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Fish and Game forecast for Saturday, February 1st- brought to you by Mott's Wholesale KFDM-TV News
49 minutes ago
The feeling probably is comparable to that of a prospector who discovers a gold nugget at the bottom of his pan.
You’re at a flea market, perhaps, or an estate sale. Wandering among old furniture, tools and the odds and ends of a life not your own, you stumble upon some really nice fishing tackle, all priced to move.
You gobble it up and smile all the way to the truck, thrilled with your big score.
Sweet indeed. But here’s the question.
Can you do it again? And again and again and again?
In truth, the answer is probably not. Finds like that, based on chance more than anything else, are by their nature tough to repeat.
So it is with fishing.
Anyone can tie into the occasional random school of fish. But putting a bend in your rod time after time after time takes more than luck. It requires consistently fishing where the fish are.
Obvious, yes. Easy, no.
Well, at least it didn’t used to be. In decades past, learning a fishery meant spending hours upon hours on the water, probing and prodding.
Things are a bit different today thanks to modern electronics.
“Your depth finder is really the key to finding fish,” said Keith Eshbaugh of Cochranton, owner of Dutch Fork Fishing Charters and a former professional walleye tour competitor. “You’ve got to go out and look with your depth finder and find the fish and only then determine what technique you’re going to use to catch them.”
Such electronics are sometimes a mystery in themselves, though. More advanced than ever, they are also — at least for some anglers — more confusing than ever.
But Eshbaugh said anglers only need to be able to record four things on their depth finder.
One is speed, so you can troll at the same pace each time. Two is water temperature, which tells you where — shallow or deep — the fish are likely to be. Three is water depth, so as to break fishing a lake into segments (say, 0 to 10 feet, 10 to 20 and 20 to 30). Four is sensitivity, which is how much detail the depth finder picks up.
“If your sensitivity isn’t high enough, you’re not going to mark the fish efficiently. You’ll mark the bottom but not the fish,” he said.
“And if it’s too high, you’ll have too much clutter on the screen.”
In other words, the depth finder is providing a picture of what’s under — and in the case of side sonar, to the sides — of the boat. You want the best picture possible, Eshbaugh said.
In cases, where the bottom of the lake is relatively smooth, it is possible to actually see fish, said Casey Smith of Fairport, N.Y., who competes on the FLW bass tour. That’s less true if it’s weedy.
But that’s still OK.
When he fishes weeds — and he does often, in his home water of Cayuga Lake, especially — he’s not necessarily looking for fish first.
“What I’m looking for in the grass with my electronics are irregularities,” Smith said. “I’m looking for clumps, I’m looking to see how deep it goes, I’m looking for bare spots.
“All you want to do is see what’s different.”
He said that’s because bass often patrol those edges, where two habitat features meet. It’s the same with rock humps, points, sunken road beds, woody debris and more.
His electronics show him where all those spots are, he said.
“Irregularities” like that are huge in holding not just bass but fish of all kinds in all kinds of waters, Eshbaugh said.
Fish never are distributed equally in any lake or river, he said. They move around, between areas of food and cover, following predictable patterns influenced by lakebed features.
Those irregularities need not be large, either.
“When fish travel around Lake Erie, they actually follow bottom contours. Even though the water might be 60, 70 feet deep, if there’s a ledge with a 2-foot drop, they know where it is and they follow it. It’s their highway,” Eshbaugh said.
In an inland lake, a 6-inch difference in the bottom might work the same way, he said.
“That’s why, a lot of new places I go, I’ll spend half an hour looking around first, before I start fishing,” he said.
Electronics allow you to target hot spots time after time, too, said Dean Cushman of teachinfishin.com. When he finds fish, he marks that location with a GPS waypoint on his depth finder.
Then, later, he can return right to it.
“We can whittle down right where the fish are,” he said.
Now, knowing that doesn’t necessarily translate into automatic catches. There are variables to consider.
But electronics can at least have you in the right spot, Eshbaugh said.
“The depth finder does not lie,” he said. “When you look at it and there are marks all over it, you’ve got to figure out how to catch them. But there are fish there.”
In early February, the regulatory body that sets catch limits for menhaden—the country’s second-most-caught fish—will consider adopting a new way to manage the species, which is valued prey to wildlife. This is the second of three articles explaining why menhaden, and this potentially revolutionary decision, matter.
In our preceding post, we outlined the history of commercial menhaden fishing—and the much shorter period of management for the species—along the U.S. East and Gulf coasts. In sum, menhaden have been targeted for centuries but weren’t subject to an interstate catch limit until 2006, and even that was incomplete. It wasn’t until 2013 that a menhaden catch limit finally extended along the entire U.S. East Coast.
