Fish populations have been up and down for at least 70 years

There has been a considerable amount of discussion on Saltfish about how much saltwater fishing has suffered over the past 15 or 20 years. One member even asked if he should buy his Delaware General Fishing License for 2020.

If you look back only 15 or 20 years, I guess you would think the fishing world was coming to an end, but let’s say you were to look back 50 or 60 or even 70 years. Then you just might see a pattern that continues to repeat itself in spite of the best efforts of fisheries managers.

My first recollections of saltwater fishing began in the 1940s, when my grandfather would go fishing on a charter boat out of Mispillion Inlet. He worked shift work at American Viscose in Marcus Hook, and when his shift finished up, he and five other guys on his shift would go fishing.

Pop brought home lard cans full of porgies. There would be the occasional trout, but most of the catch were porgies.

By the time I was old enough to go with him, the porgies were replaced by croaker. We would rent a wood boat from a lady in Slaughter Beach, put our 7.5 HP Elgin motor on the back and fish the Coral Beds. Once again, the catch would see the occasional trout, but just about every fish we took home was a croaker.

I went into the Navy after high school and when I got out in 1965, I started surf fishing and camping at Indian River Inlet. The inlet gave up blues and rockfish with some regularity, and the number of trout was definitely on the rise. The beach also saw some decent fishing for kings, blues and the occasional rockfish.

About that time, I married and inherited two brothers-in-law with boats. One fished inshore, the other fished offshore. Trout were now making their presence known. We could go down to the condos off Bethany Beach and catch all the three- to five-pound fish we wanted. Live spot would get you plenty of larger trout out of the surf, and Brown Shoal in Delaware Bay had trout stacked up 20 feet deep.

In addition, trolling with Hoochies around B Buoy would load the box with five- to 15-pound blues. Pulling cedar plugs from A Buoy to the Lightship would bring in football-sized bluefin tuna faster than you could get to the rods. Want black sea bass? No problem, just drift over the Old Grounds. All the flounder you could hope for were available in Indian River Bay.

The brother-in-law that fished offshore had a 22-foot Mako. We had a lot to learn, but in 1974, we brought in the first white marlin of the year caught out of South Shore Marina. We also caught plenty of tuna and dolphin, and even the occasional wahoo.

By the mid-1970s, rockfish were beginning to disappear, and while there were still plenty of trout and blues, those of us who cared about striped bass were really beginning to worry. The State-Federal Striped Bass Management Board was formed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to try and halt the decline in the striped bass population. We failed until Gov. Harry Hughes of Maryland placed a moratorium on striped bass, and the other states followed his lead.

Striped bass did make a comeback, but now they are in trouble again as the spawning stock biomass is below the level deemed necessary for a healthy resource.

Trout have all but disappeared. Blues are overfished. Flounder have not had a dominate year class since 2011. Regulations on rockfish will be very strict. If those are the only fish you want to catch, then take up golf.

Black sea bass are in abundant supply, as are porgies. I have not seen any figures on spot, but they were abundant in 2019. Kings were also in very good supply last year.

I go fishing to catch fish. If I know the trout are all but gone, I don’t fish for trout, and I don’t sit around the dock complaining about the fact that the big trout are gone. I fish for spot or kings or black sea bass or porgies. 

I love fishing for stripers. I still may spend a few evenings or mornings at the inlet trying to catch a unicorn. If I do catch one, hooray for me. If not, no problem.

Fish populations have been up and down for at least 70 years that I am aware of. I expect the same has been true for a long time and will still be true for a long time to come. I choose to fish for whatever Mother Nature gives me and let those who are much smarter than me figure out how to fix the system.