Scup

This the latest DEP commercial scup letter. What I find interesting is I can land 120,000 pounds of scup during the first four months of this year. Not a bad quota for someone who does most of his scup fishing out of a 14 foot rowboat. Perhaps I am looking at this all wrong; maybe what I should do is put my old body up for rent. Anyone who wishes to pay fifty bucks for a commercial boats registration can make me proposition to rent out my body and have at it. I think it would be perfectly legal since I do have all of my endorsements. All I would have to do is be aboard. The only negative thing about this is it would make me feel like a cheap prostitute.

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Bob & Mag

Scup, I wonder if they figure this like they did with blackfish? The months of Jan thru Mar they said, at the tautog meeting in Clinton, that none were caught and 0 pounds were assigned to those months in figuring the quotas.
When do you start catching them?

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Smoke free 8 Weeks!

Scup

I do not have a clue how they are planning to go about it. One thing is for sure, our DEP tends to work secretly behind the scenes. For example, they will never give any advance notice to me, or any one else, as to when a major benchmark is about to be reached regarding quotas. For example, on a given day, I will received a letter that they anticipate a particular quota will be reached in two days and hence the allowable catch will then drop to whatever two days hence or sometimes as with summer flounder they will abruptly close the season only to exclaim two weeks later "ops we made a mistake and we will reopen the season". This drives all commercial fisherman crazy; there is no way that anyone can plan ahead in this business. Come hell or high water, the big guys will always try to get their licks in before a surprise letter arrives. Last year they never really lowered the scup quota because the scup catches fell off hence the benchmarks were not reached. There really is something crazy about how the DEP goes about it. They knew the scup were in trouble, yet they did not lower the quota even though they had the power to do so. This year it became painfully obvious they blew it last season by being way too late in reducing the allowable catch. Since no one knows when the letters are going to fly this year, if anyone has boat that can catch scup, they will be out there doing their thing. By the time warm weather rolls around, most quotas will have been reached (or close to being reached) so the small guy ends up with slim pickings. I would love to see the DEP's calender year start each year in July and end in the following June. The end result will be the same, but it would mean the little guy would have a shot at getting something out of the quota before the draggers cause letters to fly. It will never happen, things are the way they are because the powers that be want it to be that way.

I do not target togs in the springtime. Togs do go into pots, but not like scup. Since scup can bring in almost as much togs, and are easier to catch, scup are what I go after. In the fall, the scup move further away from the shallows, but the togs move in close. Hence it is in the fall that I first start to go after togs. I think it is really getting hard for a recreational angler to have a decent day on the water fishing unless one is out there to catch and release or one goes after several species.