Bunny Clark Fishing Update
Written & Edited by Tim Tower
February 5, 2012, 3:30 AM EST
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Below are a couple of pictures I took just after sunrise this morning. The first one was taken three feet from the water's edge at Ogunquit Beach looking south over the water towards Boon Island ten miles away. It was 4°F and the waves washing up on the beach were about two inches high. You might be able to see the sea smoke as a white fuzz on the surface of the water. The point of land on the right is Bald Head Cliff (the Cliff House Resort & Spa).
The Beauty of Clear Pond Ice |
I jumped on the fluid trainer (my bike with the back wheel resting on friction based drum and support system where the resistance comes from vanes in an oil filled drum - rather than a much louder fan) for a half hour, getting out of the saddle (up on the peddles) every five minutes or so. It felt fine. I did some upper body work afterward. The whole experience left me more sore than when I started but not bad. And I didn't feel much pain while I was doing it. So five days without any exercise. That's not bad.
There is a Groundfish Committee meeting in Portland on Wednesday that I will be attending. This is an important meeting as this is the committee that will be giving recommendations to the New England Fishery Management Council for this years fishing regulations. These new regulations will be part of an emergency action. So once the Council gives the National Marine Fisheries Service their recommendation in a meeting at the end of the month, it should be no more than two weeks (in February) when we find out what new regulations we are going to have to suffer through with the cod. In most cases, the NMFS does not mirror what the Council wants for regulations. But the Council does help the NMFS in its decision making. The Groundfish Committee meeting will be a good meeting to attend. And I'm sure it will give me the flavor of what we might see down the road.
I'm hoping the Guestletter will be ready by the 20th.
Today was like a Monday. Everyone seemed to want a piece of me. Except for shuffling some chairs around at Barnacle Billy's restaurant, I was at the desk all day. But I seemed to be busy with everything except the newsletter. I did end up getting six hours done on it, only to lose all that I gained when I closed the document prematurely. Ouch. That really hurt. It was at the end of the day when I did it with no hope of making it up tomorrow or the next day.
The good news is that my sister, Meg, gave me a huge donation towards my start this year in cancer fund raising for the Pan-Mass Challenge. With $1,500.00 in the form of a check, it's one of the largest donations I have received. And she wanted to make sure that I put: "In Memory of my Godfather, our Uncle Wayne Clark". She also said she wants to make sure that Rosemary Woodbury (MA) doesn't get close to her in donations this year! Did she really say that? Anyway, thank you so very much, Meg. Very generous and kind of you.
I spent the whole day in a meeting of the Groundfish Oversight Committee in Portland, Maine. I say the whole day; I left when the discussion associated with recreational groundfishing was done, somewhere around 2:30 PM. The meeting was focusing on the "cod crisis" in the Gulf of Maine (GOM). The meeting was basically a shell as they were working with preliminary catch estimates, the new estimates due out on January 23, 2012. These preliminary estimates show that the recreational catch of cod in the most recent years have been higher than the commercial catch. Of course, they have no handle on cod discards as it relates to the mid-water herring trawler activity. And these preliminary recreational catch estimates also include the released cod as dead discards, 100%? Which, we know is not true. In short, the cod stock assessment includes recreationally caught cod as estimated by the recreational surveys (most of which are very inaccurate) that have been "taken out of the fishery" and all the cod that are released also "taken out of the fishery". I have a huge problem with this as we know that most of our cod are released alive. So we are being told that we take more cod out of the fishery than we really do, by a very big margin. It's hard for me to think that after all these years that we haven't gotten any better at the science than we did when we started. That was part of the meeting.
Another part concerned what we can do in the general legal sense. With the original stock assessment, the one I talked about a few weeks earlier, they estimated that the cod stocks were in such bad shape that we had to decrease the cod landings by 95%. And that even if no fishing occurred, we would still not meet the cod rebuilding plan (set out by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation & Management Act) by 2014. This we all knew. The question is, if indeed this original stock assessment is correct, what kind of time frame are we looking at legally to get the job done. It appears that the National Marine Fisheries Service (the agency that is going to decide the upcoming regulations) has limited discretion that allows overfishing to continue in the short term or about one year. In the meantime, the NE Fishery Management Council can draft a plan that has to eliminate overfishing within two years. I mean, conceivably, if overfishing is allowed to continue unfettered, potentially, the fishery could be shut down in two years. So this legal area is gray, somewhat gray, but there is wiggle room to allow fishing businesses within the GOM to continue. And the bright side could show that with time they could come up with a better stock assessment. But this man's opinion is that that won't happen.
The third part of the day centered around what the recreational regulations could look like with this bad cod stock assessment. Tom Nies, the Planning & Developement Team's spokesperson, said that a cod bag limit is a "non-starter". In other words, not a useful tool to decrease overfishing within the groundfish recreational community. He thought the most effective tool would be time/area closures. These ideas include the closure of the Western GOM closed area (the Jeffrey's Ledge area) to recreational vessels and cod fishing seasons, the decrease of such from what we see today. Also, he suggested that minimum cod size be decreased to 19 inches to cut down on the number of discards.
