Herring are running

[Capt_K]

The herring have started running. The bass are close . Time to get serious about getting the boat ready. Hope to be in by April 23rd. Capt K

[fillet1]

Capt K -

Sounds like you are in NJ?

[chumbucket]

Nope. He's in RI. And the herring are starting to run here in MA as well. I checked a couple of herring runs near my house. Not a lot, but there are a few making there way upstream. Won't be long now. ;)

[fillet1]

Must be on the same time timetable as NJ. We get them in the rivers usually starting the second week in April give or take. I used to catch them on 2 lb spinning outfits with tiny gold spoons. They are starting here now.

[fillet1]

Since when is s*p*o*o*n a bad "thingy" word ?? ;D

[chumbucket]

Since my grandfather was chasing my grandmothers skirt. ;D ::)

[fillet1]

Yeah, gold thingys were the ticket!!!

They are killing the bass here already!!

[macojoe]

screw the herring!! I am tired of all the Bull Sht to go get them!!
Live Scup is were its at!!

[fillet1]

Now is a scup what I would call a porgy??

[macojoe]

for you southern guys yes!

[Capt_K]

MJ, Whats the deal in Mass. to get herring?? We just need a fresh water liscense and we can net 12 a day except Sunday Monday or Tuesday. If you can get them in salt water there is no limit or closed days as I under stand the regs.
Capt K

[macojoe]

pretty much the same here but you have to buy a permit, no freash water lic needed. The fee's and the amount of fish you can get are different from town to town.
Some places you are not allowed to get the fish, you have to wait for the green man to get them for you and then your off.
They have closed all the best runs on the Cape or have made them impossible to even want to borther!!
So I just go early and grab a few scup and I am off to the races, and they work just as good if not better and they are here all season.

[CT_V-20]

This is educational because I have never used a porgy for bait for anything and I didn't know anybody else did anywhere either. WHat do you catch with porgy? Here in CT, porgy/scup are pretty popular food fish and they are abundant. We use bunker/menhadden for bass and blues and they are abundant from June through September. I'm getting the sense that maybe scup doens not = porgy.

[macojoe]

Scup

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/macojoe/scup.gif

I use Scup for bass as many others do also here!!

My 2 bigest Fluke 11 & 12 pounds were also caught on live lined Scup!

They make great bait!!

Description—
Although the scup is not marked by any one outstanding character it is made easily recognizable by the fact that the spiny portion of its dorsal fin is considerably longer and higher than the soft-rayed portion, which, with its deeply lunate caudal fin, separates it from all other Gulf of Maine fishes of similarly deep and sidewise-flattened bodies. The scup is about one-half as deep as it is long (to the base of the tail fin) and very thin through, recalling a butterfish (p. 363). But the dorsal profile of its rather short head is slightly concave instead of convex, and its scales rather large, thick and firmly attached; not small, thin and easily detached as they are in the butterfish.

The mouth of the scup is small, its eyes are situated high up on the side of the head, and the margins of its gill covers are rounded. It has one [page 412] long dorsal fin originating over the pectorals and preceded by a forward-pointing spine; the spiny (12 spines) and soft (12 rays) parts are continuous, forming a single fin. As a whole the dorsal fin is moderately high, its first spine much shorter than the others, its rear corner rounded, and it can be laid back in a groove along the mid line of the back. The anal (3 spines and 11 or 12 rays) is nearly as long as the soft part of the dorsal, under which it stands, and is almost even in height from front to rear, but with the first spine shorter than the others. The anal fin is depressible in a conspicuous groove, like the dorsal. The caudal is deeply concave with sharp corners. The pectorals are very long (reaching to even with the soft part of the dorsal), sharp pointed, and with slightly concave lower rear margins. The ventrals, situated below the pectorals, are of moderate size.

Color—
Dull silvery and iridescent, somewhat darker above than below; the sides and back with 12 to 15 indistinct longitudinal stripes, flecked with [page 413] light blue and with a light-blue streak following the base of the dorsal fin. The head is silvery, marked with irregular dusky blotches; the belly is white. The dorsal, caudal, and anal fins are dusky, flecked with blue; the pectoral fins of a brownish tinge; the ventrals white and bluish, and very slightly dusky; the iris silvery; the pupil black.

Size—
The scup is said to reach a length of 18 inches and a weight of 3 to 4 pounds, but adults usually run only up to about 12 to 14 inches, and weigh only 1 to 2 pounds.

Habits—
Scup are inshore from early April at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, and from early May northward to southern Massachusetts. Most of them withdraw from the coast late in October, though some few linger through November, and an occasional fish into December even as far north as the vicinity of Woods Hole.

It has been known for the past 20 years or more that many scup winter off Virginia and off northern North Carolina, in depths of 20 to 50 fathoms, where large commercial catches are made yearly by otter trawlers from January to April,[45] with a few as deep as 90 fathoms or so. And marking experiments have proved that some of the scup that summer along southern Massachusetts migrate southward in autumn as far as to the offings of Chesapeake Bay and of northern North Carolina for the winter, at least in some years, and vice versa.[46]

Scup have, however, been taken during the past few winters in depths of 45 to 70 fathoms off southern New England, in numbers large enough to show that part of the northern contingent of the species simply moves offshore in autumn, to come inshore again in spring.[47]

Differences in the locations where the largest catches are made in cool winters and in warm make it likely that a preference for water at least as warm as about 45° F. is the factor that determines how far seaward the scup move off any part of the coast in any particular winter.[48] And they are so sensitive to low temperatures that large numbers have been known to perish (both large ones and small) in sudden cold spells in shallow water.