In a key decision in 2012, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages menhaden catch, set the coastwide limit at 25 percent below the prior year’s catch, demonstrating a strong commitment to conserving the species and its predators. This precautionary approach left an estimated 300 million more menhaden in the ocean and corresponds with significant growth in the population of large adult menhaden in the Northeast in the years that followed. Since then, the commission has resisted pressure for drastic increases in the limit, opting instead to raise it incrementally and promising to base policy on ecosystem-based science when it becomes available.
That moment is here. Last week, scientists released a peer-reviewed assessment on menhaden, and the commission will have the chance to adopt it as policy next week. Here’s a primer on that science.
For years, scientists have recommended that fishery management, even for one species, account for other elements of the broader marine food web. For example, scientists agree that forage fish—small schooling fish that serve as prey for myriad other species—deserve catch limits that account for their role.
That’s because forage fish are a connective tissue in the food web, transferring energy from the plankton they eat to high-level predators. Menhaden managers must take extra caution to ensure that overfishing doesn’t harm the broader food web.
For decades, menhaden management was tailored primarily to commercial fishing interests, with predators’ needs only roughly estimated. In this old single-species model, managers determined allowable catch based on reference points—an upper-end population target to shoot for and a low threshold to stay above—but these failed to ensure that enough menhaden were in the water to keep predators healthy.
Under the new method, managers would still identify targets and thresholds, but these numbers would be informed by ecological reference points (ERPs) that broaden the focus to account for key predators’ needs. For example, to generate an ERP for how many menhaden are eaten by striped bass, scientists combed through data, including studies of what those bass eat. Managers will still have discretion to consider trade-offs and risks, but the ERPs should mean that catch limits will keep menhaden populations stable or growing rather than falling so that key predators will be appropriately fed.
This model reduces the risk of population crashes, which means greater productivity and stability that will benefit wildlife, commercial menhaden fishing, recreational fishing of predators, and ecotourism businesses that depend on charismatic species ranging from osprey to whales.
Once the commission begins applying these new ERPs for menhaden, the country’s largest forage fishery—which is also the second-largest fishery of any kind in the country—will be managed using some of the most modern, science-based methods available. This should challenge other fishery management bodies to modernize their models and reference points and lead to better catch limits with a reduced risk of unexpected crashes of fish populations—natural resources that belong to the American people.
In our third and final post in this series, we will report on the commission’s decision about ecological reference points, which is expected at its early February meeting.
Joseph Gordon is a project director and Aaron Kornbluth is an officer with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ campaign to protect marine life on the U.S. East Coast.
Reminder for the week: Deer, duck, and dove hunting seasons ending
DOVER – DNREC’s Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police conserve Delaware’s fish and wildlife resources, promote boating safety, and protect the public through outreach, education, and law enforcement. To help achieve public compliance with laws and regulations, officers from Jan. 20-26 made 1,177 public contacts and responded to 67 complaints regarding possible violations of laws and regulations or requests to assist the public.
Officers issued a total of 54 citations for the following listed violations related to:
Wildlife Conservation: Unlawful to provide a guided hunt on division lands, unlicensed hunting, hunting license forgery, hunting migratory waterfowl without required HIP number, hunting migratory waterfowl without required federal waterfowl stamp, hunting migratory waterfowl without required state waterfowl stamp, possession of unlawfully taken waterfowl, failure to check antlered deer within 24 hours, failure to purchase a hunter choice tag prior to killing an antlered deer, failure to tag antlered deer, possess/transport an unlawfully taken antlered deer, failure to tag antlerless deer, failure to check antlerless deer within 24 hours, unlawful to purchase, sell, attempt to sell antlerless deer or antlerless deer parts, hunting deer with a firearm during archery season, unlawful use of dog training area*, and trespass to hunt.
Boating & Boating Safety: No boating safety certificate and no throwable preserver aboard as required for vessels 16 feet long or longer.
Public Safety: Failure to display required hunter orange during a firearms deer season, possession, purchase, ownership, or control of a deadly weapon by a person prohibited, possession of heroin, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Other: Impede a lawful hunt, trespassing after hours on a state wildlife area, operating an unregistered motor vehicle on a state wildlife area, fictitious motor vehicle tags, driving with a suspended or revoked license, loitering, and criminal impersonation.
*Includes citation(s) issued at the C&D Canal Conservation Area.
DNREC’s Division of Fish & Wildlife recognizes and thanks the majority of anglers, hunters, and boaters who comply with Delaware’s fishing, hunting, and boating laws and regulations. The public can report fish, wildlife, and boating violations to the Delaware Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police by calling 302-739-4580 or using the free smartphone DENRP Tip app downloaded from the Google Play Store or iTunes App Store. Wildlife violations can be reported anonymously to Operation Game Theft by calling 800-292-3030, going online to http://de.gov/ogt, or using the DENRP Tip app; Verizon customers can connect to Operation Game Theft directly by dialing #OGT.
