Burton Rogers with a rockfish that defies the predictions of scientists for the 2010 season.

By Karl Blankenship
Bay Journal News Service

More than two months before biologists threw their first net into the water to gauge the success of this year’s striped bass reproduction, Ed Martino had the answer, and he never had to leave his desk.

Rockfish reproduction, Martino determined in May, would be “well below average.”

The researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Cooperative Oxford Laboratory came up with his conclusion by going online and looking at March though May river flows monitored by the U.S. Geological Survey and temperature data from Baltimore-Washington International Airport for the same period, then plugging the information into a mathematical model.

While Martino crunched numbers in his office, a team of biologists from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources waded into the water at 22 locations once a month from July through September. At each site, they did two sweeps through the water with a 100-foot seine net, then counted everything they caught.

When the work was done, the biologists had averaged 5.6 juvenile striped bass per net haul. That was less than half the long-term average of 11.6. After all of their field work, they had reached the same conclusion as Martino.

His model, which was developed with data from the Maryland DNR, confirms what biologists have thought for years: The weather during any given spring plays a huge role in determining how many larval striped bass survive to be “recruited” into the overall population. But his model puts an exclamation point to just how important weather is: In looking back to 1985, he can account for more than 80 percent of the annual variability in striped bass recruitment in Maryland, where the majority of the East Coast population is spawned.

This year, the model successfully predicted a poor year even though many fishery biologists – including Martino – thought it would be good.

But that predictability may contain a hint of problems on the horizon for striped bass. Although the coast-wide population remains above target levels, striped bass recruitment in Maryland has been below average for three consecutive years, largely because the weather hasn’t cooperated.

“The Bay is full of spawners, but we are seeing a real reduction in recent years in reproduction,” Martino said. “So I think it’s pretty obvious that something else is going on in the environment.”

That “something else” may be found in work done by Bob Wood, the NOAA scientist in charge of the Oxford Lab. Wood suggests that a broader, long-lasting climate pattern called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation may be affecting striped bass and other fish.

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is an alternating pattern of warming and cooling over large areas of the Atlantic Ocean, similar to the El Nino, La Nina patterns in the Pacific. The shifts affect climate over large regions of North America. Various AMO phases, during which different parts of the Atlantic are warmed or cooled, persist for decades.

During certain AMO phases, which promote wetter winters, cool springs and more frequent nor’easters, the prevailing pattern seems to promote improved reproductive success for anadromous fish, such as striped bass, which live most of their lives at sea but return to freshwater to spawn.

During other AMO phases, which promote drier, warmer springs, the situation is reversed, with fish such as menhaden, that spawn on the coastal shelf and whose larvae use estuaries for nurseries, getting a boost. During those times, striped bass reproduction takes a hit.

Wood says those phase shifts are strongly correlated with the rise and fall of striped bass and menhaden stocks in the past.

Striped bass crashed because of overfishing in the 1980s, which was also a time when the AMO was in a phase unfavorable for their recruitment, so fish being caught were not being replaced. The ensuing rebound of striped bass stocks is often touted as a major fishery management success as managers took dramatic actions, including a coast-wide moratorium, to protect the spawning stock. And it was. But Wood’s work strongly suggests that managers also got lucky. Their fishing moratorium coincided with an AMO shift that greatly improved striped bass spawning conditions.

“Had the weather not turned, we would have been waiting longer for that recovery,” Wood said.

Meanwhile, as striped bass recruitment bottomed out in the 1970s and 1980s, menhaden recruitment soared, only to fall to persistent low levels in the 1990s and 2000s as striped bass again benefited from the prevailing climate cycles. The same general pattern holds for other anadromous and shelf-spawning fish, Wood said, but the correlation is strongest with the anadromous striped bass and white perch, and the shelf-spawning menhaden and spot.

The exact reason why temperature and the timing of river flows is so important is less certain. Martino and Wood theorize the cool temperatures delay the production of plankton until striped bass larvae are most abundant. The high flows may push those plankton and striped bass larvae together so the larvae, which are poor swimmers, have plenty to eat.

