Just wondering, Native Bass.

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Date: December 27, 2002 at 02:15:35
From: ken, [pool-64-223-38-62.prov.east.verizon.net]
Subject: Just wondering, Native Bass.

Re: Just Wondering...

Summer 2001

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Re: Just Wondering...

From: Ken
Date: 02 Oct 2001
Time: 13:06:34
Remote Name: 64.223.19.188

Comments

The bay has been full of bait and there has been lots of heavy feeding on it by both bass and blues for over a month now so that behavior is commonplace at the present time. The water is still warm even though the wind was from the North for a few days and the air was cool. It takes a while for water to cool down to the point that all the bait would leave. Wind on a beach is often a catalist for feeding in many types of fishing because it gets the water moving and the bait gets energized. It is common for a windward shore to have a lot of action even though it makes it harder to cast for many fly fishermen. Last Winter and the year before menhaden stayed in the seekonk river all winter and there were a lot of bass there with them. I have several friends who fished there all winter and even at night and found the fishing to be excellent especially around the Red bridge from shore. There are lots of theories about what fish do and don't do but most of them are not based on observed fact but on heresay. Many people take their boats out of the water on Labor day because that is the end of the season. Is it true? It is for them and they never partake of the most beautiful time of the year on the water. Many fishermen believe what they have been told about fish migrations and the end of the season and never bother to find out if what they hear is in fact true. We have a tendency to believe the common beliefs that may or may not be close to the truth. I have seen blitzes in Dec at Point Judith and Charleston many times and there was and is a commercial fishery for stripers in Narr Bay for winter stripers. Last year the size limit on these fish for commercial harvest was 24" and 50,000 lbs. A well respected fish scientist from Woods Hole told me that there have been studies done that show that the stripers that are found in the river systems from Canada and New England have different DNA than the fish from the Chesapeake and the Hudson. What this may mean is that like steelhead and salmon there may be strains of stripers that are native to our river systems and because of the cleaning up of the rivers in the last few years those strains are increasing in number. If it is true than those fish would have evolved different spawning characteristics than their southern relatives but that is to be discovered. Many striper fishermen are fishing for bass though the winter and are finding lots of bass to be caught. The easy idea is to say that they are holdovers but perhaps not. Every year in late May and early June I fish a place that has a school of bass that are full of eggs. I have sent the eggs to biologists in the south so there would be a record of it. I think that these fish come from Nova Scocia to spawn here but that is just a guess. There is so much more to learn about stripers than what we think we know that it is amazing. Most of what we know is assumption not fact. If the New England states have native populations of stripers what will that mean politically to fishery laws about harvesting fish that are not migratory? Are they endangered because they have different DNA than the migratory stocks? Lots of things to think about. Keep fishing for the fish and don' quit if the fish dissapear for a period of time. Look for them in different places then you ever have before. Go up higher in the rivers.

Last changed: November 05, 2001

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