AS A NEW FISHING SEASON BEGINS

Every season is different.

I’ve been fishing for more than sixty years, and if I think back on that time, I can’t find any two seasons that were exactly the same.  Comparisons get a little fuzzy when I look back at the years when my age could be expressed with a single digit, but even then, I remember change.

So as April 2020 begins, kicking off a new season, I have to sit back and wonder what sort of change this year will bring.

Usually, change is driven by weather, water temperature and the like, overprinted with the natural and human-driven impacts on fish populations.  Cold winters that linger typically slow up the start of the season, while warm winters, like the one that just passed, see the action start sooner.  Big schools of menhaden are already moving along the coast, and entering Long Island’s bays.  On those scores, we’re already ahead of the curve.

Based on the abundance of the fish themselves, 2020 looks like a mixed bag.

April 1 saw the start of the winter flounder season, but that doesn’t mean much anymore.  Back in 2004, New York anglers took home more than 14 million of the little flatfish, but the population collapsed years ago.  Last year’s estimate for the entire state was about 400, althought the number of fish actually sampled in anglers’ catch was so small that such estimate is wildly imprecise.  I haven’t actively pursued flounder for many years, and that is something that won’t, unfortunately, change in this season.

April 1 also saw the start of the spring blackfish (more properly, “tautog”) season.  April 2019 was largely a bust; while New York anglers landed nearly 650,000 blackfish last year, only about 150 of those were caught in the spring.  But the water was cold in 2019; this year’s ocean is warmer, and it’s not impossible that I’ll be sitting over a wreck trying my luck before the month ends.  If the blackfish aren’t chewing, there’s still a fair chance that a cod or some ling (a/k/a “red hake”) will render a wreck trip worthwhile.

Striped bass remain overfished, but there should be a lot of undersized fish from the 2015 year class moving along the coast, and enough legal fish from the 2011 around to let anglers who feel so inclined to take a fish home.  New regulations that became effective on the first of this month, and are intended to protect the largest members of the spawning stock, require all bass measuring 35 inches or more to be released.

Bluefish are overfished as well; there will undoubtedly be local pockets of abundance popping up throughout the year, but don’t be surprised if bluefish are scarcer than stripers.  On the plus side, there’s reason to believe that weakfish might be a bit more abundant; New York anglers caught about 350,000 of them last year (including those that were released), by far the highest number caught in the past five years, and nearly triple the number caught in 2018.

Otherwise, the inshore scene should see a lot of short fluke—reports are that 2018 finally broke the long stretch of below-average recruitment, and saw good numbers of young fish enter the population—a few very large ones, and not much in between.  Black sea bass and scup should remain very abundant, although at somewhat lower abundance levels than we enjoyed in in 2019.

Offshore, the picture is also spotty.  Based on last year, we should see good numbers of bluefin tuna, provided that we get enough sand eels south of Long Island to keep the fish around; given our recent warm winter, that’s hardly assured.  We should also see decent numbers of thresher sharks, with many inside the 20-fathom line, but that, too, is dependent on bait, primarily menhaden and the recently abundant chub mackerel.

Otherwise, the news isn’t as good.  Mako sharks and bigeye tuna are both badly overfished, as are blue and white marlin.  Yellowfin haven’t been truly abundant in years, and in recent seasons, longfin albacore have all but disappeared from our local canyons.   But sometimes, when water conditions are right, there is always the chance for a hot tuna bite to break out.  That’s a change we can hope for.

But the biggest change affecting this season will undoubtedly be caused COVID-19, and its impacts not only on people’s health, but on the commercial and recreational fishing industries, and on the fish themselves.  And that’s very hard to predict.

Some people have speculated that relatively few will go fishing, and that stocks such as striped bass will thus get a much-needed reprieve.  At the same time, fishing remains a legal activity, marinas and gas docks are open, and there are a lot of bored people who are staying at home with little to do.  It’s possible, given that situation, that fishing pressure will be higher than it is in a normal year.  At least in some places, there are signs that the latter case may prove to be true.

At the same time, fishing isn’t free, and with unemployment spiking, many people may prioritize paying their rent and buying food above recreation.  That could limit the number of people who end up going fishing.  While fishing, in theory, might be a way to put food on the table, the reality is that fishing from shore can be inexpensive, but is usually not too productive; fishing from a boat can be very productive, but the related costs make it cheaper to buy fish at a store. 

