Reel Therapy Fly & Light Tackle Fishing charters

Local boat-based fishermen from Northern New Jersey (Think Raritan Bay) and Western New York (Think Jamaica Bay) will soon have 54 new fishing hotspots to explore. Empire Wind 1 and Empire Wind 2 is a “pizza slice” shaped offshore wind lease area,   located 13 miles south of Jones Beach, New York, and 19 miles east of Long Branch New Jersey. It is wedged between the shipping channels, with the tip  near  the infamous offshore hotspot known as the “Cholera Bank”. This project has been in the works for a while, since 2017, when the lease was awarded, and continues to move forward.    Empire Wind 1 (EW1) was one of the first wind energy areas to enter the multi-year process in the Bight.  It will be supported locally at the first New York-based “wind port” in South Brooklyn, transforming the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT) into an offshore wind hub. The most recent news about Empire  Wind 2 (EW2)  is the cancellation of the Offshore Wind R...

Recreational anglers are seeing firsthand that warming waters mean that species are moving farther north than ever before – disrupting fisheries management and throwing off fish migration patterns. Combined with the fact that offshore wind turbines act as artificial reefs that attract fish, many anglers support responsibly developed offshore wind power. However, conventional electricity generation is also harming fishing in other, less noticeable ways, such as acidification, mortality in power plant cooling intakes, and mercury pollution. All of these are reasons recreational anglers should welcome more clean energy such as offshore wind power in our state. The burning of fossil fuels for electricity generation creates excess carbon dioxide that, in addition to adding to the greenhouse gas effect, is also deposited in our oceans, making them more acidic. Increased acidity is altering our marine ecosystems and creatures in ways that we cannot readily see, but years of scientific researc...

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...