Fluke regulations in New Jersey will stay the same at five fish at 18 inches in length. Despite ideas to of a split size limit in New Jersey, Tom Fote and Capt. Al Ristori confirmed that It will be status quo for N.J. fluke anglers, but the season will be set at the next Marine Fisheries Council meeting. New York had been pushing to go up to an 18 1/2-inch minimum in order to extend the season. Fote made an effort to have Delaware Bay made a separate zone to overcome the problem of having a mere 16 inch minimum in Delaware, but 18 inches in N.J. He said this caused Pennsylvania anglers to Delaware rather than Fortescue or Cape May in order to bag some smaller flounder/fluke for the table while fishing the same waters.
The disparity of N.Y. anglers having a higher minimum than those in N.J. fishing the same waters of Raritan Bay was the driving force behind the ASMFC forcing N.J. into regionalization with N.Y. and CT. last year, but there was so little sympathy with the same inequity in Delaware Bay that Fote couldn’t even get a second in his effort to create a region to the south.
Fote noted that the new summer flounder assessment showed the species is overfished and overfishing is occurring in the north. Yet, he said our region didn’t overfish its fluke quota last year. Some had been concerned that the 16-inch minimum allowed for shore fishermen at Island Beach State Park would have a big impact on the quota, but only a mere 176 such fluke were checked in there last year.
In an interesting side note, we are faced with a 33 percent cut in sea bass quota, and the combinations of 12 1/2-or-13-inch minimums with various bag limits and seasons will be presented to the Marine Fisheries Council for a decision.