This to me was the most controversial part of the day. I got up and spoke to this in front of the Committee. I wanted them to consider that fact that a minimum of 50% of the cod we release go back alive and survive. This is supported from my tagging research and all the tagged research data available. I feel the survival rate of returned cod is actually higher than that. I said (to the Committee) that that along with a strict bag limit would allow us to survive as a business throughout the season and keep some cod for the entire season. And I believe it would make the recreational fishery a sustainable one. There is no debate with the Committee when you get up to make a statement. So there were no comments from the Committee to my statements. It just becomes a matter of public record, is all. But my point is that if there is a way for historical businesses centered around the recreational catch of groundfish to survive through this, every means possible should be found to allow it. I don't believe the best interests of the party/charter industry are being covered appropriately, at least not through the words of Tom Nies.
So the long and the short is this. We are going to get some cuts for cod landings. How much of a cut is anyone's guess right now. My guess is that the fishing from April 1 to May 1 will follow the regulations as they were last season (I could be wrong on this as well). But, starting the fiscal fishing year of 2012, May 1, we will have a whole new set of regulations directed to cod. Keep in mind that the next Council meeting at the end of January is a very important one. And there are still more meetings ahead this winter to decide the 2012 fishing season and, indeed, the future of party charter fishing.
What I wrote is very simplistic view of things. There is much more to it and there are other committees involved. It will be an interesting winter, a challenging one.
I spent my early morning trying to chose the right words to write a concise overview of the Groundfish Oversight Committee meeting that I attended the day before. I expected some calls and emails. And I anticipated correctly (got quite a few). And I got the feeling people were looking up to me to solve this problem. And I wish I could. I know in my heart what I think would be prudent management and still keep everyone fishing. But the whole management thing with all the agencies, committees and participants have worn a groove so deep in the track that they are on, it's going to be hard (or damn near impossible) to get over the bank they have created and get into the world of common sense. It's clear to me that in order to solve the cod problem, the mid water trawlers have to be shut down completely, right now. Without a viable food source, the stock can't survive and it leaves the small cod open for predation by dogfish and other predators. Dogfish eat herring as well. And with a healthy herring source, you would bring a lot of balance back to the fishery. At that point you could start looking at the cod. And I have my own feelings on that score, the first being to close the spawning areas to everyone for a six month period minimum. That includes the Whaleback area and the area off Boston. In a perfect world, the fishing could continue with commercial boats with observers aboard keeping everything that was hauled aboard, establishing a hard TAC (total allowable catch) and stopping them when the quota is reached. Nets could be set up so that the small ones aren't caught (they are set up that way anyway). And what small ones were caught would be counted with the landings and brought in. This will never happen. I could go on but I'm going to stop right here (I tend to get carried away with a couple cups of coffee). I certainly won't solve the fishery problems at my desk.
I would suggest that if anyone is concerned about the new regulations that they attend the NE Fishery Management Council meetings coming up at the end of January.
Whan 8:30 AM rolled around, I met Ian Keniston and Jared Keniston to complete our CPR/First Aid course with the Heart Health Institute. This took us until noon. The course has changed dramatically in the last ten years but more than I ever expected it would in just the last two years. For instance, CPR is a chest compression thing first once you have determined the status of the victim. And it goes from there. I felt I learned more from this course (we had a great instructor as well) than I have from any of the courses I have taken in many years. And, yes, we all passed with flying colors.
I had just enough time to get to Canvasworks in Kennebunk to pick up the newly refurbished Bunny Clark side curtains. I also had to go over the design of the new hanging straps that have to be made for them.
We had fire inspection at both Barnacle Billy's restaurants afterward. I met my brother, Court, and Chuck MacDonald down there. We passed with flying colors yet again.
The rest of the afternoon I spent at the desk working on the Guestletter. I took back the six hours I lost when I closed the Guestletter prematurely thinking I had saved everything. And I got two hours ahead of that previous stopping point. It only took two and a half hours to make up for the six hour loss. This primarily because I had all my research notes still and I had it fresh in my mind how I had written the deleted paragraphs. I stopped before the start of the Bruins game - which, it turns out, I was too tired to watch. They looked like they were playing well so I went to bed.
