The striper season is not over with fall migration just around the corner! The migration will begin as the water cools and baitfish leave our estuaries and harbors; this is the time for coastal fishing.
Preliminary catch estimates through June suggest an increase in striped bass in New Hampshire over the last five years. This may come as no surprise to any avid striper fishermen out there, and the harvest estimates suggest the same thing that anglers have been telling us all year, the fish are small. This year, New Hampshire was abounding with stripers that were just shy of the 28-inch minimum, and there were many reports of MUCH smaller fish as well. But bountiful small fish bode well for the future health of this fishery.
A lot has happened around New Hampshire’s coast this year, here is a small sampling:
Record river herring runs came through two of our coastal fish ladders. The Lamprey River and the Cocheco River both had over 90,000 river herring pass into the freshwater sections during their spawning run. This came after a couple of significant changes. In the Lamprey River, an additional 7.8 miles of river above the Wiswall Dam, the second dam on this river, were made accessible for spawning fish by the addition of a fish ladder in 2012. In the Cocheco River, modifications that were designed and constructed by our Facilities Construction and Lands Division were completed to allow for operation of the fish ladder as a “swim through” for the 2016 season. This means that the fish are able to swim up the fish ladder and pass through into fresh water on their own; previously the fish were trapped in a large holding area and were netted out and passed into the fresh water portion of the Cocheco River by hand.
This summer also marked the start of a transformation in the Exeter River. On July 1, the removal of the Great Dam in Exeter commenced. The most recent dam at this site was built in 1914; however, dams have existed at this location since the 1640s! In 1969, a fish passage structure was built, but passage at this fishway was never very efficient with less than 500 fish making their way upstream in some years. However, many more fish are seen below the dam than make it up the ladder. With a free flowing system, hopes are high for a resurgence of these anadromous fish further up into the watershed.
Winter rainbow smelt fishing has been poor for the last few years, but there is hope for future fishing. Although smelt fishermen were not able to fish in 2016 because of a mild winter and lack of ice on Great Bay and its tributaries, record numbers of smelt were captured by biologists during the subsequent spring spawning run. In 2016, catches at the Squamscott and Oyster rivers were the second highest over the last 9 years, while counts in the Winnicut River were the greatest for the same period! The smelt catch at the Winnicut River has been relatively low in recent years, less than 40 smelt per year during the spawning run. However, since the removal of the dam in 2009, the number of spawning adults captured in the area surrounding the previous dam has been steadily increasing. In 2016 the number of captured adults was 738 smelt! In the last few years there has been record low smelt catches during both the winter creel survey and fyke net survey, but the high catches this year during the spring spawning fyke net survey gives us hope that the smelt populations may be improving.
The lobster population in the Gulf of Maine at present time is healthy. A recent population assessment conducted by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission determined the population was above the target levels and that overfishing wasn’t occurring. Due to the mild winter of 2015/2016, lobsters began to molt early this past spring. In a typical year lobsters begin to “shed” their shells in late June/early July. This past spring, “soft” lobsters began showing up nearly two months early off the coast of New Hampshire.
Lobsters are highly influenced by water temperatures and we’ve been witnessing an upward trend in water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine for the past 30 years. That increase has been even more pronounced over the past decade. In 2016, water temperatures collected from a buoy off the ME/NH coast showed that all months fromJanuary through July were above the 15-year average. To date, our lobster trap survey for this year has shown strong catch rates, and with these recent increases in water temperature, we’ve also noticed a shift in the distribution of lobsters with higher-than-normal catch rates in deeper water.
Source: - Becky Heuss, Marine Fisheries Biologist
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