Given the competing considerations, trying to gauge angling effort in the upcoming year can yield little more than a guess.

At the same time, there are some current certainties.  In many jurisdictions, including New York, both party and charter boats are deemed “non-essential businesses,” and have been shut down to avoid spreading the virus.  It’s not clear how long such shut down will last.  So long as it does, some anglers will lose their only access to the fishery, and if it lasts too long, some boats could go out of business. 

Shutting down the for-hire fleet won’t have much of an impact on fish stocks, as for-hire vessels are responsible for a very small percentage of all angling trips and a relatively small portion of overall landings, but it could have a very big impact on some fishermen, and on the businesses involved.  At the same time, it could reduce fishing pressure on some wrecks and artificial reefs that see fish numbers, and fish size, decline quickly in the face of relentless angling effort.

Reduced commercial fishing pressure could have more of an impact.  Restaurants in New York, and most coastal states, have been shuttered in an effort to slow down COVID-19; since a large proportion of locally-caught seafood is sold to restaurants, that has severely reduced demand for commercially caught fish up and down the coast.  A recent article in Virginia’s Eastern Shore Post describes the plight of a black sea bass fisherman, saying that

“’We talked to the Bronx market [in New York City] yesterday,’ he said…’and they said our fish company was 40% down from normal,’ but because sea bass has such a large Asian clientele, he was told, ‘Do not go fishing.  We will not buy your fish,’ so we are at zero.’”

In response, the fisherman is trying to sell fish locally, to the general public, but is moving far less product than he would if the markets were open.

Similar stories are playing out in many commercial fisheries.  In Montauk, New York, a trawler returned to the dock with 1,000 pounds of fluke (a/k/a “summer flounder”), found no market for his fish, and ended up giving it away.  The price of fluke in Montauk, when a market will take it, has fallen from $3.00 to $0.50 per pound; scup has fallen from $1.25 to as little as $0.10 per pound.  At those prices, fishermen can’t turn a profit, and have little reason to leave the dock.

Given that the commercial sector has been allocated the greater share of both summer flounder and scip, a lack of commercial fishing effort could have a real impact on such species’ abundance this season.

It all depends on how long the “social distancing” lasts. 

A new model produced at the University of Washington predicts that New York will reach the peak of its pandemic, in terms of health resource use, on April 9, and that the peak daily death rate will occur one day later.  Before the month is over, we will have largely weathered the current storm.  That model assumes that social distancing will continues through May 31.

That’s two more months of closed restaurants for the commercial fleet, and two more months when the for-hire fleet couldn’t sail.   That would seriously impinge on the for-hire fleet’s season.  Although they do some odd charters for striped bass and bottom fish in April, the fleet’s real money season begins when fluke opens on May 4.  Losing the entire month of May would cause some real harm.  And, once the for-hire boats are allowed to sail again, there’s no guarantee that many of their customers will have either the money or the desire to book trips right away.  It might take a few weeks, or even months, of normalcy before that occurs.

Right now, nothing is cast in stone.

If nothing changes, it appears that both surfcasters and private boats will be allowed to fish throughout the year.  Beaches may well be more crowded as anglers, banned from their usual workplaces, seek some sort of distraction.  Boat fishermen may find the water more crowded, too, although it is just as likely that unemployed anglers will cut back on their time on the water in order to cut back on expenses in a time of need.  Anglers who depend on for-hire vessels to access the resource could be out of luck for a while.  It’s not clear when party and charter boats will be allowed to sail again; it could happen this month, although June 1 is probably a more realistic target.

For the fish, COVID-19 might not have much effect.  More anglers fishing from the beach won’t significantly increase recreational landings, and the current ban on for-hire angling won’t significantly decrease them.  On the other hand, restaurant closings could significantly curtail commercial fishing activity for a while, and if that happens, it could have a positive impact on at least some fish stocks.  But even that will vary from species to species; primarily recreational fish, such as striped bass, bluefish and black sea bass, won’t benefit much, while primarily commercial species, such as summer flounder, might be positively affected.

Today, that’s all speculation.

But that’s the way every new season starts.  Only time can tell whether our predictions come true.

Still, the course of this season is cloudier than most.  Let’s just hope that we’re all able to see it through to its end.