I spent the early morning shoveling light snow. Had it been heavier, I might not have been able to do so after this hernia operation. But after a couple hours of it, I was no worse for the wear. Most of the morning I focused on finishing the newsletter. I had the surgeon's appointment at 10:30 AM in Portsmouth. There he told me the surgery looked good, I was doing well and could lift up to forty pounds now (a bag of pellets). And I do feel good, much better than a couple of days ago. I had to pick up sanding materials for the Bunny Clark while I was in the area, which I did. I went back home and worked on the newsletter until it was time for meeting with town manager. That meeting centered mostly around Cove Committee stuff, house keeping items, really. From there I went to get a flu shot. I came back home and ran three miles on the beach at an eight minute pace. Didn't really feel that good. I think Veprek could have taken me. I ran between 4:00 PM and 4:30 PM with an ambient air temperature of 23°F. After a shower I worked until 7:00 PM on the Guestletter. I have two more paragraphs before it is completed. I should be done with it tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have it proofed on Sunday and up on Monday - with or without pictures. Eventually, I'll have a PDF with digital images, one without and the regular HTML version in the Guestletter section.
I spent the day working on the newsletter here and there. I moved twenty bags of pellets around, I met one of the town's top electricians down at Barnacle Billy's (we were going over what it would take to put a generator in at Barnacle Billy's, Etc.) and I took time out to watch the Bruins game in the afternoon. I have just a few more sentences to go before finishing the newsletter. [Funny, Captain Kenton Geer sent me an email telling me he enjoyed the newsletter. For a minute I thought I had put it on line without realizing it. Turns out he read last years missive.] I ran four miles on the beach in 17°F weather late in the afternoon. At 6:00 PM, I got the chills and was sick all night.
I spent all morning working on the newsletter. I finished writing it by 10:00 AM, finished proofing by noon and to my local "proofers" by 12:30 PM. I went for a five mile run after that. The rest of the day I spent camped out in front of the TV watching the Bruins game but flicking to the Pats game during commercials. The Bruins game finished first so I watched the Ravens blow the field goal attempt. I figured the Pats were done. The Bruins game was much the same with the first goal against put in by one of the Bruins themselves. Not very easy games to watch. I went to bed just knowing the Giants were going to win tonight.
I just got the intial copy of the proofed Guestletter up. I put it up here in it's most rudimentary form as a PDF document (this way you change it's size for easier reading or download a copy): 2012 Guestletter Eventually, I will add pictures and put the HTML version in the Guestletter section of my website. This winter I have had so many more distractions, it's been hard to get anything done. And, likewise, I could have spent many more hours trying to make the newsletter easier to read and less wordy (a common problem of mine). But here it is in the rawest form you will see it. I hope you like it. One thing is for sure, all the statements are true with all the details taken from an enormous database I have built over twenty-nine years.
I spent the rest of the day fielding phone calls, all the odd jobs associated with people waiting to give me my marching orders after two days, getting emails from anglers who found typos in the text of the Guestletter (thank you, all!) and working the desk. The afternoon was devoted to writing a two page testimony for the confirmation hearing of Patrick Keliher (for Marine Commissioner) in Augusta tomorrow in front of the Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resouces. I will make a presentation representing the two restaurants, Bunny Clark, Corp., myself and for CHOIR (the responsible herring group) who's principles will be locked in a herring meeting all day tomorrow. They approached me and I told them I would be their proxy - gladly. As I was finishing up the written testimony, I hit some keys and embedded something into the text that I could not find a way to eliminate. It took me an hour of working and throwing things around to finally realize that I would have to type the whole thing over again. Certain words would get bolded while others would remain normal. Anyway, I re-typed the whole thing and then went for a five mile run. When I came back, I proofed it, changed it and left it to make copies for tomorrows run north.
And, no Greg, I never broached the 10 min./mile mark. A slow run - even by your standards.
I spent the morning driving to the Bunny Clark (Dave's Boat Shop) and dropping some materials off (very foggy ride), working on this page and meeting Carl (from the Yankee Stripper) at Barnacle Billy's. Carl had some finished lounge chairs and picked up the last lot to re-finish for us. While there I went over the testimony I had written the day before, made some changes and printed out twenty copies to present at the hearing.
I left Ogunquit at 10:15 AM and reached the Maine Restaurant Association's office in Augusta almost an hour earlier than anticipated. Eventually, I met Dick Grotton (MRA). Both of us walked to the Cross Building where the hearing was being held. At the hearing I shook hands with Patrick Keliher and wished him good luck (a fishing thing). It wasn't long before the state senators and representatives filed in and were seated at the head of the room (the Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resouces) . First, Governor Paul LePage's senior natural resources advisor, Carlisle McLean, representing the Governor there, made her presentation in support of Mr. Keliher. It was an excellent presentation, I have to say. Next, Patrick Keliher was called to the podium where he gave a presentation and then was grilled by every member of the Committee. I think he did very well overall. The Committee, to a person, seemed to be very positive. From this man's perspective, it looked like every member was happy with the Governor's choice from the onset (most, of course, have worked with Mr. Keliher). After Mr. Keliher sat down. The Committee asked for those members of the public who were in support of the Patrick Keliher appointment step up to the podium. I was the second person to talk from that group. I made my own presentation (representing our two restaurants, the Bunny Clark and myself) first and then I read from the CHOIR testimony. I was asked no questions. Next Dick Grotton spoke representing the MRA, in favor, of course. Both Dick and I left after that. It was about 2:45 PM. The hearing had started at 1:00 PM. It was the first time I had ever made a presentation on the "yea" side of things. Normally, when I go to a hearing in Augusta, it's to speak against a proposed bill. Anyway, it was an uplifting very positive experience and I'm glad I went.
