Fifties Count -- 2009

[Chris Garrity]

From this week's NY/NJ edition of The Fisherman, which arrived in my mailbox today:

Bill Kampf of Mont Clare, PA, caught a 64 (yes, sixty-four) pounder on a bunker chunk in Delaware Bay on November 8.

There's a picture of this fish, and it's a monster: it looks like a beer keg with stripes.

[Frank Daignault]

Originally Posted by Chris Garrity

From this week's NY/NJ edition of The Fisherman, which arrived in my mailbox today:

Bill Kampf of Mont Clare, PA, caught a 64 (yes, sixty-four) pounder on a bunker chunk in Delaware Bay on November 8.

There's a picture of this fish, and it's a monster: it looks like a beer keg with stripes.

Thanks, Chris, Looks like about 75, throwing in a few from delaware Bay. This is about consistant with the last 7 or 8 years.

[Chris Garrity]

From today's fishing column in the Press of Atlantic City:

Dan Shelton is a 25-year-old outdoorsman from Millville and Ed Marcantonio of Ocean City is retired and had his first decent year of fishing.

They have some things in common. They are winners of The Press 2009 Bent Rods Fishing Contest fall season striped bass and bluefish awards. Both fish were caught in the final days of the fall segment, which ran from Sept. 21 to Nov. 29, in Delaware Bay and registered at Longreach Marina on the Maurice River.

Shelton caught a 55-pound striped bass on Nov. 21. It was 50 inches in length and 30 inches in girth.

In related news, the Long Beach Island Surf Fishing Classic, which runs for almost three months (September 10 through December 6), and therefore covers almost all of the Fall Run, was completed without a single 50-pounder being entered. The winning fish, caught by Michael Kane of Doylestown, PA, weighed 42.69 pounds. It's somewhat interesting, to me, anyway, that nothing bigger than this was entered in the contest.

[Frank Daignault]

It does not surprise me a bit that there were no fifties. In contests where you have to produce the fish and where there is strict measurement and control, the results, and consequently the "fifties", goes down. Since the moratorium a lot of real high-liners have not seen a 40 pounder from the beach. There has also been a spate of returned fish that were weighed through measurement, which leads to a lot of exaggeration. Well run contests produce way less monsters.