"FLOATER MONTH" IN THE NEW YORK BIGHT

 

Twenty-five or so years ago, striped bass anglers around New York Harbor used to talk about “floater week.”  That was the week, sometime in April, when the water temperatures rose high enough that the bodies of all of the people who ended up in the harbor—voluntarily or involuntarily—over the winter began to decay and produce enough gasses to rise off the bottom at begin floating around the harbor.

It so happened that the same rising water temperatures triggered the spring striped bass bite in the Harbor, so the human “floaters” were a sign that a new fishing season was getting underway.

We don’t hear many people talking about floater week anymore.

But perhaps we should be hearing a lot more talk about what, for lack of a better name, I’ll call “floater month,” that time between late October and maybe Thanksgiving, when anglers fishing in the New York Bight frequently sight the bodies of big striped bass floating across the water’s surface and washing up on the beach.

Sometimes, you see it written up in social media, accompanied by photos of dead striped bass in all conditions from freshly deceased to gull-picked and decaying.  Often, the photos are accompanied by the narrative that the fish washed ashore by gill netters, or maybe by trawlers that caught them as bycatch while fishing for something else, and then dumped them, dead, into the sea.

And, sometimes, that might be what happened.

But what anglers often refuse to admit is how many of those dead bass are killed by recreational fishermen.

Intellectually, we know that, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the stock assessments that they regularly produce, about 9% of all released striped bass die soon after being returned to the water (although recent research suggests that the 9% figure may be too high).  And we know that, in a typical year, the number of bass that succumb to release mortality is supposedly about the same as the number of bass that are intentionally landed.

But knowing and accepting are two different things, so we often tend to be surprised when the evidence of release mortality floats right in front of our eyes.  In November, in the New York Bight, that happens quite often.

The reason for those floaters isn’t hard to understand.

Big schools of menhaden, and sometimes other species of baitfish, migrate south and west along the coast in he fall, and sort of stall when they reach New York Harbor, where the shoreline, which had been running mostly east/west, makes a 90 degree turn and begins to run in a north/south direction.

Typically, the schools of bait extend east for a few miles, often as far as Fire Island Inlet, and extend south along the northern New Jersey shore as well.  The menhaden attract predators, and the entire area can become a sort of National Geographic show, with bass blitzing on bunker, gannets dropping out of the sky, humpback whales lunge-feeding, thresher sharks attracted to the packed baitfish, and the occasional giant bluefin tuna making a cameo appearance.

And there are plenty of those other predators, too, the ones that arrive in boats and add to the confusion, running all over the ocean chasing the bass, and sometimes bumping into some of the other species as well.  On any given day, particularly on the weekends, there can be fleets of boats stretching for miles, all of them fishing for, and often catching, striped bass, and many of those bass will be large.

Larger than 31 inches, which is the top end of the recreational slot size limit. 

Thus, we see a high percentage of those bass—this year, a substantial majority of them—being released.  Not all of those released fish survive, but we know that there are ways to increase the survival rate. 

Anglers should be using circle hooks when they fish with live bait—it’s legally required—to  lessen the number of striped bass that are fatally hooked in their gills or gut.  

Replacing treble hooks on lures with in-line single hooks will also help, so much so that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has created the “Trade A Treble Program,” which invites anglers to present a surf plug to DEC representatives at certain scheduled events, and have the lure’s tail treble replaced with either a single hook or a hookless bucktail “flag,” to reduce the number of potentially injurious hook points on the lure.

And it’s important to minimize the time that a bass spends out of the water.  The Maryland Department of Natural Resources advises that

“Fisheries managers urge anglers to be prepared to remove the hook and if they want a picture, take it quickly—in less than a minute—before releasing the fish.  However, the best option is to not remove striped bass from the water at all.

“That’s because another major risk factor for caught-and-released fish is simply the exposure to the air.  When a fish—which may be exhausted from fighting the line—is pulled into the air, it’s a shock to their system that can cause shock and respiratory distress.

“A 2025 University of Massachusetts Amherst study that analyzed the post-release activity of hundreds of striped bass caught off the coast of Massachusetts found the amount of air exposure was the most significant influence on the recovery of striped bass.  The scientists recommended limiting fight time to less than 2 minutes, handling time to less than 2 minutes, and air exposure to less than 1 minute.