Dick Grotton walked me back to the MRA office. There we said our goodbyes and parted ways. I headed to Portland to pick up the Bunny Clark's updated inflatable life raft an hour before the place closed. I drove right home from there. I worked answering emails and writing a few "thank you" emails to those who helped me at the hearing. I did no more work after 6:00 PM.
I found out later that no one had stood up to oppose Patrick Keliher's appointment at the hearing. He was confirmed unanimously by the Committee. So Mr. Keliher has to pass the Senate confirmation now. If he does that, which shouldn't be a problem, he will be our new Marine Commissioner.
I found out today that under Maine law, Pat Keliher's time as an interim Marine Commissioner has run out. So we have no Commissioner here in the state until the House and Senate take approve the recommendation of the Committee on Marine Resouces and appoint Mr. Keliher as the new Commissioner. By law, the House and Senate have a month to either confirm or reject the Committee's recommendation.
I spent the day fielding phone calls as I tried to build the reservation book for this season. It normally takes me two full days.
At the same time the Science & Statistics Committee (SSC) met in Rhode Island to come up with regulations on the cod crisis today - or at least review the new data that has just come in. The new figures show that the recreational sector caught twenty percent less than was originally thought. I believe it's more like a figure greater than 50% and I know I am right on this. There has to be some common sense involved here. And this takes being out there and knowing day to day what anglers/party boats are doing and how the closed cod season is being treated. Also, the SSC is still hung up on the 100% discard thing with the recreational anglers. In other words they are assuming that 100% percent of the cod a recreational angler releases back to the ocean is a dead fish or the same as a fish that is landed. This is, of course, absurd. But they are using this figure and adding it into the landings. This ruins the results because of the length to weight ratio. And they can only assume the weight of the fish an angler catches because they only ask for numbers of fish (in 90 percent of the cases - including the Vessel Trip Reports & shore side surveys; and they don't use the data from the VTRs!). The commercial sector is counted in pounds. So, in fact, it's too confusing for even the SSC to come up with a salient idea of the recreational catch of groundfish. They simply do not know. It's not just a case of the best science available. It's more like no science is good science. I know I'm being a little obtuse in that last statement but I'm nearly correct. It does not look like we are going to be treated fairly in this one. On the other hand, if they find out that the regulations the recreational sector is allowed to catch in 2012 is too great, it will be very hard to justify business as usual for 2013. On top of that we still have to figure out if we can get by the Magnuson Act that states we have to eliminate over fishing by 2014. And that, I'm sorry to say, is not going to happen.
So there were three participants at the SSC meeting who I was texting as I was building the reservation book. I bet I spent two hours in texting alone. I probably should have just taken the ride down. But did get enough done to meet the work quota for this week and, potentially, get the reservation book completed by tomorrow afternoon.
My whole day centered around getting the reservation book built. However, at the same time I was getting our lobster boat, the Petrel, fueled and Tim Coleman (the wreck maven) was going to be over at 9:00 AM. I had a lot of notes in areas south of where I fish that Tim was interested in going over. I have had limited time to pick out numbers I thought might be relevant. So I had invited him up. Fueling the boat was going to also be a 9:00 AM thing but went to noon and then 3:30 PM. I didn't much care when I was going to get fuel with the other things planned anyway. So I did my work as Tim did his in another room. Tim left later in the afternoon. I finished at 6:00 PM.
Most anglers know Tim Coleman as editor and writer of the Fisherman Magazine. And he was the editor and is still a free lance writer, a good one. But he is also an excellent expert fisherman who has a mind for the bottom. And he loves the wrecks and the history of them. He is very interesting to talk to. So, to me, it was a treat and an honor to have him under my roof. And, I have to admit, had he not been there my reservation book would have been completed in the mid afternoon. I couldn't keep myself from stealing a chat with Tim every once and a while. Great man.
I spent the majority of the day working at the desk getting the Ultra Marathon invitations done and in the mail. I also had about a half hours work up at the town office paying mooring bills, yearly business registration and paying excise tax on the two boats. It was a nice day to be ashore.