Are you AWARE?
Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police remind hunters that deer, duck, and dove hunting seasons are coming to an end:
Although many hunting seasons are ending, Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police encourage the public to report game law violations as soon as possible. Some illegal activities that should be reported include:
For more information on hunting – including hunter education, licensing, hunting and trapping seasons, limits, regulations, wildlife area information, and more, with sections devoted to deer, small game, turkey, and migratory birds – click on 2019-2020 Delaware Hunting & Trapping Guide. Wildlife area maps with area-specific regulations are available online at Wildlife Area Maps.
Follow Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/DEFWNRPolice/.
Follow Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police on Twitter, https://twitter.com/DE_FW_NRPolice.
Contact: Sgt. Brooke Mitchell, Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police, 302-739-9913, or 302-382-7167.
Related Topics: arrests, blotter, boating, fishing, hunting, outdoors and recreation, permitting and regulation, police, wildlife
Keep up to date by receiving a daily digest email, around noon, of current news release posts from state agencies on news.delaware.gov.
Here you can subscribe to future news updates.
Reminder for the week: Deer, duck, and dove hunting seasons ending
DOVER – DNREC’s Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police conserve Delaware’s fish and wildlife resources, promote boating safety, and protect the public through outreach, education, and law enforcement. To help achieve public compliance with laws and regulations, officers from Jan. 20-26 made 1,177 public contacts and responded to 67 complaints regarding possible violations of laws and regulations or requests to assist the public.
Officers issued a total of 54 citations for the following listed violations related to:
Wildlife Conservation: Unlawful to provide a guided hunt on division lands, unlicensed hunting, hunting license forgery, hunting migratory waterfowl without required HIP number, hunting migratory waterfowl without required federal waterfowl stamp, hunting migratory waterfowl without required state waterfowl stamp, possession of unlawfully taken waterfowl, failure to check antlered deer within 24 hours, failure to purchase a hunter choice tag prior to killing an antlered deer, failure to tag antlered deer, possess/transport an unlawfully taken antlered deer, failure to tag antlerless deer, failure to check antlerless deer within 24 hours, unlawful to purchase, sell, attempt to sell antlerless deer or antlerless deer parts, hunting deer with a firearm during archery season, unlawful use of dog training area*, and trespass to hunt.
Boating & Boating Safety: No boating safety certificate and no throwable preserver aboard as required for vessels 16 feet long or longer.
Public Safety: Failure to display required hunter orange during a firearms deer season, possession, purchase, ownership, or control of a deadly weapon by a person prohibited, possession of heroin, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Other: Impede a lawful hunt, trespassing after hours on a state wildlife area, operating an unregistered motor vehicle on a state wildlife area, fictitious motor vehicle tags, driving with a suspended or revoked license, loitering, and criminal impersonation.
*Includes citation(s) issued at the C&D Canal Conservation Area.
DNREC’s Division of Fish & Wildlife recognizes and thanks the majority of anglers, hunters, and boaters who comply with Delaware’s fishing, hunting, and boating laws and regulations. The public can report fish, wildlife, and boating violations to the Delaware Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police by calling 302-739-4580 or using the free smartphone DENRP Tip app downloaded from the Google Play Store or iTunes App Store. Wildlife violations can be reported anonymously to Operation Game Theft by calling 800-292-3030, going online to http://de.gov/ogt, or using the DENRP Tip app; Verizon customers can connect to Operation Game Theft directly by dialing #OGT.
Are you AWARE?
Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police remind hunters that deer, duck, and dove hunting seasons are coming to an end:
Although many hunting seasons are ending, Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police encourage the public to report game law violations as soon as possible. Some illegal activities that should be reported include:
For more information on hunting – including hunter education, licensing, hunting and trapping seasons, limits, regulations, wildlife area information, and more, with sections devoted to deer, small game, turkey, and migratory birds – click on 2019-2020 Delaware Hunting & Trapping Guide. Wildlife area maps with area-specific regulations are available online at Wildlife Area Maps.
Follow Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/DEFWNRPolice/.
Follow Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police on Twitter, https://twitter.com/DE_FW_NRPolice.
Contact: Sgt. Brooke Mitchell, Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police, 302-739-9913, or 302-382-7167.
Related Topics: arrests, blotter, boating, fishing, hunting, outdoors and recreation, permitting and regulation, police, wildlife
Keep up to date by receiving a daily digest email, around noon, of current news release posts from state agencies on news.delaware.gov.
Here you can subscribe to future news updates.
