Jen Zuppe has set what should be the women’s all tackle world-record tog. She was fishing on the Fish Bound with Capt. Kane Bounds when she hooked and landed a 23.4-pound monster tog. If the boat and captain sound familiar, they are the same that caught the men’s all tackle world-record tog back in January 2015. Kenneth Westerfeld caught that 28.5-pounder. It would seem that Capt. Bounds knows where the big tog live. The Fish Bound runs out of Ocean City, Md., and as you might imagine, he is booked up most of the winter.
Capt. Bounds and a few other captains who target tog have set their own rules. They have a three-fish limit instead of the four-fish limit set by the government. They also encourage releasing females so they can continue to provide more tog in the future.
Personally, I have never considered tog a catch-and-release fishery. To the best of my knowledge, they are not overfished and overfishing is not occurring. I am aware there was serious illegal fishing going on in New York, but I believe that has been controlled. Anyway, it is a free country, so if you want to only keep three tog and release the big females, you have every right to do so. As for me, I will keep my four fish as allowed by law and enjoy every mouthful.
Marine Recreational Information Program
I just received the latest data from the Marine Recreational Information Program. This is the data the various councils use to set our fishing regulations. It is gathered from dockside interviews and phone calls to anglers through information from their Fisherman Information Network number. For-hire boats must also send in information from their trips.
What happens to that raw data once it gets to the bean counters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, heaven only knows.
As an example, in 2021, Delaware and New York harvested no black sea bass from shore. New Jersey, however, harvested 204,157 black sea bass from its shores. With both states to the north and south of New Jersey catching no black sea bass from shore and New Jersey catching almost a quarter of a million, you would think someone would have noticed the slight discrepancy. Well, no one did. The figures went through a review by the Scientific Committee, and they seemed to think everything was just fine.
Now we have the data from 2022. Last year, Delaware and New Jersey harvested zero black sea bass from shore, but New York brought in 6,041. Once again, I could see a red flag. New Jersey went from more than 200,000 black sea bass from shore to none, while New York went from no black sea bass from shore to 6,041.
There are other numbers that I suspect could be wrong. They have 10,033 bluefish harvested from Delaware shores in 2022. I know small blues were caught from the surf and at Indian River Inlet, but most were not even snapper size. In addition, they have 28,584 blues taken on private boats. I seldom had reports of blues last summer other than those caught by charter boats trolling small spoons at Fenwick Shoal. The MRIP only lists 338 blues caught by charter boats in 2022. I feel certain charter boats caught many more than that.
This would almost be funny if the fish managers didn’t use these numbers as absolute fact and base our recreational regulations on them. In the past, we had a similar system that called only residents in seaside towns. The Bureau of Standards looked at that and decided to make it better. So now they call fishermen who live anywhere. That is a slight improvement, but more needs to be done.
Waterfowl hunters have to keep track of what they shoot and send in a card at the end of the season. I see no reason why saltwater recreational fishermen can’t keep track of what they catch along with the time they spent on the water and send it in after every trip. Most of us could do this electronically on our phone or home computer. The rest could use prepaid postcards.
I have been told this would be too expensive. I don’t think so. Considering what we must pay those Beltway bandits to generate the data we get today, I bet we could set up the new system and end up saving money.
It would take a strong PR program to get recreational fishermen to go along with the new system, just as we did with the saltwater fishing license. I believe it would be worth the time and money to have solid data and reasonable regulations.
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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.