Two weeks ago my son, Micah, had asked if we could go fishing this weekend. He was going to bring a friend. Two days ago we decided that today was going to be the day. The weather report was suspect. But Friday and Sunday were certainly out. So I went to bed last night wondering if we were actually going to do it (in the meantime, his friend backed out). I woke up at 2:00 AM, as I do every day, and listened to the wind. I rolled over to go back to sleep and wondered if we were going to make it. When I got up at 3:00 AM, the wind was gusting out of the northwest to thirty knots. I worked on the computer until 4:00 AM and finally decided it wasn't worth it. It was going to be too windy to go fishing. And, besides, I wasn't sure where I would be able to go in weather like this where I would catch fish and have limited mobility to make up for my mistakes when I made the bad choices. I told Micah at 4:30 AM that we weren't going. We were going to round up the last of the lobster traps and bring them ashore instead. "Ok, Dad.", was all Micah said. As daylight approached, I had a feeling that the wind was not going to last. Indeed, it was only blowing twenty knots at 5:30 AM. I changed my mind. I told Micah that I didn't care if we had to stay inside Jeffrey's, we were going to go fishing and make a day of it. We'll bring the Bunny Clark's sea anchor.
At 5:00 AM EST the air temperature was 33°F, the sky was clear, the wind was blowing out of the northwest at twenty-five knots and the visibility was excellent. We finally got the boat to the dock at 7:00 AM. By the time we got loaded up, it was 7:30 AM, the latest I have left for a fishing trip in so long I can't remember. An offshore wind is such that the further you go out, the rougher is gets. And so it was. At the twenty mile mark we had four or five foot chops out of the west northwest with wind speeds of twenty plus. I kept going. At our first stop seas were four to six feet in chops but I still tried a drift. It was perfect. We were fishing very deep but the lines had a fishable angle and we could hold bottom. After that first drift, the wind started dropping consistently. By noon, there was no wind and only a one foot left over chop. It was warm enough to forgo gloves if you wanted (I've learned over the years that you eventually lose if you don't wear some protection on your hands - it took me a few years to realize this!). The sky was clear all day. By 1:30 PM, we were done. The wind was just starting to ripple the surface from the south. The visibility was excellent. This held true all day including the ride home. Ten miles from Perkins Cove, the wind was blowing about ten knots from the south with a one foot chop. It was just about dark when we got back to Perkins Cove. The wind had picked up to fifteen knots but the sky was still clear and the air temperature was 37°F. The visibility was still excellent. At 6:30 PM, I went for a run on the beach. This was great as I ran to the south. But turning around and running into the wind was tough. It was blowing over twenty knots and the wind had taken a more southwesterly lilt. When I got home the wind had increased to twenty-five knots and Micah was clearing fish boxes under a light in the driveway. The high air temperature at the Portland International Jetport, Portland, Maine was 42°F (with a low of 28°F) today. In Boston, Massachusetts the high was 46°F (with a low of 38°F) today. Concord, New Hampshire's high temperature was 44°F (with a low of 32°F) today.
We never did use the sea anchor. The first spot didn't look good and wasn't good. But the drift was perfect. I thought to myself; "Well, at least it will be fun to be out here, even if we don't catch anything." The next spot was six miles further. It was a spot I tried with the Bunny Clark twice when I was in the area. It was deep but looked perfect for fish. But both times I had tried it in the past we got little or nothing. And when we did get something it was redfish. By then the drift was getting perfect, the weather was telling me that the wind was going to drop and it was warm. Warm weather in almost February? Come on. How lucky can you get? Our first drift took us into really deep water fast but we caught two cod; mine was 10 pounds and Micah's was about 9 pounds (I didn't weigh his fish but I did take a picture of the fish before he let it go. The digital image appears at the upper left of this entry.). His fish was out of the same year class but it was thinner. The next drift, we started catching pollock. From then on it was a fish a cast until we stopped drifting. We made ten or more drifts, each about a quarter of a mile long, the last one tailing out a half mile. The fish just wouldn't stop biting. And every time I went back, I picked a different edge. Finally, I ran into a spot with a lot of cod on it. But we couldn't get through the pollock to get to them.
As we drifted off the edge, the pollock maintained the same depth which meant that a gap formed between the bottom of the pollock school and the bottom. While Micah was having fun with the pollock, I left my jig on the bottom and hooked into what seemed like the largest cod I have ever had on the line. I thought I was on bottom first or had hooked some old gear with a smaller fish making it seem like a big one. And for over two minutes I could not get this fish off the bottom. Every once and a while it would give that big head shake. When it finally did come, it came slowly. And it stayed like this all the way to the top. Before I could even see my forty foot leader, I could see the fish. The water was exceptionally clear. It looked big. But it looked big because I had hooked it in the back! A 29 pound cod that was barely hooked in the skin of the back! My first trophy of the year.
The pollock were all about the same size, 10 pounds. We landed some pollock up to 14 pounds, one of my fish. And we had three between 5 and 8 pounds. But the school was huge and it looked like every fish came from the same mold. So for three hours we never put the jig down without catching a legal sized fish. The good thing with pollock of this size is that you can release them. Very few looked like they were suffering from barotrauma and, indeed, they went back to bottom like a shot. We were able to catch seven cod from 5 to 29 pounds (all released alive, of course). But it was a miracle that we were even able to get through the pollock to them. We also caught seven redfish. Five were big ones under 2 pounds and two were small.
