Reel Therapy Fly & Light Tackle Fishing charters

Just a couple of years ago, Omega Protein Inc, based out of Reedville, Virginia, made a handshake agreement with the folks around the Chesapeake Bay stating that they would avoid fishing Atlantic Menhaden (Bunker) inside the bay as much as possible and fish out in the ocean. In 2019, they reneged on their word and not only fished the bay but fished over their allocation, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) voted Virginia out of compliance. This season, they continued to fish the bunker out of the bay until there weren’t any left to catch, so they headed out to sea. With its own fleet of planes, Omega searches the waters looking for the massive schools of bunker that gather on the surface and then call in the bunker boats to catch them up with ease. These very skilled pilots can even determine if the schools contain the right size fish and that the school won’t overload the nets.  Last week, one of our volunteers alerted me that 4 Omega planes landed in Monmo...

 

As seen in the Star-Ledger  1/16/23 Researchers and authorities perform a necropsy examination on a female humpback whale in Brigantine on Jan. 15, 2023. The whale is the 7th to wash shore in New Jersey or New York since early December. (Photo by Michael McKenna of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center) Conservation expert: Speculation on whale deaths jumps the shark. | Opinion By    South Jersey Times Guest Columnist By Capt. Paul Eidman   As a professional captain and owner-operator of a recreational fishing charter business in New Jersey, my clients and I are often lucky to come across whales, dolphins, turtles, and other marine life. On several occasions out at sea, I have even been lucky enough to be sitting still fishing, with the engine off. I have had these enormous humpbacks curiously swim right up to my boat, raise a pectoral flipper up next to my gunwale and look me in the eye. These experiences are as memorable as fishing, if not more so, and will re...

It was all over the news: Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on new wind energy areas (WEAs) for offshore wind developers to start the survey process and determine where and how they will install the offshore wind turbines off New York and New Jersey. As an experienced charter captain and recreational fisherman, and a close follower of the offshore wind energy industry, I wanted to explain what I believe this auction and these six WEAs mean to the fishing community. First off, these new areas are further out than earlier wind farms and far out of reach of the average boater, with the closest area being 27 miles off the coast of New Jersey and the furthest being 53 miles out at sea! Second, from the data provided we can estimate that there will be about 370* and the  actual commissioning of these wind farms may not happen until almost 2030 or even later, so it is not going to be happening for a while. There’s a lot of engineering, permitting, and background work that goes i...

The amount of fishing misinformation out there on social media is enough to make me crazy and inspired this blog post. Take a deeper dive into the world of offshore wind power with me and learn more about what these weird-looking ships are and why they are there. These ships may be big and weird-looking, but I assure you they aren’t “Chinese trawlers” or “Omega Bunker boats” netting up millions of pounds of fish. In fact, there isn’t a single fish hook or net onboard. They are Research vessels hired by offshore wind developers to perform surveys of the ocean floor on the coming windfarms. This is all part of the planning process to explore not only the actual turbine locations but all the cable routes. Those tall structures (A-Frames) that you see on deck tow the sonar arrays behind the vessel and map the seafloor. The other tall towers on some ships are for doing the core sampling. Some of the larger vessels even have a helicopter landing pad on the bow giving the ship an odd prof...

  Recently, legislation was introduced in Louisiana to stop the menhaden reduction fishing industry from damaging fragile nearshore habitat, the lifeblood of the Louisiana Coast. This bill would keep the pogy boats at least one-half mile from land where the water is shallow, and the risk of ecosystem damage is high. While this is a good idea, the legislation does not go nearly far enough. The Gulf menhaden reduction fishery is the largest fishery in the Gulf of Mexico and the second largest fishery in the United States. This industry uses spotter planes and massive mother ships to scoop up whole schools of fish, which they “reduce” to fish oil and fish meal for use as pet food and feed for fish farms. Every year, the industry removes more than two billion fish from the Gulf. 85% of the catch is in Louisiana waters. Gulf menhaden are a critical part of the Gulf ecosystem, serving as forage for many predator species, including gamefish like redfish and speckled trout, marine ma...

  I was recently invited to participate in an offshore wind simulator up in Middletown, Rhode Island. Marine operations modeling and simulation. The United states maritime resource center (USMRI) is a not-for-profit 501C3 that is open to all stakeholders, commercial, recreational fisherman, or anyone wishing to experience this firsthand as  well as for US Coast guard training. For the program, offshore wind developer Orsted’s Revolution wind farm was selected to model. They used actual wind farm survey data, as well as manufacturing data to create the towers, turbines, and related structures. The turbines themselves are slated to be Siemens Gamesa 11 megawatt turbines atop a monopile tower and the blades were about 95 feet off the sea surface. There were also substations built into the model. The turbines are set up there at 1nm x 1nm, but please note that the wind farms further south is to be set a bit closer at .08nm x 1nm. Additionally, they threw in a few sailboats...