“In that study, all 521 fish survived within 20 minutes of release…although the scientists did not monitor the fish after that time and biologists note that fish may suffer from effects in hours or days after a catch.  The fish removed from the water for two minutes or longer in the study did not fully recover during the monitoring time.  These negative effects were worsened for larger fish and higher water temperatures.  [emphasis added]”

Unfortunately, a lot of anglers—I hate to say “most,” although that’s how it too often seems—don’t really follow those rules in the Bight during the fall run.

Take circle hooks. 

Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, which required the use of circle hooks when fishing for striped bass with bait, was adopted on October 30, 2019, and went into effect for the 2020 season.  It led to a fair bit of whining from some striped bass anglers, although the folks who fish bait from the beach, for the most part, bit the bullet and complied with the law.

That wasn’t the case for boat fishermen in the Bight, who had long favored a technique called “snag-and-drop,” which involved casting a large, weighted treble hook into a school of menhaden, snagging one of the baitfish, and then allowing it to sink beneath the school, where striped bass were often waiting to pick off injured prey.  The technique was an effective way to catch big striped bass, but under Addendum VI, anglers were required to immediately reel in any menhaden that they snagged, and re-hook them on a circle hook before allowing them to swim back into the school.

Unfortunately, most anglers simply ignored that new rule.  An article written by Capt. John McMurray, who frequently pursues fall striped bass in the New York Bight, described fishing there during the 2023 season this way:

“While sure there were guys throwing plugs or dropping flutter-spoons, it was pretty clear that most of the fleet were ‘snag-and-drop’ fishing.  In other words, ripping a weighted treble hook through a menhaden school, sticking one, letting it swim and waiting for a striped bass to eat it.  What do I mean by most?  I dunno, I guess about 80-90%?

“If you’re up on your regs, which you should be, that’s illegal in New York, and, well, everywhere else.  In fact, fishing any live or dead bait on a treble is prohibited.  The only thing you can use is an in-line circle hook, meaning the point of the hook is not only bent in, it’s in line with the shank.  Which I suppose makes sense, as it’s more likely that you’re going to gut-hook a striper on a treble than if your were using an in-line circle hook.  A solid regulation intended to reduce dead discards.  IF…it were at all enforceable.

“The problem is, it’s efficient, and unless there are repercussions, there’s no reason for anglers NOT to do it…”

It is extremely unlikely that anyone is going to get caught, and ultimately cited, for engaging in snag-and-drop, and even if they were, the excuses that they could provide to the court—that they were fishing for bluefish, and not striped bass; that they intended to reel in the bait and put it on a circle hook, but the bass hit the menhaden on its way to the boat; etc.—make it even more unlikely that they would face any penalty for breaking the law.

Thus, although snag-and-drop was illegal, it was widely practiced in 2023 and, as Capt. McMurray observed,

“In case you haven’t already drawn the conclusion on your own, there were a LOT of dead discards this October.  Every day we’d see several floaters, plus a LOT of fish that came over boats’ gunnels pretty darn bloody.”

Snag-and-drop appears to be just about as popular today as it was three years ago, and so the tradition of floater month continues.

Yes, it’s possible that dead bass floating past your boat died in a gill net or in a trawl, but it’s far more likely that a recreational fisherman caused its demise.

And treble-hooked plugs only add to the problem.

It’s not usually a matter of the bass taking the plugs deep, although I’ve seen plenty of cases where a bass will take a big lure—in one case a bunker spoon bigger than my shoe—so deep into its mouth that it can’t even be seen, with only the leader stretching out past the fish’s jaws.  The real problem is that bass usually strike toward the head of a lure, so the forward treble gets hooked in their jaw, while the rear treble whips around during the fight and not infrequently impales an eye, gets under the gill plate, or otherwise causes serious harm to be fish.