Micah Boating a Couple Pollock |
Another Vid of Micah Fishing Taken with an Iphone |
That night, Deb (my wife) cooked the redfish fillets in a pan on an open burner with lots of garlic and olive oil. They were so delicious. Redfish have a very delicate flavor if they aren't cooked too long. And Deb did her part to perfection.
The two videos above are something I'm experimenting with. I also have the option of uploading to You Tube and giving you a link instead. The You Tube thing would eliminate having to download Quicktime or other video applications. If you experience problems with either, drop me a note. This will give me more direction as to the method I will employ in the future.
At 5:00 AM EST the air temperature was 33°F, the sky was clear, the wind was blowing out of the west at twenty-five to thirty knots and the visibility was excellent. The wind blew out of the west northwest at twenty to twenty-five knots with higher gusts all day. The air temperature hovered around the freezing mark until 8:00 AM and the climbed over it. The air temperature was in the high 30s most of the day. It may have gone over 40°F, but I was too busy to notice. Late in the day, the wind had dropped and was coming around out of the west. I never checked it after that. But I did see from our closest buoy report that the wind hauled out of the southwest later at night and blew up to twenty knots or so. The sky was clear all day and the visibility was excellent. After sunset, clouds started moving in over the stars. The high air temperature at the Portland International Jetport, Portland, Maine was 40°F (with a low of 30°F) today. In Boston, Massachusetts the high was 43°F (with a low of 34°F) today. Concord, New Hampshire's high temperature was 40°F (with a low of 21°F) today.I spent the whole day with my son, Micah, hauling lobster gear, putting traps (warps and buoys) in the boat and bringing it all home. With no snow drifts to walk through, mild temperatures (perfect for lugging traps around) and an area free of snow to stack traps, it was the easiest I've ever had it. It makes such a difference, too, when the air temperature is above freezing alone, without anything else. Traps don't slide around and have to be tied down, warps don't freeze, the deck isn't as slick, windows don't get iced so you don't have to constantly clear them and the traps aren't heavier because they get a chance to dry out. Indeed, with any wind at all, they build ice on them when temperatures are below freezing. Not today. Today the traps seemed light as a feather. The groin area is still a bit tender from the operation but not so tender that I couldn't work to capacity. Now I have one less thing to worry about. Although, I will miss my only steady link to the ocean until spring. We'll have to go fishing a little bit more often on the old Petrel.
I was going to go for a run after work but decided against it. I was tired and felt like I had worked out anyway. I brought some lobsters to my parents. Then we had lobsters ourselves. It's amazing how much better lobsters are that are fresh caught. It really does make a difference. I watched a bit of the all star (NHL hockey) game but lost interest after about fifteen minutes. It's very different to watch a hockey game that doesn't matter with no checking or hitting. The urgency of the game is missing and, for me, a lot less interesting. It was an early night to bed.
The digital image on the right is a shot of Micah waiting for the hoist while sitting on the washrail of the Petrel. The picture shows the last of this years traps getting ready to be hauled back home. There will be a lot of repair work done on these babies next spring!
I never left the house today except to go for a 5 mile run on the road (at an 8:15 pace - I've gotten woefully slow, Greg V. & I didn't feel great). I spent the whole day working on some type of presentation to the NE Fishery Management Council for Wednesday, getting ready for our first day of reservations (very) early Wednesday morning and getting those Monday calls, emails, orders and book work out of the way. It was a boring day but I didn't get my hands dirty. That's not a good thing. I would rather be out there with Jack Judge getting my hands dirty! And I'm already anticipating another fishing day with the Petrel if I can swing it. That was just too much fun on Saturday.
My wife has a special way she pan fries pollock with a special dipping sauce afterward. Tonight, by special request, she made me this wonderful dinner. These have to be new pollock we caught. There was very little oil content (not that pollock have much oil anyway) and it tasted so much like haddock, I had to check the refrigerator to make sure she wasn't pulling a fast one on me. It was very good, excellent in fact. If I can get on her good side tomorrow maybe we'll be having baked pollock tomorrow night!
I spent the day running around, doing restaurant things, checking the Petrel (my lobster boat has a leaky stuffing box and I have been monitoring it to see if maybe I should tighten it or leave it), picking up materials and stopping at the Bunny Clark for a progress report.
Below is a shot of the cockpit deck. We took the old decking up because of water encroachment outboard of the hatch framing. There was no rot there yet but it was inevitable in the near future. Plus, water softens up the platform and creates other future looming problems with deck beams and the distance between them. I try to catch up with these things a little bit each year. The decking is almost thirty years old and, as you can see, the deck beams look as new as they day they were put in. I remember painting all those deck beams.
