The striped bass are finally heading our way. Reports from south of the Cape indicate slot-size fish have entered the west end of Long Island Sound and the bigger-than-slot-size fish are right behind them along the Jersey Shore. If the warmer spring weather continues, allowing ocean water temperatures to rise, these fish will keep coming north.
A few striped bass stay in Massachusetts waters through the winter — sexually immature fish have no reason to migrate. So how can you tell if you have caught a migrating bass or a resident one? For one thing, the migrating bass will typically be long and thin because the energy needed for their journey keeps them underweight. Resident fish in early season are smaller but fatter shaped — more footballs than torpedoes.
The first to arrive here are usually the Hudson River fish, which are darker, with reddish-brown backs, muddy sides, and, often, fungus-rotted fins. Then we get the fish coming in from the ocean, mostly migrating up from the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. They are bright, with backs that are silvery greenish-gray, which comes from swimming a long distance over sand. They will have bright silver sides and bold stripes. They will also have sea lice on them, which appear as brown spots on their sides.
With climate change keeping winter water temperatures higher than what we have come to expect, my guess is it’s easier for some of these fish to stay put.
I think we will start to see these migrating fish in two weeks. We need to see herring, pogies, and mackerel arrive here in quantities before the bass will follow. They’ll come when their food is readily available, and that is what will hold them here.
The recreational fishing regulations for summer flounder, black sea bass, and scup are now set for the season and the only notable change is that the summer flounder minimum size is up from 16.5 to 17.5 inches, with the season shortened by nine days: it’s now May 21 through Sept. 29. The minimum size for black sea bass remains at 16.5 inches, with its season running from May 8 to Sept. 3 and a four-fish bag limit. Scup minimum size has been increased to 11 inches from 10.5.
We saw a real feel-good story unfold here last Tuesday, April 23, when the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s Marine Mammal Rescue and Research team responded to two simultaneous dolphin strandings in Wellfleet. Eight white-sided dolphins were stranded in the Duck Creek area near the town pier, and three stranded at the Gut outside the dike at the Herring River estuary. In an operation that took nearly seven hours and was made difficult by the muddy conditions at low tide on the flats, IFAW was able to rescue 10 of the 11 dolphins. They successfully placed them back in the water at Herring Cove that same evening.
We continue to see whales in and around our harbor. A humpback whale was spotted at Long Point this week as well as a single right whale. Although we haven’t seen this pattern lately, this was actually a very common event many years ago in the late spring. Why these animals ignore an area for years and years and then suddenly reappear is anyone’s guess and probably one more of those things we will never know for sure.
