Outdoors: Black sea bass take center stage in Cape Cod waters - Worcester Telegram

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Mark Blazis  |  Telegram & Gazette

The unseasonable Nor’easter canceled many Memorial Day weekend boat trips. On the few days that winds relented last week, though, fishing off the Cape was fabulous.

Keeper stripers had dramatically arrived in the Canal, and bluefish were all over Vineyard Sound. But for anglers more concerned with eating delicious fish, the presence of newly legal black sea bass took center stage.

Limits of spawning black sea bass and big scup were there for the taking just off Hyannis and the Centerville River. Some commercial fishermen will soon be putting out pots at rocky hotspots like Colliers — not for lobsters — but for sea bass, which can bring home a big paycheck.

Making a living fishing Nantucket and Vineyard sounds isn’t easy. The few who figure out how to do it necessarily have to diversify, variously trapping conch, scalloping — and setting out pots for sea bass — if they get the proper permits.

Sea bass pots, unlike lobster pots, can be fished with or without bait because sea bass are curious, always moving in and out of structures for food and cover. In this case, they get caught in the two-sectioned, lobster-pot-like enclosures and can’t figure how to get out.

Sea bass trappers who do use bait typically place squid, fish, or sea clams in mesh bags or bait tubes while always looking for rocky structures upon which to optimally place their pots. Sometimes, scup, a.k.a. porgies, flounder, fluke, tautog, or skate swim in, too.

My son, Capt. Matt Blazis, looks forward to sea bass season every year to make his renowned and much-anticipated ceviche and sea bass tacos. Valuing their deliciousness, Matt always encourages us to throw back any minimally-legal fish (15-inchers) — and keep just the biggest knuckleheads — mature, spawning males whose heads develop a prominent blue hump.

Surprisingly, most black sea bass are protogynous hermaphrodites — meaning that they start life as females — and with maturity — develop into very different-looking males. Ichthyologists aren’t totally sure why this happens. The prevailing theory is that a relative scarcity of males in a spawning group stimulates females to switch sexes to provide the essential sperm. Generally, there are many more females than males in a given sea bass population, so males will gather females to mate with and defend their territory. This bizarre but practical sex change explains why the oldest female sea bass reach just 8 years, while males can live to 12 and grow much bigger.

Mastering the jigging technique can help anglers fill their limits. It’s important to have your jig hit bottom before you immediately begin lifting up on your rod tip. This pumping action can produce hits either on the ascent or descent of the jig. Many of our hits typically come just as the jig hits bottom. If the current is too fast, though — and that has been an increasingly aggravating problem with our windier weather — the boat can drift too fast, making it more difficult to hook up. Many boats will consequently use a wind sock or even an anchor to help get a better drift or stay positioned in a productive honey hole.

Some sea bass anglers do best using bait, taking advantage of sea bass’ favorite foods: crabs, squid, sea clams, sea worms, small fish and shrimp. Sea bass aren’t just on our menus. Frequent local predators of these special fish are spiny dogfish, monkfish, big fluke, spotted hake and skates.

Commercial landings of sea bass here average close to 4 million pounds and involve mostly trawls as well as weirs, hooks-and-lines, as well as pots.  Minimum size for the commercial fleet is 12 inches. Weir fishermen have no possession limit. Trawlers can possess 100 pounds; hook-and-line fishermen 200 pounds; and pot fishermen 400 pounds. The commercial season ends on an unpredictable date — whenever the annual quota is reached — and that usually means a harvest worth around $12 million dollars. Our recreational sea bass season, in contrast, runs from May 18 until Sept. 8. Anglers can keep just five fish 15 inches and longer. We try to keep just big males around 20 or more inches.

By the way, Chilean sea bass, aren’t sea bass. They’re not even in the same genus. They’re actually Patagonian toothfish — a name that was changed for marketing reasons.

At a fish market, I smirked when I saw some black sea bass that had been caught in Chile. I’m sure that more than one purchaser naively went home erroneously believing they were going to be eating Chilean sea bass — arguably one of three most delicious fish in the world.

I last ate fresh Patagonian toothfish off southern Argentina just before venturing to Antarctica a year and a half ago. Wegman’s will occasionally carry it — but only frozen. No one can get fresh Chilean sea bass. And even when frozen, it sells for well over $30 per pound — more than double the cost of black sea bass.

Bottom line: just know that a sea bass caught in Chile isn’t Chilean sea bass.

Plenty of mackerel

Trying to avoid Memorial Day mayhem, Auburn’s Russ Therrien did some scouting last Thursday, launching from Green Harbor in Marshfield. While more than a handful of my fishing friends wouldn’t share their secrets with their own grandmother, Russ, to his great credit, generously shares his with regularity.

With a full moon, the tide was as low as Russ had ever seen.  

“There was barely enough water to get out," he said. "Without a depth finder, a fisherman unfamiliar with the water could easily run aground. The bottom’s muddy though. Our mission was to see if keeper stripers had arrived, and if there were any haddock around. First, we stopped at Stone Ledge off Scituate — often a rewarding haddock hotspot. Nothing. A huge porbeagle, though, swam by the boat making that leg more than worth it. It was easily 9 feet long.

“We then headed due east to Stellwagen Bank to check for haddock there and load up on mackerel." Russ added. "Disappointingly, there were no haddock — but, as usual, there were plenty mackerel. Our plan was to live-line some and freeze the rest for later use.

“We then shot over to Race Point, trolling tube-and-worms and later live-lining mackerel,  to check for stripers. We came up empty again. There were lots of surfcasters on the beach, but we didn’t see anyone catch anything. The big stripers are still just a little farther south of Stellwagen, where we would have gone if we weren’t trying to catch a few haddock, too.”

At least it was possible for some boaters to stay fairly close to shore and limit out on delicious winter flounder just off Quincy.

—Contact Mark Blazis at markblazissafaris@gmail.com.

The Link Lonk


June 01, 2021 at 02:33AM
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Outdoors: Black sea bass take center stage in Cape Cod waters - Worcester Telegram

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