2020 Delaware Estuary Striped Bass survey report

[Mike]

Includes population data, tag return info, and detailed info on the new regs.
https://www.fishandboat.com/Fish/Fisheries/BiologistReports/Documents/Bio2021/6x02-05-DelawareEstuary.pdf

 

[Dave_W]

Thanks for posting this Mike.

Not surprising numbers and consistent with trends in recent years. Will be interesting to watch this data over the next few years as the new regulations' impact sets in and the good year class of 2014 continues to grow.

 

[poopdeck]

Thanks for posting indeed. The report is accurate to my personal experience of the 2020 striper season, kind of.

I saw the guys out working the Trenton area and spoke to them a number of times as we both seek out the information of the other. Personally, I had one of my best striper years in a long time as far as numbers go. Im guessing we boated somewhere around 50 striped bass this year but only a handful over 30" and none over 35". Now to be fair landing striped bass over 30" in an endless boulder field with heavy current is challenging and can be an exercise in frustration so I'm sure we hooked a few more larger fish but didn't get them in the boat.

So the size of the bass seem to reflect what I witnessed. The thing skewing the numbers, I believe, to the low side is the time frame of the survey. Now timing the run is always a week here or a week there. I typically shad fish into the third week of April and then switch to stripers thru the last week of May. Of course I adjust according to where I think the run is, time wise.

This year the peak of the striped bass fishing for me was about over when the survey started on May 11. come mid May the numbers declined and by the third week of May we were only catching a handful of 18" fish. When this happens is when we switch to smallmouth fishing.

I think if they would have started the survey in the beginning of May and went to the third week the numbers would have been higher. Not faulting their decided on time frame because that's the way it goes with migratory fish but I think they missed prime time by a week or two. I was very encouraged by the striped bass this year. Not so for the smallmouth. Time to go read that report. I'm very worried about the SMB.

 

[Mike]

I realize that you were not being critical of the operation. The crew was aware of the timing problem in that first, the water temp was not cooperating. As I recall it was either a bit too cool for the fish to be in the shallows or the water temp was falling. When the water temp started rising or when the shallows started to warm up enough it got very windy, necessitating aborting their first day or two on the water. I know they went down to Chester one day, started electrofishing, and got blown off by the high waves after only completing a couple of sampling sites. Such is sampling sometimes, but fortunately we, now they, usually hit the timing right. Over the decades the first day of sampling has gradually had to be moved forward due to increasingly warmer water temps earlier in May. The first week of May did not used to be very good. More recently conditions have been more favorable during that week on the sampling sites (Am not including Trenton in this comment). I can only tell you that it is very “painful” for the crew when they can’t get on the water due to wind when all other conditions are quite favorable.

 

[poopdeck]

They do a great job for sure and now that you mention it we did have some horribly windy days. Wind and tide can put white caps on the tidal river. I recall some days where I was all but drifting back to the ramp because the pounding my flat bottom boat was taking got my back upset with me. Made me miss my vee bottom for sure. The wind chop was that bad.

I know last year has me really looking forward to this year.