Shipp Remembered appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Update: Art Weston can add to his already impressive list of records with a massive 283-pound alligator gar he caught while fishing in Sam Rayburn Lake, Texas on September 2, 2023. The giant gar overtakes his previous best of 251 pounds, and if approved will potentially set both the IGFA All-Tackle and IGFA Men’s 6-pound Line Class World Records for the species. Weston was once again fishing with Capt. Kirk Kirkland aboard the Garship Enterprise when the big gar hit, and gave him an incredible 2-hour and 45-minute battle before getting the fish to the scale. Like most of Weston’s records, this gar was weighed on a certified scale and released. The IGFA states this record is currently pending and under review.

(Original article continues below.)

Even for an expert in catching world-record fish, this one was special: a freshwater specimen nearly 8 feet long from a river in Texas.

Art Weston has made a specialty of setting International Game Fish Association records. In fact, the massive alligator gar was one of six potential IGFA record fish Weston caught on a recent trip to the Trinity River, including a 142-pound alligator gar on 50-pound test, and a 191-pounder on 130-pound line.

He caught the big fish – 7.5 feet long and 251 pounds – on 80-pound braid. “It was easier to catch than the 102-pound fish on 2-pound line, I can tell you that,” which he did Oct. 1, 2022, he said.

A Gar Fishing Record Setter

Weston, who lives in Union, Kentucky, and manages the artificial intelligence department for a bank, already has a long list of IGFA records, including six that are pending. If they and his most recent submissions are all certified, his total will be 46. And counting.

“I think probably record fish are caught every day, but people don’t know that they’re records, or know the rules for submitting them,” he told Sport Fishing magazine.

Weston is obviously a serious angler, and fishes where the big fish are, including Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Bolivia and Brazil. He also knows the requirements for certifying a catch and has the gear and equipment to satisfy them. For example, while big alligator gar are caught on the Trinity River all the time, most of them are caught on baited treble hooks — and that’s against the IGFA rules. Weston fishes for them with J hooks.

Along with knowing the IGFA rules inside out, he’s made a hobby of assessing things like line breaking strength, hook strength, the effects of abrasion. “I actually have a digital force gauge in my house,” he said. “I make hundreds and hundreds of leaders every year. All of that I did to have an advantage in record hunting.”

Weston even shares his know-how on his YouTube channel, Analytic Angling.

A Surprise Bite from a Record Gar

The big gar took a piece of carp on the Trinity on April 16. Weston was fishing from shore with Capt. Kirk Kirkland, who’s landed thousands of the big fish as a commercial fisherman and a guide. The fish never set off the rod’s alarm; Weston had only picked up the rod to re-cast when he discovered he had hooked up.

You don’t fight a fish like that standing on the bank. Weston and Capt. Kirk boarded the Garfish Enterprise, Kirkland’s custom-built, flat-bottomed Weldbilt, and pursued the big gal on the river. The fight was a relatively brief 25 minutes. Kirkland saw the fish first. “He just yelled out, ‘That’s the one, that’s the one you want,’” Weston recalled. “I’m like, ‘Is it big?” and he’s like, ‘it’s huge.’”

They both thought they might have caught an actual alligator, which are common in the area. “It pulled the boat in circles,” Weston said. The gar surfaced, Kirkland got a lasso around it (permitted by IGFA), and they towed it to shore, hauled it up to the game tripod on the bank, weighed and measured it, and released it back to the river.

“It had a lot of fight left in it,” Weston said. “It just happened to surface and Kirk was fast enough to get the lasso around it. We were very fortunate to land it fast. It wasn’t out of the water for more than five minutes, and they’re air breathers. It was released alive and well with no issues.”

The current IGFA 80-pound-test record for alligator gar is 132 pounds, set by Jennifer Schall in the same river in 2021. The all-tackle IGFA record for alligator gar is 279 pounds, set way back in 1951.

Careful Selection Leads to More Records

Not all of Weston’s records are enormous fish. He picks his battles, seeking species that aren’t well represented on the IGFA lists. For example, the IGFA recently determined that Alabama bass were misclassified and wiped out all the records. The fish in question is now called spotted bass. On the April trip, Weston caught one on 2-pound line, one on 4-pound, and one for its length, and expects them all to be IGFA records, at least for a while. “I don’t mind being the first one,” he said.

Another example: two of his teenage kids caught IGFA records a mile from their house. A nearby pond had been stocked with hybrid striped bass, which are also known as wipers, but which the IGFA calls whiterock bass. No one had submitted a catch for the species. Emery and Elyse Weston each caught two and entered the record books.

All of which goes to show there are opportunities for recognition. “You actually have a better chance than most people think, depending on what you’re trying to catch,” Weston said.

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