Fishing

The first portion of the 2021 black sea bass season comes to a close a minute before midnight Tuesday and this is the final crack at this cooperative glutton until October 8 to take advantage of the 10-fish limit.

The various shapes (grubs, mullets, shrimp, crab), shapes and lengths have a common denominator, that being a scent that the flatties cannot seem to resist.

The half way page on the calendar signals the onset of the offshore season when bluefin tuna, soon to be followed by yellowfin and then bigeye tuna, dominate the offshore angling scene.

Because others are trashing the properties and otherwise using it for purposes not intended, we, the anglers who helped purchase and maintain the property, can’t go fishing?

With the huge amount of focus and angling effort centered on saltwater (flounder, weakfish, stripers, sea bass and black drum), South Jersey’s freshwater fishing scene remains largely ignored.

In this context, “fish” is summer flounder, aka fluke, and not to be excluded are the tidal rivers.

As one South Jersey charter captain put it, “There are so many sea bass out there that they’re eating the paint off the bottom of my boat!”

Sure, these are sunfish, but not the 3-4 inch sunnies associated with kids, a Barbie or Spiderman push button outfit, a bobber and a nib of garden worm.

For the second springtime in a row, the NJ Bureau of Freshwater Fisheries re-vamped its spring stocking schedule in order to minimize angler crowding (the social distancing thing) as well as any risks to personnel.

With the black drum in Delaware Bay (and also in Great Bay...see below), the bluefish still on the crush and stripers in the rivers and back bays chowing, who is even thinking about cod?