Sometimes, that harm is bad enough that the fish dies, even if the angler swears that “it swam away strong.”  A couple of seasons ago, a friend, who happens to be a very experienced and very capable surfcaster, came across a bass of about 30 pounds dead in the wash.  He described the fish as “pristine,” and said that it must have been unintentionally killed by an angler just minutes before, since it was in too good a condition to have floated in from one of the boats fishing farther offshore.  My friend was so offended by the sight that he picked the bass off the wet sand and took it home, knowing that it was illegal to do so, but also saying that if the DEC wanted to ticket him for it they could, but he wasn’t going to let the fish go to waste.

And then there’s the big killer—probably the biggest killer of all—that far too many anglers are guilty of, bad, or overly delayed, release.

The sad fact is that cameras kill—or, at least, the delay too often involved when striped bass are photographed prior to release proves fatal. 

It’s a particular problem with large bass, which have already been fought for an extended period—very likely longer than the two minutes that scientists recommend as a maximum fight time—and are then kept out of water while someone digs out a camera and takes multiple shots before the bass is finally returned to the sea.,

Often, the angler makes no effort to revive the fish after it is released, even though it is clearly showing signs of distress.  One day last season, a couple of friends were fishing in the Bight when they saw that sort of scenario play out, with a good-sized striped bass dropped back into the water to just float away, exhausted but clearly still alive. 

While one of them told the irresponsible anglers, loudly and at length, just what he thought about their approach to catch-and-release, the other—who, formally trained as a biologist, regularly revives and releases striped bass as a part of his job—managed to get hold of the floating fish and began to revive it, a process that took close to half and hour.  Whether the fish ultimately survived is difficult to say, but it certainly had a better chance than the multitude of bass that are dropped back over the side without any revival efforts at all.

And how far those fish are dropped might also make a difference. 

One of the things we’ve seen in the Bight in recent years is an expansion of catch-and-release fishing for oversize (that is, longer than the 28- to 31-inch recreational slot size limit) striped bass from party boats.  While such boats used to primarily target legal-sized fish that their customers could take home and eat, the relative dearth of smaller bass, and the preponderance of large ones, has led to the boats targeting “overs” when slot-sized fish aren’t around. 

As a practical matter, a party boat’s deck is too far off the water to allow anyone on the boat to even try to revive it.  Add in the facts that, when the bite is hot, a fish might be languishing in the water, waiting for a mate to net it, for an extended time, then might sit on the deck for a while before the mate can unhook it, and then is held out of the water for photographs before one of the boat’s crew finally drops it back into the ocean, and it’s easy to understand why floaters occur—although, to be fair, the party boats’ contribution to the floater problem is probably far less than that of the private boat fleet, just because the private boats are responsible for far more striped bass trips.

That doesn’t mean that anglers fishing the New York Bight’s fall run are any less responsible than anglers elsewhere.  Release mortality occurs throughout the bass’ range, from the St. Lawrence River all the way to Virginia and, in the rare cases when the fish come close enough to shore, even North Carolina.  It happens throughout the year.

It’s just that, during the fall, the New York Bight, bordered by the densely-populated New York City metropolitan area, probably sees a convergence of striped bass, bait, and striped bass anglers that is greater than anything seen elsewhere on the coast.  So, it sees the greatest concentration of floaters as well.

But floaters occur everywhere along the striper coast and, wherever they occur, they remain a problem.

Right now, fishery managers estimate that about 9% of all released striped bass die, although recent research suggests that might be an overestimate, and that the actual release mortality rate is somewhere in the 4% to 5% range.  But all of those estimates are an overall average of release mortality, regardless of the size of the bass or where or how it was caught.

It is entirely possible that if managers and researchers focused on only the larger fish—say, striped bass at least 40 inches in length—and handled them in the same way that bass are handled in the real world, by engaging in snag-and-drop, and/or dragging bass up on the sand for photos, or bringing them aboard boats for extended photo sessions there, then tossing many of them back into the water without making any effort to revise them, basically, exposing them to the same sort of handling that they face every fall in the New York Bight—that they would find a mortality rate far above the currently accepted 9%.

And that’s a concern, because the last strong striped bass year class was spawned in 2018, and the eight years since then have seen, on average, the weakest spawning ever recorded.  That means that the best chance of rebuilding the stock over the next 10 or 15 years resides with the bass that are already a part of the spawning stock biomass.

The same bass that are regularly seen floating each fall in the New York Bight.