Fluke Season Opens And Gets A Big Boost From DEC

As a incorrigible procrastinator, I have long lived by the old adage “If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.”

Apparently, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation lives by the same creed.

The DEC waited until less than 48 hours before the start of the 2022 fluke season to announce what the rules would be for this year — thusly, by the time you are reading these words, they’ll sorta be old news.

It’s too bad they waited so long because the news they brought for fluke fishermen was certainly reason for celebration.

The minimum size for fluke was cut by a half inch — the first time we’ve seen a size reduction in several years. And while the bag limit remains at a perfectly reasonable four fish per person, per day, the season has been extended by 12 days, until October 9.

This is glorious news because New York fishermen are definitely having a harder and harder time putting fluke on ice than they have much of the last two decades.

The reason for this, it would seem, is that while the fluke stock is doing pretty well by all accounts, the main body of fish is gradually shifting its residency northward.

This has been going on for the better part of 20 years now, very much in parallel with the recovery of the stock from the slump of the 1990s as management got sharper.

In the early 2000s, the waters off New Jersey were the home of the best spring and summer fluke fishing on the East Coast. Big fish, lots of fish, long seasons — they had it all. During that time we here on Eastern Long Island had a pretty good fishery too, but it wasn’t like in Jersey where if you didn’t catch at least a 6-pounder on a trip it was something of a disappointment.

Then that all changed. From about 2007 or 2008 until about 2018 or so, we were in the hot zone. Big flukes were flying over the rails on every tide. Our bays and near-shore bowls were stuffed with hungry flukes all summer long. A sharp angler fishing out of Shinnecock or Montauk had a very good chance of decking an 8-, 9-, 10-pound fluke on most about any trip. Hell, I caught a 9-pound doormat on a frickin’ Deadly Dick that I dropped to the bottom off Montauk one day while waiting for the albies to pop up again.

That kind of fishing has gradually faded out in the last few years here and, in fitting with the pattern, spectacular fishing has materialized to the north and east, most notably off Block Island and the Nantucket Shoals — the latter of which has become a serious trophy-hunting destination.

Our fluking still has its moments, but they are undeniably more scattered and shorter-lived than they were even five or six years ago.

So it’s perfectly reasonable for the DEC to ease up on the limitations on New York fishermen a bit. We suffered through 21-inch minimums and two-fish bag limits for some years when the fishing was gangbusters. Now that it has slowed and putting four keepers in the box is legal but difficult to achieve on some days or in some places, trimming the size limit and expanding the seasons is not going to threaten overfishing by New York’s hundreds of thousands of hungry anglers.

It may well help a smidge’ to ease the pain for party and charter boat owners of the state’s still absurd black sea bass regulations, which have hobbled our for-hire fleet and handed a leg-up to their counterparts in New Jersey, where seasons are longer and bag limits are more than double what they are here. It’s criminal and the worst kind of byproduct of sound fishery management. But that’s another column (and it’s been several previously).

So for fluke fishermen, Sunday’s opening day — a full two weeks earlier than we were allowed just three years ago — was just the beginning of a very long season of fresh ceviche and fried fluke sandwiches.

Stripers are also putting in a very good early season performance and a good number of weakfish have been taken from local bays and even the beaches. While I have not heard of anyone catching that yellow-eyed Beetlejuice fish that shall not be named, I’m sure someone will have by the time this column hits the presses.

It’s go time! Catch ’em up. See you out there.