The rest of the afternoon was spent running around and studying for my exam tomorrow (speaking figuratively, of course).
The New England Fishery Management Council meeting was long and hard for me, personally. I spoke on two issues in the morning part of the meeting. I was concerned about the huge spike in the recreational catch including what months the spikes represented and what that represented to me. The second issue was that of the stock assessment treating the cod bycatch (released legal and sub-legal cod) as discards or dead fish. In other words, they were lumping the released cod in with the catch to make the recreational landings look higher than they were. I was concerned because I know that the majority of our cod are released alive. We released sub-legal cod on a regular basis but we also release a large number of legal cod back to the ocean alive every year. I know cod have a high survival rate from all the tagging of cod I have done since 1983 and the tagging data that is out there. In fact, in one three year segment of tagging, I got a tag return rate of 26% on cod of 15 to 22 inches long. With tag shedding, natural mortality rate, fishing mortality rate,at large cod, fishermen not returning the tags, etc., etc., that equates to a survival rate of over fifty percent. I believe that anglers fishing off the Bunny Clark enjoy a survival rate with regard to cod at a minimum of 75%. It's probably over 50% for the fleet in general. I also spoke to dogfish predation on cod since there aren't the herring in the Western Gulf of Maine closed area that there used to be and the huge population of dogfish that resided there this summer season (if dogfish don't have the herring, they will eat the cod - and they do, believe me on this). And I talked a short bit about the cod being scarce because of the lack of herring.
There was talk about what the Council could do legally about issuing a total allowable catch (TAC) in the Gulf of Maine for fiscal fishing year of 2012 (May 1, 2012 to May 1, 2013). And there were motions made. One of the biggest motions was one that set the TAC at between 6,500 metric tons and 7,500 metric tons. This is basically 250 metric tons less than the 2011 season. And, in my mind, doesn't get the job done. I appreciate that fisherman believe there are a lot of cod around but I have an a acronym for them: SAPS (small area projection syndrome). I believe there is a "core" population of cod that go back and forth between the Great South Channel and Whaleback near the Ilses of Shoals (for spawning purposes), and all these fisherman are fishing there. And if you fished there only, you too would believe that there are a lot of cod around (and project this to the whole of the GOM). But if you spent most of your time to the east or you fished the Cashes Ledge closed area for any amount of time (as Greg Mercurio on the Yankee Capts does - another great party fishing business, by the way), you would find the cod stocks quite diminished. Don't get me wrong. I don't believe that cod are endangered or about ready to go extinct. But I do believe that we aren't doing enough to protect them. I would like to see a healthier cod stock so everyone could enjoy catching them (recreationally and commercially) in a sustainable manner without having to worry about whether we are going to be able to fish in the following season.
But I digress.
Another motion made by Terry Stockwell, Maine's representative on the Council, passed that said the recreational sector would be managed by a reduced bag limit and a reduced minimum size. The exact figures for a bag limit or a minimum size were not available and won't be available until the correct TAC is adopted by the National Marine Fisheries Service and made part of the regulations for the upcoming season. Then NMFS will decide how much of the TAC is available to the recreational sector and the bag limit will be decided accordingly. I suspect that the bag limit will be no less than five fish. It could be more. And I could be wrong. I also suspect that the minimum size will go to 19". I don't agree with this. But the reason they are doing this is to cut down on the number released cod that have a lower survival rate. Also, the thought is that if the bag limit is caught, the boat will leave the cod sooner than if the minimum was higher. Makes sense. Sort of. But if you consider the base line cod population on Jeffrey's Ledge (for instance) has grown to the minimum of 24 inches, we will fish down this population in the first year. This will reduce recruitment back into this closed area and decrease greatly the base line cod population. This happened the last time they reduced the length limit to 22 inches. I used to keep a handle on the base line cod population with my tagging program. I found that this population of cod roves up and down the length of Jeffrey's predominantly. And, of course, they go outside the closed area as well. But it's surprising how large a percentage of returns comes back from other parts of the closed area.
The long and the short for us next season: It is unlikely that the new regulations will be in place before May 1, 2012. I got this directly from legal council at the meeting. So, from April 16, 2012 to May 1, 2012, the cod bag limit will be 10 fish of 24 inches or greater in length. From May 1 until May 1, 2013, there will be a reduced bag limit on cod and a reduced size limit as well. There is no plan to keep anglers out of the closed area and no plan for time area closures or a shortened cod season (this comes from the Council - it's important to remember that the Council is an advisory board to NMFS. NMFS could always decide on something more stringent in the regulations). Also, since the haddock bag limit of 9 fish per angler came out, new figures have shown that anglers caught half of the haddock that was originally thought and used as a number to get to the 9 fish figure. It is expected that the NMFS will extend that limit over 9 fish or eliminate the haddock bag limit completely by the start of the 2012 fishing season or before. Stay tuned on that one.