“The prey almost has to bounce off the heads of the larval striped bass,” Martino said.

Conversely, warmer years benefit larval menhaden, which use the same nursery grounds, but arrive earlier and eat different kinds of plankton.

Wood first published his hypothesis years ago, but has since strengthened the climate - recruitment connection, adding more data and looking at actual striped bass and menhaden harvests dating back to the 1880s. A new publication is in the works, which he hopes will prod more discussion among managers.

A better understanding of these long-term patterns can be a huge aid for fishery managers. Had they understood they were in the midst of a down-cycle for striped bass recruitment in the 1980s, for instance, managers might have acted sooner to curb fishing pressure, Wood said.

There are problems in using the information in management, though. The understanding of regional climate patterns is far from complete, and it is much easier to observe what happened in the past than to predict what will happen in the future. As a result, it’s hard to say with certainty whether the last three years of poor reproduction stemmed from a change in the AMO and will persist into the future – or their correlation is just coincidence.

“It is quite possible that he (Wood) is correct. The problem that we have, and it is a typical problem with this type of analysis, is that they are always based on an analysis of the past,” said Alexi Sharov, a stock assessment scientist with the Maryland DNR. “In many fisheries around the world, strong correlations were found between recruitment and certain environmental factors based on historical data, but the attempts to use these correlations to predict recruitment were not very successful, indicating that we are dealing with a very complex, intricate process.”

Also, while striped bass recruitment has been poor the last three years, there’s been no boom in menhaden recruitment. The menhaden recruitment index remains below average.

Managers have become increasingly concerned about the status of the striped bass stock. The total number of fish estimated to be in the coastal population has declined by a quarter in recent years, although it still remains at what fisheries scientists consider safe levels.

The recruitment needed to replenish those stocks has been poor in many places where it’s monitored, especially in Maryland, where striped bass reproduction has the strongest connection to future populations. Recruitment has been below average for the last three years, and four of the last five, in the state.

Because of concerns about the population, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a multi-state agency that regulates catches of fish that migrate along the coast, recently decided to assess the striped bass stock next year, rather than 2012 as previously scheduled.

This article is distributed by Bay Journal News Service.

   Though I was only four or five years old, I still remember my first charter boat fishing trip on the Chesapeake Bay.

When my Dad told me I was going fishing, I got my toy plastic reel and steel rod that had a rubber hook for snatching up open mouthed plastic goldfish in a dexterity game.

I cut off the rubber hook with safety scissors and tied on a Christmas ornament hook. I was ready to catch a fish.

   Capt. Bill Dixon from Town Creek must have been amused as I carried my rig onto his boat with my Dad, his business partner Howard Carpenter, and members of our families.

   I insisted on only using my rod. When we got into a school of bluefish, I took a silverside minnow that was spit out from one of the boated blues, hooked it on the ornament hook, and hung it over the side.

   For a long time I did not catch anything. Capt. Bill tried to get me to use one of his rods. No, I was going to catch a fish on my rod.

   Then somewhere during the course of a feeding frenzy, I hooked a bluefish on my little rig. I cranked the few feet of line in with the fish hanging on the hook. I had caught a fish with my rod. That was enough for me.

   Years later, I learned that Howard had slipped the fish on my hook when I was distracted.

   Regardless, that set in motion a fishing transition from cane poles, to Zebco spin cast reels, a fancy fly rod, open face spinning reels, and deep sea trolling combos.

 I saved my quarters for all manner of fishing gear: jitterbugs, Rebel lures, plastic worms, bobbers, snelled hooks, and the annual edition of Fishing in Maryland which I devoured.

   Every year, we fished with Capt. Bill. He was our Chesapeake Bay captain. I remember most of the trips and used his rods after my first trip. Always, we brought back a washtub full of bluefish, rockfish, or sea trout.

   I was in the seventh or eighth grade attending Leonard Hall Jr. Naval Academy when I last fished with Capt. Bill.

