Sport Fishing February 2019

“WE’VE DONE A GOOD JOB OF SAFEGUARDING OUR MARINE FISH STOCKS, BUT WE’VE SUCKED AT SHARING THAT PUBLIC RESOURCE.” Who owns the fish? Those who earn their living by fishing commercially? You and me, as ardent sport-fishing enthusiasts? Environmentalists who want to fence them within no-take marine protected areas? The simple answer: no one. As author and angler Sid Dobrin argues in his new book, Fishing, Gone? (due out this April), fish are a resource to be safeguarded and shared. As a nation, we’ve done a pretty good job of safeguarding our marine fish stocks, with most now considered healthy. But we’ve sucked at sharing that public resource. The recreational-fishing community has for years noted that federal fishery management has been designed to serve and accommodate primarily the commercial-fishing industry.…

As an old rod-and-reel commercial fisherman used to tell me, “You can’t cook what you can’t hook.” With that in mind, I’d wager that more game fish avoid being hooked and cooked because of bad casts. That includes casts that come up short, casts that don’t land anywhere near the fish, casts that spook fish, and casts that snag docks, rocks and mangroves. Matching your tackle with the conditions under which you’re fishing and the species you’re pursuing can make a huge difference in your casting. A light lure on a heavy-duty rod with a tiny reel probably won’t go more than 10 feet beyond the boat. “With any type of tackle, it’s all about balance,” says pro angler Bernie Schultz. “The rod, the reel, the lure and the line.…

(Seriola lalandi)) BLOODY BEAUTIFUL FISH Q I caught this beautiful snapper off the coast of Madagascar. I’m anxious to know more about it! Phillippe Pletincx France A What you have there, Phillippe, is a great example of one of the more distinctive tropical snappers: the blood-red, or humphead snapper (Lutjanus sanguineus). This species occurs only along the west coast of Africa from Natal, South Africa, north to the Red Sea, including the waters around Madagascar. Adult blood-red snapper frequent rocky and coral-reef areas to depths of around 300 feet during the day. These fish have been observed by some anglers to prefer slightly silty bottoms, where they forage for crustaceans and mollusks, mainly at night and often in relatively shallow water (25 to 40 feet). Juvenile blood-red snapper are relatively…

Polarized sunglasses are as indispensable to anglers as fishing rods, reels, lines and lures. But for the longest time, those whose eyesight wasn’t the sharpest either had to put up with their blurry vision while wearing sunglasses or grin and glare it while fishing with non-polarized prescription lenses. That has changed over the past few years, and several manufacturers of high-quality polarized sunglasses now offer the same high-quality, custom-made prescription lenses in a high percentage of their various frame styles. They include single vision, bifocal and progressive lenses. And many health- or vision-insurance plans cover prescription sunglasses. RECENT RX ADVANCES It used to be that good prescription sunglasses meant glass lenses. The majority of manufacturers now make Rx lenses of polycarbonate plastic, lighter than glass and scratch- and impact-resistant. Manufacturers…

VISUAL ACUITY FLIR Systems has introduced an industry first with Raymarine’s ClearCruise AR, which stands for augmented reality. This new navigation technology delivers enhanced on-water awareness to the company’s Axiom multifunction displays. The system overlays navigational information onto stabilized video from a CAM210 HD marine camera. Nav markers, AIS traffic, objects and waypoints appear in text blocks over the moving video. The camera costs $699.99 and is generally mounted facing forward on a hardtop or T-top, though additional cameras can be added; the AR200 stabilization module costs $499.99. EASY TO FATHOM Penn’s new Fathom II LW levelwind conventional reels feature a full-metal body and side plates, HT-100 carbon-fiber drag washers and a 4+1 stainless-steel bearing system. The heavy-duty reels are designed to handle daily extreme abuse. The 13 models start…

Tommy Ruste of Aålvundfjord, Norway, has submitted a 7-pound, 6-ounce roundnose grenadier [a], caught this past July near Trongfjorden. The existing record came from the same area (in 1993) but weighed only 3 pounds, 11 ounces. Drifting bait off Southern California’s San Clemente Island earned Ali Pfleger of Newport Beach, California, a pending women’s 30-pound record for a 211-pound, 11-ounce Pacific bluefin tuna [b] this past August, after a 45-minute battle, while fishing with her record-holding father, Tom Pfleger. If approved, the catch defeats the 117-pound, 8-ounce fish that has held the category since 1968. A whopping 35-pound jack crevalle [c] will, if approved, be the new men’s 8-pound-tippet fly-rod record for the species. The fish was caught by Capt. Brian Vaughn this past September while fishing just off his…