Striped bass and fluke are a prime item this weekend in fish markets and in restaurants. And that will be it for the season. Due to the fact that state quotas have been met, the commercial striped bass season will close on Monday, August 23, and the commercial fluke season will close on Wednesday, August 25. The state estimates the 1.12 million-pound quota for striped bass and 846,667-pound quota for fluke have been met. Fish markets will likely have fish for a few days after the fishery closes.
One evening when author Paul Greenberg was 10 years old his father dropped him off at Menemsha. That night he would pull six glistening iridescent squeteague from the waters around the jetty.
“I thought I was going to be rich beyond my wildest dreams,” Mr. Greenberg said in an interview at the same spot on Wednesday.
Everett Poole of Poole’s Fish Market sat Mr. Greenberg down and told him he would take the fish off his hands for 65 cents a pound. It was the first fish he ever sold.
With the start of the 65th annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby just days away, fishermen are concerned about the health of the centerpiece fish, striped bass, in these waters and along the coast.
There is perhaps not a fish more watched by commercial and recreational fishermen, not to mention scientists, than the striped bass. The fish is the swimming equivalent of the American eagle.
Rahul Harpalani caught his first fish ever, a striped bass, on Tuesday. The 24-year-old active duty first lieutenant with the Army had a smile on his face like no one else on Menemsha charter captain Scott McDowell’s boat. Out fishing a mile south of Squibnocket, Mr. Harpalani was having the time of his life. “It is so serene out here,” he said.
“Now you are a fisherman,” said Joe Bennett, a 70-year-old veteran from Maine, who sat beside him.
The Vineyard has no fish weirs these days. The trapping technique, catching fish by way of corralling them against walls of branches, timber and spiles strewn with nets, is no longer used here.
On Wednesday afternoon, however, Jonathan James-Perry, 33, a storyteller and historian with the Aquinnah Cultural Center, gave a talk about the use of fish weirs by the Wampanoag Indians of this region. In a time when the ocean was bubbling with a lot more fish than are there now, a fish weir was an effective way to catch fish.
The recreational season is off and running and no one can appreciate it better now than Capt. Scott McDowell of Chilmark. His boat is in the water working perfectly after a mishap earlier this year.
A state legislator’s effort to make striped bass a recreational fish only is dead for now. The state’s Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture has sent the proposal back for further study.
House Bill 796, filed by Falmouth representative Matthew C. Patrick, would have closed striped bass fishing to all but recreational fishermen. The bill was filed a year ago.
Island fishermen gathered for a dinner meeting at the Home Port Restaurant last week. The guest speaker was Niaz Dorry, a director with the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, based in Windham, Me.
She compared the plight of the small-town commercial fisherman to that of the family farm, and as with small farming, she painted a picture of hope amid innovation.
Hearings begin next week on legislation that would make striped bass an exclusively recreational fish in state waters.
The Massachusetts Striped Bass Conservation Bill, 796, filed a year ago by Falmouth state representative Matthew Patrick, has been debated among recreational and commercial fishermen for months.
Don’t make striped bass a game fish. That was the message delivered last week by a group of Vineyard commercial bass fishermen who traveled to the state house in Boston to object to legislation that would do just that. The fishermen, most of them members of the Dukes County/Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Association, spoke out with one voice against House Bill 796.
More than 100 fishermen attended the hearing hosted by the Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture on Jan. 14.