 I walked aboard with an open face saltwater Berkley spinning rod and reel combo.

   Though spinning combos are part of every charter boats arsenal now, forty five years ago, the Penn boat rods and trolling reels were the order of the day.

   Capt. Bill shook his head at the new fangled rig.

   The plan for that charter which I knew in advance was to locate and drift for sea trout. I tied on a double hook rig just like he had his rods outfitted.

Capt. Bill could read his old flasher fish recorder like no one else on the Bay. Time after time, he put us on a school of weakfish hungry for our peeler crab baits.

   We caught sixty sea trout that day. I had a great time and caught thirty trout myself with my rod and reel. Late in the day, Capt. Bill walked over to me, picked up my rig, and tested the action by bending the tip of the rod. He smiled at me knowing that I had selected the right rig for the right day.

   The kid was ready to fish with his own rod.

THE CHESAPEAKE 

A decade prior to the tragic sinking of the El Toro in the cold waters of the Chesapeake Bay in December of 1993, I spent many summer days fishing with previous owner Capt. Norman Bishop on that same vessel. Those were the days when the bluefish were abundant enough to be chummed in for the party boat customers to make good catches for a reasonable per-head price.

Though I paid like any customer, I was happy to provide fishing tips for novices.

At the end of each trip, I collected the left over alewives that I later ground for chum and froze to use on the next trip.

The frozen block of chum thawing out in a mesh bag hung in the water made a consistent slick with the freshly ground chum that the mate was tasked with ladling overboard.

     When I got my own boat, I had a good supply of good fishing locations across the Bay thanks to a good relationship with the captain and crew.

     At the same time, I was playing bass guitar in a five piece country and rock band in Colonial Beach, Virginia. Ralph Long, the left handed lead guitar player, was also my fishing buddy who was showing me the ropes on the Potomac River. In addition to all this, I worked from daybreak to 5:00 P.M. at our family sawmill. Ralph was a real go-getter. Every morning, he drove his girlfriend to work. Later, he’d go get her.

     Though it may be a lot of week-end fun, playing in a five piece band does not involve making much money.

Ralph figured a trio made up of lead guitar, bass, and drums would be a far more profitable venture. We needed to work Tony the Drummer into our act as he was the only one of the three of us who could sing reasonably well.

Unfortunately, Tony had a strange timing quirk. During the vocal portion of a song, Tony thumped at one tempo. When the lead break occurred, he always sped up, way too fast. Poor Ralph just could not make his fingers move that quick.

     Since the working, fishing, music making portions of our lives left little time for practice sessions, Ralph and I came up with a plan to work out our sets and teach Tony consistent timing. We recorded our bass and guitar parts with a metronome on cassette tapes (remember them) and wired a sound system inside the cabin of the 25’ KenKraft  that was to become our floating concert stage.

     Tony was not too keen on fishing, but we convinced him to come on board, bring his sticks and keep time on the engine box as we would play through the cassettes and take turns singing along. Tony was to sing every other song. Ralph and I should alternate fronting the other half of the set list with Ralph growling out the gruff stuff and I would sing the instrumental songs like “Tequila” or “Wipeout”. I still remember every word. Both of them.

     We kept the boat on a trailer down at Buzzy’s Marina to have a quick shot across the Bay. Tony and Ralph met me at the mill in Charlotte Hall at five o’clock on a Monday evening in July. We all jumped into my ‘74 one ton Ford pick-up truck and made the hour long run south to Ridge. It took a half hour to hitch up the boat, pick up a bucket of chum and alewives, and launch the boat. By 7:30 P.M., we were anchored at the Middle Grounds in the Chesapeake.

     Ralph flipped on the cassette player in the cabin. Tall lanky Tony started drumming on the engine box. I tossed my mesh bag holding a frozen block of chum overboard. Ralph and I baited up and threw our lines out while I flipped fresh chum from the five gallon bucket. Tony sang a song, then Ralph, back to Tony, then my word or two, and back to Tony.

