-
@Team1morecast Thinking along the lines of trophy trout fisheries, I was listening to the Cut and Retie podcast and they had an episode dedicated to people catching their first striped bass in the northeast. Overfishing had basically destroyed the striper population to the point that a moratorium was put in place. All these guys talked about how it was so unheard of to even catch a striper. Something several of them mentioned was how strong the weakfish population was during that time. Weakfish are extremely closely related to speckled trout and striped bass basically fill the same role as redfish once you get up around New Jersey.
As the striper population came rebounding back, the weakfish population plummeted to the point that you can only keep 1 fish now in NJ. I’ve also heard on another podcast that you can even see a hierarchy where redfish, speckled tout, and stripers live. Basically you can cast to a point and the dominant redfish are all you will catch until you fish them out of that spot. Then the stripers bite, then the speckled trout will feed last.
I’m not sure if I’m just rambling but my thoughts are this:
1. I wonder how much available forage is available to truly grow trophy speckled trout and does our normally robust redfish population hurt this aspect/will we see this dip in our redfish help that fishery as well.
2. How much this large population of bass that may have been extended beyond their historical range impacted available forage and is that more of the true impact vs the salinity? Thinking that if you allow more species in to compete in the areas that would normally just be your trout/redfish it probably hurts those populations directly.
3. It’s known that bull redfish will prey on speckled trout. Trophy trout are obviously different creatures, being more solitary. Maybe that’s more of a learned trait to avoid the bull redfish attacking schools of trout? My perspective changed on how large of a fish another fish will eat when I saw the guy who found a dead 30″ trout with a 16″ mullet in its stomach lol.
