Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 15, 1990 TAG: 9004160237
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR Editor
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The finest Boston mackerel fishing in modern times already has occurred, starting in earnest early in February. Anglers have been able to catch these modest-size fish three and four at a time.
"That provided the majority of the winter excitement," said Claude M. Bain III, director of the Virginia Salt Water Fishing Tournament.
April should usher in encounters with big bluefish, sea bass and channel bass, along with some flounder, speckled trout and black drum, Bain said.
The tournament begins its 33rd annual run today. This is the second season that its opening has been boosted from May 1 to mid-April in order to take advantage of early-hitting fish, said Bain. Last year that resulted in an additional 50 citations, including the largest tautog of the year.
The state-sponsored tournament continues through Nov. 30, offering citations for outstanding catches in 22 species. The only weight change for this year, the minimum size for a croaker citation has been lowered from 4 to 3 pounds.
We asked Bain to comment on fishing prospects for the new season. Here are his predictions:
AMBERJACK: I just hope they come back like they did last year. What a year! Last year broke all records. Jacks were just everywhere, around the wrecks and towers. It hardly can get better.
CHANNEL BASS: Stable. It is about the same year in and year out. I don't expect a great year, but I don't see any reason for it to fall off the edge of the table either. It should be an average year.
BLACK DRUM: The decade of the '80s was the worst we have had in the past three decades, and I don't see much reason to expect improvement.
BLUEFIN TUNA: Their population continues to shrink. We had a pretty good two-week run last year. I look for the same sort of thing, a pretty decent run of small fish, but overall the bluefin tuna population along this coastline isn't very good.
Last year's run was the second two weeks of June. That was early. Normally they show up the first of June and build to a peak at the end of June or early July. We can look for things a tad early this year, with water temperatures above normal.
BLUEFISH: I think the conditions are right for them to make an appearance in the Chesapeake Bay. It would be really nice to see them back in the bay this year after a poor season last year. This time, you have warm-water temperatures inshore and we don't have as much freshwater runoff coming down the rivers. The jury still is out. They haven't shown up yet.
FLOUNDER: Wait three or four years before you go fishing. It is that bad.
GRAY TROUT: The odds aren't good for big fish. The decade of the '80s has been steadily down for big fish. We should have decent numbers of small fish, like there has been virtually every year of the 80s.
Last fall, there was a pretty decent little spurt of activity for fish in the 4-or 5-pound range at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, so there is some hope that the medium-size fish are coming along too.
MARLIN: I hope it is going to be like last year, which was probably the best we had in the 1980s following the peak years of the late 70s. A lot is going to be dependent on the ocean currents, the gulf stream and whether we get some warm-water eddies that will position the late-summer population off the mid-Atlantic coast.
SPECKLED TROUT: It should continue to be really quite good. That is another fish that has been outstanding for us and it isn't one that depends on ocean currents or anything like that. They are estuarine fish. We have had three years where their numbers and the citation numbers have grown. There is no reason not to expect that it won't be another fine year for speckled trout.
SPOT: I don't know what to think about spot. They are a short-lived fish. If you have a good spawn one year you could see a lot of fish in catchable size within a year. It is a very changeable fishery on a year-to-year basis. We only had two citations last year. We haven't had more than 12 anytime during the 1980s, but we've had years when there were plenty of spot to catch averaging about two-to-the-pound. They don't seem to be growing big.
by CNB