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.
There is another fishing boat in Menemsha. The blue, 55-foot offshore lobsterboat Retriever belongs to Capt. Alec Gale and will be used by him to transport fish from Menemsha to the mainland. Retriever replaces his previous workboat, the Jane Lee, a Bruno Stillman 55.
A Sag Harbor landscape artist has turned her attention to making shark tournaments on Long Island and on the Vineyard more environmentally friendly.
April Gornik is raising money to pay for and provide free circle hooks to fishing captains who participate in this month’s 24th annual 2010 Monster Shark Tournament in Oak Bluffs. The tournament is July 22 through July 24.
Vineyard fishermen did well in the state’s annual saltwater fishing contest, with six Island anglers taking prizes at an event held on Valentine’s Day at the Eastern Fishing and Outdoor Exposition in Worcester.
The state keeps tallies for the largest fish taken in a wide array of categories from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30.
Helena Kirschenbaum of Oak Bluffs won in the women’s category for a 42-pound, six-ounce striped bass.
The current in the Edgartown harbor has changed again.
It has been three years since the Norton Point opening connected Katama Bay to the sea, and the water movement through the harbor has gained another measure of unpredictability: currents running through Edgartown harbor are far greater than tidal.
Plus, the three years of increased current has changed the way boaters use the harbor and the way bathers use the beaches.
Last spring, when a local angler wanted to catch Atlantic mackerel in Vineyard waters he had to get in a boat and motor more than a mile off Gay Head. This week there is no need for the boat. For the first time in many years anglers are jigging for mackerel off Memorial Wharf in Edgartown and they are getting quite a few; some have caught enough for a holiday dinner. Plus, they are catching plenty of Atlantic herring.
M. Emmett Carroll Jr. has seen change on the waterfront, from the days when lobsters were bountiful to now when they seem scarce. He has kept his faith by dancing with new ideas, shifting his attention to raising oysters. He runs Menemsha Oysters, pretty much a one-man aquaculture operation which involves raising and harvesting some of the Island’s tastiest oysters.
The world’s oceans need protection, a globe-traveling National Geographic underwater photographer told a large audience at the Tabernacle last Saturday.
After 35 years of photographing the oceans, Brian Skerry, 49, said he is troubled by growing evidence of degradation of habitat and the waste and loss of sea life. “I think the oceans are dying a death of a thousand cuts,” he said.
An Aquinnah resident caught two bluefish by hand at the end of the day last Saturday. Wilde Whitcomb, 31, was out walking with his sister, Gabrielle Whitcombe, in front of Zacks Cliffs at about 6 p.m., when they noticed a bluefish swimming in the surf.
Mr. Whitcomb stepped into the water and grabbed the fish by the tail. They continued to walk along the beach and found another. Mr. Whitcomb grabbed that, too.