     Most sane fishermen would figure that there is no way we could catch a fish with all that cacophony taking place. Though their ears cannot be seen externally, fish have internal ear bones in their skull which hear amplified vibrations from their air bladder. Also, fish have a lateral line along their side that picks up vibrations in the water. During my years running party boat snapper night fishing trips in the Keys, I discovered that the hum of a genset produced more fish than running the night lights from the battery bank. Mixing a steady sound with an abundant flowing food source is actually a recipe for some very good fish catches if applied properly.

     So, we played, sang, and fished our way through three hours of cassette tapes. When we pulled anchor at 10:30 that night, we had a 150 quart cooler made by Sailing Specialties Inc. half full of bluefish under the light of a nearly full moon.

     By 1:30 P.M. Tuesday morning, we had made it back to our respective homes and beds.

     The next afternoon, we were ready to do it again. Same routine: leave the mill at 5:00 P.M.

     That evening, the fishing was even better. We discovered that sea trout beneath the bluefish could be caught by adding a one ounce sliding egg sinker and monofilament leader to the flat line rig. By the end of our three hour jam session, we had filled that coffin sized cooler with mostly eight to twelve pound sea trout. I did notice that the fish bites seemed to cycle in intensity as Tony’s crooning tenor voice filled the night air. Ralph and I were not so popular with the sub-surface audience.

     We took the next evening off to rest, but agreed to hold another practice session on the Bay on Thursday night. I took time on that Wednesday night to re-dub one of the cassette tapes.

     As the sun was setting the next evening, we were busy catching fish in the chum line while we sung our hearts out on the Chesapeake Bay to Tony’s now steady drumbeat. The completely full moon glowed overhead when I popped in the next tape. On this tape, I had arranged all of Tony’s songs in that set in consecutive order.

     Tony serenaded from his first to second song.  The sea around us literally shimmered in the moonlight with the reflections of thousands of fish swimming around the boat. By the third song, the water was boiling with fish flipping on the surface. While Tony did his very best Freddy Fender version of “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights”, Ralph grabbed the landing net and started scooping bluefish from the surface. I reached into the cabin and pulled out the long wooden handled heavy duty grass shrimp net to harvest the sea trout below.

     While kneeling on the deck and swinging the net deep below the surface, I felt a sudden jolt. The net stopped abruptly. Looking down, I saw my arms and half the top of my head engulfed in the gaping jaws of a shark that was rising above the surface. In a fraction of a split second, I dropped the net and fell back into the boat as the huge mouth clamped shut.

     Tony laughed but never missed a beat. He did not see the shark, just me fumbling in the bottom of the boat. My own mind flashed to the pictures in Tommy Courtney’s Restaurant of a couple bull sharks he had captured in his nets. I pointed over the gunnels and stuttered, “Bull shark!”

     “Bull shhh”  was all Tony could get out of his month as the shark jumped clean out of the water directly over Tony’s wide eyes and dropped chin. The moon disappeared in a shark blocked twenty foot long eclipse. A giant lollipop stick (my grass shrimp net) protruded from the shark’s jaws. From my angle flat on the stern deck, I could see the shark’s blue skin.

     This ferocious flying fish was a monster mako that must have taken a wrong left turn at Virginia Beach.

     Tony dropped his sticks. Ralph flipped off the stereo switch as he retreated into the cabin. Tony and I were not far behind. Quietly, we trembled, huddled, and waited in the depths of the foc’sle for the shark to make another move. Easily, this blue water denizen could crush the boat by landing directly on us or it could bite a hole through the bottom. Either way, we were history.

     The anxious minutes turned into long silent hours through the moonlit night. The sun slowly rose over the Eastern horizon as night surrendered to day. None of us made a peep while the El Toro chugged across the Bay, anchored and established a chum line not far from us on that Friday morning. I eased up through the cabin hatch, unhitched the anchor line and threw the works overboard then quickly ducked below. We drifted far down current before firing up the engine hoping the shark had disappeared or moved on to better feeding grounds behind the El Toro.

