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Old 12-02-2019, 01:14 PM
Finprof Finprof is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: St Michaels MD and Princeton Junction NJ
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Originally Posted by Mako mike View Post
I truly believe most of theses fish are no longer breeding in the bay. I think most are favoring cleaner coastal waters in New Jersey.
For some direct evidence on the fish changing behavior, I live in New Jersey most of the week but have a house and boat in St Michaels so I fish both Jersey and the Chesapeake. Last April my boat stayed in its slip in St Michaels and Dan's boat stayed on its trailer while we went on a six pack out of Raritan Bay.
The captain and mate were so sloppy that Dan was thinking there was no way we could catch fish with four rods and muddy parachute tandems. Dan was wrong. We caught a nice mid-30s fish about every 15 minutes and went over pods that were good enough to jig. These fish are staging to go up the Hudson and there is some recent evidence that they are going into the Raritan as well. The fishery in the Hudson keeps getting better while the Chesapeake keeps getting worse. The fish are probably not as numerous in Raritan Bay than they were in the Chesapeake simply because Raritan Bay is so much smaller so it doesn't mean that the stock is fine. We were fishing within sight of the New York skyline and the water was cleaner than any Chesapeake water. There were also lots of adult bunker on the screen but not the acres of bunker on the surface that you see off Belmar in Spring.
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