On Dec. 27, I went on a fishing trip unlike any other I have been on before. While I have fished with Capt. John Nedelka on the Karen Sue for tog, on this trip, no one would be allowed to keep any fish, even if they measured over the 16-inch minimum size.
This excursion was put together by Scott Newlin, who works for the Fish and Wild Life Division of DNREC and is currently doing a tagging study on black sea bass and tog under a federal grant from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.
Most tagging studies can gather their subjects by trawling the bottom, but since black sea bass and tog are structure-oriented, a trawl is not practical. These fish must be gathered by hook and line or by commercial pots. We were on a trip to gather tog by hook and line.
We arrived at the dock and were underway by 7 a.m. There were just the two of us, Scott and me, as two other gentlemen that Scott had invited backed out at the last moment.
John ran south to Fenwick Shoal and his mate, Glen Myers, had us anchored up on a wreck in quick order. Glen also tied up a unique two-hook rig and baited it with green crabs.
The two-hook rigs were made by sliding the eye of a J hook on a dropper loop, but not pulling the hook back through the loop. The same dropper loop is pulled through a second J hook eye, and that hook is then pulled back through the loop. What you end up with is a single hook locked in place and a second hook that can be adjusted to the size of the bait. With green crabs, we put one hook in the leg hole at one end of the bait and another hook at the leg hole at the other end. In spite of all this trickery, I still brought up part of a crab with the center bitten out between the two hooks.
I had brought my usual two bottom-fishing outfits, but Scott said I couldn’t use them. Instead, we all used the same rods, reels and line. The rods were Star, the reels were Diawa and the line was braided.
In addition, both of us had stopwatches on lanyards around our necks. We started the timers when the sinkers hit bottom and kept them running until we caught a fish, ate lunch or moved to another location. Scott kept track of the time between fish, and, at the end of the study, he will average this out to come up with a figure that will give fishery managers some idea of how long it takes a recreational angler to catch a tog. He has done the same for black sea bass. I hope when these numbers are used, it will prove that the fantastic figures used in estimates of recreational catches are actually impossible.
The weather was perfect, and we hit several wrecks and several places on different wrecks. The results were the same every place we went. Short tog. Scott used lots of tags to the point that he stopped tagging really small tog and saved his tags for the larger small fish.
I really had a great time on this trip, and I learned quite a bit about the workings of the science of fishery management. You would think as many advisory councils as I have been on, I would have seen it all, but even an old dog can learn new tricks.
Goodbye 2018
I, for one, am happy to see 2018 in the rearview mirror. It was the worst fishing year I have ever had in my life, beginning in the spring when I didn’t get to go trout fishing in New Castle County due to bad weather or having to work when the weather was good.
Then there was opening day of sea bass season. I had booked a spot on the Angler out of Ocean City in February and couldn’t believe my good luck when the weather turned out to be good on opening day. I should have known something was going to go wrong, and it did. My total catch for the day was one black sea bass. Not even a dog shark. Things did not improve, and my last sea bass trip in December with my son Roger resulted in the same score, one black sea bass.
I did manage to catch a five-pound flounder in the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal and a nice black drum in the surf, but that was just about it for the year.
Can 2019 be any worse? Oh yeah, it can, but I don’t plan to quit.
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Eric Burnley is a Delaware native who has fished and hunted the state from an early age. Since 1978 he has written countless articles about hunting and fishing in Delaware and elsewhere along the Atlantic Coast. He has been the regional editor for several publications and was the founding editor of the Mid-Atlantic Fisherman magazine. Eric is the author of three books: Surf Fishing the Atlantic Coast, The Ultimate Guide to Striped Bass Fishing and Fishing Saltwater Baits. He and his wife Barbara live near Milton, Delaware. Eric can be reached at Eburnle@aol.com.