     That strategy must have worked because we are all three still alive to tell the story though Tony was shell shocked into amnesia regarding the entire week’s events. Last time I heard him play, he was drumming in a five piece band and singing “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” in Toot’s Bar.

Grass shrimp are your low cost option…FREE!

     The top three baits guaranteed to catch fish in the Chesapeake Bay and tributaries are bloodworms, soft crab, and grass shrimp.  Ironically, the best quality, freshest bloodworms and soft crabs are not always found in bait and tackle stores.

     As you enter St. Mary’s County, the best bloodworms and freshest coffee is found at the 7-11 store across from the Charlotte Hall Farmers Market.  Every weekend, dozens of vanloads of visitors stock up at this location early in the morning to provision up for the hour long drive to Point Lookout Park.  The high volume of turnover insures that you get a good cup of coffee for you and a new cup of bloodworms for the fish.  The cold cup goes in the cooler. 

    A little further south, there are two seafood dealers who carry live soft crabs.  They also will pack your crabs in ice to keep them fresh for the day’s fishing.  Copsey’s Seafood is on the right just past the speed zone in New Market.  Thompson’s Seafood is also on the right a couple miles further south on Rt. 5.  Both places carry recently shed local soft crabs that are good enough to eat if you fail to catch fish.

     Bloodworms are expensive as they have to be shipped from Maine and Nova Scotia.  Soft crabs are also fairly expensive due to limited access.  Fresh grass shrimp, however, are free for the dipping. 

     There is a catch.  You have to catch them.  You can buy refrigerated grass shrimp that are packed in sawdust but the fresh caught buggers are better bait.

     There are plenty of fine mesh nets available that will screen out grass shrimp but many do not have a stiff enough frame to last any length of time.  The best grass shrimp roller net that I have purchased came from the Tackle Box in Lexington Park.  The aluminum frame bolted to a solid thick wooden handle will last many years.

     Catching grass shrimp is as simple as pushing the roller net through shore grass at high to medium tide.  The grass rolls down under the wooden roller beneath the net.  The shrimp hop up in the water.  The net scoops them up.  During low tide, the shrimp can be found around the edges of boat ramps or pilings.

     Though you can wear hip boots to stay dry, I prefer to push the net through the grass in a pair of shorts wearing old sneakers or a pair of crocs for foot protection.  A large plastic butter or Cool Whip tub with a snap on lid makes a fine container for the dozens of little shrimp you will catch.

     Adult grass shrimp are about an inch long.  This time of year, the larger ones will be loaded with eggs.  These big mamas also make the best bait.  Fortunately, there are trillions of these critters along the shore.

     Armed with a butter tub of fresh grass shrimp and seaweed, you can catch most any fish that swims in the Bay and tidal tributaries.  The standard double hook bottom rig works fine in open water, but I drop down to a single snelled hook about five inches above a small sinker when fishing brushy small creeks because of the snag potential.  Remember, to keep the container cool with no water for the shrimp to swim in or they will suffocate since the small amount of water will not hold enough air.  A little seaweed will provide sufficient moisture. 

     Small #4 hooks are about the right size to impale a single grass shrimp from the tail to head.  Later on in late July, August, and September, it may take a couple of the smaller shrimp that are more plentiful to cover the hook.  I prefer spinner hooks though the plain ones work fine.

     Mostly, I target fat white perch with these tasty morsels.  In the early Spring, grass shrimp are the very best bait for yellow perch.  This time of year, almost every fish that swims will snatch a fat grass shrimp.  Years ago, the grass beds were so plentiful that fishermen chummed for striped bass using gallons of grass shrimp for chum.  Now, a live spot is equally effective for catching rockfish, thus reducing the mortality rate on grass shrimp by fishermen.

     Not many fishermen use grass shrimp in their arsenal of bait due to the high cost of a roller net.  With tax, you can expect to spend forty bucks on a roller net that will last a lifetime.  This grants you the ability to wade through the shore grass in pursuit of these super bait shrimp.  That may sound like a lot of clams till you consider that bloodworms are ten dollars a dozen.

 You do the math.