It appears that different bodies of scup move inshore successively in spring, for in 1950 the Albatross III took 2,700 scup in 15 hauls at 45 to 55 fathoms, in the Hudson Gorge, on May 11-18, which is one or two weeks after the earliest scup, ordinarily appear inshore near New York. And the fact that scup are more plentiful in June and July than in May points in the same direction.

It has been said that the first fish to arrive in spring are the large adults, with the immature fish following later. But there is no definite rule in this regard.

During their summer stay inshore, the scup tend to hug the coast so closely that a line drawn 5 or 6 miles beyond the outermost headlands would probably enclose the great majority of the total population at that time of year.

Scup usually congregate in schools. The young fry come close in to the land in only a few feet of water. Large fish, however, are seldom caught in summer in water shallower than 1 or 2 fathoms (occasionally at the surface), or deeper than 15 to 20 fathoms. They prefer smooth to rocky bottom, which results in a distribution so local that one trap at Manchester, on the North Shore of Massachusetts Bay, took small numbers of scup in 1885, 1886, and 1887, while another trap close by did not yield as much as one fish. They are bottom feeders in the main, seldom rising far above the ground, the adults preying on crustaceans (particularly on amphipods) as well as on annelid worms, hydroids, sand-dollars, young squid, and in fact on whatever invertebrates the particular bottom over which they live may afford. They also eat fish fry to some extent, such free-floating forms as crustacean and molluscan larvae, appendicularians, and copepods. The young feed chiefly on the latter and on other small Crustacea. Adult scup, like most other fish, cease feeding during spawning time, for which [page 414] reason few are caught then, but they bite very greedily throughout the rest of the summer on clams, bits of crab, and sea worms (Nereis), as do the immature fish throughout their stay.

Along southern New England scup spawn from May to August, but chiefly in June. Probably spawning both commences later and continues later for the few fish that manage to summer in Massachusetts Bay, and it may be assumed that they spawn wherever they summer.

The eggs are buoyant, transparent, spherical, rather small (about 0.9 mm. in diameter), and have one oil globule. Incubation occupies only about 40 hours at 72° (probably two to three days in the June temperatures of Massachusetts Bay) and judging from the season of spawning at Woods Hole, it is not likely that development can proceed normally in water colder than about 50° F. At hatching the larvae are about 2 mm. long, the yolk is fully absorbed within 3 days when the larva is about 2.8 mm. long, and there is then a characteristic row of black pigment spots along the ventral margin of the trunk. At 25 mm. the pectorals have assumed their pointed outline and the caudal fin is slightly forked, but the ventrals are still so small and the body so slender, that the little fish hardly suggest their parentage until they are somewhat larger.[49]

In southern New England waters fry of 2 to 3 inches, evidently the product of that season's spawning, have been taken in abundance as early as September; they are 2½ to 3¼ inches long in October, and they may be as long as 4 inches at Woods Hole in November. Apparently young scup grow very little during the winter, for many of 4 inches are seen in the spring, probably the crop of the preceding season. According to Neville's unpublished studies,[50] scup average about 4¼ inches (11 cm.) long at one year of age (from hatching), about 6¼ inches (16 cm.) at two years, about 77/8 inches (20 cm.) at three years, about 9 inches (23 cm.) at four years, and about 9¾ inches (25 cm.) at five years. If this age schedule is correct, the ages of the large fish of 12 to 15 inches, weighing 1½ to 2½ pounds are considerably greater than the 3 to 5 years that have been credited to them, following Baird's[51] estimate.

General range—
East coast of the United States, from North Carolina to Cape Cod; casual in the Gulf of Maine as far as Eastport, Maine.[52]

[fillet1]

MJ-

Are you fising the scup Live?

[macojoe]

My 2 bigest Fluke 11 & 12 pounds were also caught on live lined Scup!



MJ-

Are you fising the scup Live? ::)

YES

[fillet1]

Dont I feel stupid now? ::) ;D

[CT_V-20]

Very thorough MJ. Looks and sounds like a porgy. What size do you live line for Fluke and what size works for bass?

[macojoe]

well what you want to no, The legal size or the size I fish with ::)

In mass Scup is to be 10" legal size

I use anything from 5 to 10" for Bass, and 4 to 6" for Fluke

[Capt_K]

MJ, You are right on with the scup. I use them out on the "Block" a great bait for big bass. Capt K

[Franco]

MJ - A CERTIFIED PISCATOLOGIST - (PISCATOLOGY IS THE SCIENCE OF FISHING)

[macojoe]

I can't even say that word!!

Just sharing what I no! And I did not learn it myself, I was also told from someone years ago about it.

Just sharing the wealth!!

Franco is this the fish you were speaking about porgy?

[Franco]

Hey MJ, a few years ago I went to a Saltwater Sportsman fishing seminar at the University of Maryland and a guy at the college siad I was a piscatologist. I almost took him fishing with me, as BAIT. I had to go home and look it up. Heck, other than that seminar, the only time I went ti college was to party. You always have a lot of good advice, I read all your posts. I have never caught one of those fish - scup or porgy, I fished the chesapeake bay and ocean off virginia, Mainly went for strippers in the fall and winter, trout, flounder, cobia, tile fish, spanish mackeral, blues for fun, yellow fin tuna, some blue fin tuna, black drum, spot and croakers in the warmer months.

[macojoe]

I guess they hang from Maine to NC at different points in the year. That means you are to far south and they no work for you!!

Thats ok I will use the ones you don't!! ;D