The final motion that was passed, the last of the day after 6:00 PM, was the bomb in my view. The motion was to open to commercial groundfishermen the eastern part of the Western Gulf of Maine closed area (not including Jeffrey's Ledge itself - the deeper water just outside the bank), the whole of the Cashes Ledge closed area (except the area directly around Amen Rock), all of Area 2 on the northern end of Georges Bank, half the year on the haddock spawning Area 1 and all of the Nantucket Lightshop area to the southwest of closed Area 1. I've always been of the mind that the commercial fishery is just too hard in some of these spawning areas. They aren't cod spawning areas but there are many hake and pollock spawning areas that will be open to commercial gear, particularly draggers. And, of course, cod do reside and pass through these closed areas, particularly the Parker Ridge/Fippennies area in the spring. And I thought we were in a cod crisis? I also thought that experiments in habitat management would be greatly enhanced by having areas that have been closed for long periods of time. A move to open these areas will throw that idea on the wood pile, so to say. I guess I'm mostly concerned about the haddock spawning area. It's no secret that once that area was closed, we started seeing haddock showing up again in the Gulf of Maine. I've always thought that should be closed to everyone. It hasn't been lately. A directed haddock fishery has existed for a couple of years and the mid-water herring trawlers have been allowed in there and have caught thousands of pounds of juvenile haddock with the herring. [It might be noted that there was a fear that the herring trawlers were catching so many haddock that they would go over their bycatch limit of haddock and be forced to move out of Area 1. The Council ended up giving the herring fleet a larger haddock TAC instead of telling them that they should move out of this area! ] Anyway, my thoughts only.
I spent most of the day at the desk working on fishery management issues, Bunny Clark business/reservations and writing the previous day's entry. It was a boring day but one that I had to get behind me.
I did little else but work at the desk all day. Dave Gray (VT) called me last night. We talked about the Guestletter (and why I didn't print a hard copy mailer). So, last night, I decided that today I would devote my time to posting the Internet version of the Guestletter up on my page or in my Guestletter section. It's a full day process. It requires taking the Word document I started with and converting it all to HTML language. It's not difficult by any means but it is time consuming. And I wasn't done when my working day was done at 6:30 PM. My plan it to get it to readable form (devoid of the digital images I plan to add at some point) and post it tomorrow.
I also spent about two hours on trying to find a solution to the upcoming recreational fishing regulation changes. A few of us have been given the opportunity to attend a stakeholder's meeting on February 10. Here we will take the decreased total allowable catch (TAC) on cod and try to come up with regulations that will fit both the party/charter and recreational vessels for fiscal fishing year 2012. I have some good ideas. At least they seem good to me. And I bounced some of these ideas off my fishing email membership. It's a work in progress. But I plan to be fully committed to some salient ideas that will both benefit the industry and also limit the cod take.
I also went back and forth with Jared Keniston first and, later, Ian Keniston on Bunny Clark ideas as it concerns the projects associated with her this winter. They are making very good progress under Dave Pease who runs the show over there. We got a couple of great ideas to improve things there too. So I was full of ideas by the time I was done. And I was certainly ready to leave those ideas behind by dinner time.
And my high point of the day, besides talking to Priscilla Brooks at the Conservation Law Foundation (regulatory issues), was getting an award in the form of a silver PMC logo pin and a personal letter from Billy Starr, the originator of the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, for raising over $100,000.00 for the Jimmy Fund since my involvement started in 2007. The pin is important for it's recognition, of course. But it's more important as I have something to wear on my Barnacle Billy's shirt that should garner attention, questions and, ultimately, a donation to the cause. So a few steps forward today.
Rather than update this page this morning, I spent the entire time working on getting the Guestletter up. It can now be viewed as an Internet letter at the link on the index page of my site, the link adjacent to the atom bomb gif. I also dropped in another link to the same PDF Guestletter. I will add more pictures when I get some time.
I stayed at the desk updating this page and working on brochure inserts until 1:00 PM. At that point I took a break and jumped on my road bike for a 30 mile ride. This is the first time I've been on my bike for over three weeks or since I had the hernia operation. I felt great for the first twenty miles, averaging about 19 mph. I started to feel it in my legs after that. At the 26 mile mark I bonked. From there I had to drag my ass home at a slow pace.
After a shower, Micah and I prepared the Petrel for another fishing trip tomorrow. We needed extra fuel so I called up Mike Estes at Estes Oil and he came down to the shop to start a truck and give us 18 gallons. That wasn't filling the tank but it gave us enough to make the trip with the fuel I already had. We also loaded everything else we needed to make the trip. Ian Keniston, Micah Tower, Jared Keniston and I are going to make the trip. It's planned as a fun trip but also a trip where Micah can get some one on one in the filleting department. I'm really looking forward to it.
