 OUT OF THE BLUE, SEATROUT COME OUT Orlando Sentinel -- Friday, September 21, 2001 By: Don Wilson, Sentinel Columnist Orlando flats guide Al Wilson and Steve Kozinski fished the Indian River last week and had what Wilson called "the most phenomenal day of fishing ever." They caught 17 redfish and 18 seatrout, including three trout that were more than 20 inches long. They released most, keeping a few of each species. Wilson didn't know it, but the catch was probably a feat accomplished by a handful of flats guides this year. Not the redfish total, but the seatrout. Just when seatrout stocks were supposed to be booming, six years after the netting ban, the fish are disappearing from the upper Indian River/Mosquito Lagoon complex. Catches have been so bad that commercial hook-and-line fishermen said their catches for the three-month commercial season were only a fraction of years before. And one longtime commercial fisherman said he didn't even bother to go fishing from June through August, spending the summer guiding recreational anglers to redfish and a few seatrout. After checking with personnel at their field stations, marine biologists at the Florida Marine Research Institute confirmed the sudden shortage but had no quick answers. Suggestions ranged from too much heat last summer to too little fresh water for the past few winters to high salinity levels. Commercial fisherman Mark Wright of Titusville told of a topsy-turvy summer season. "The whole summer was incredibly poor. In early June, I was catching a lot of big fish -- too big to keep -- or very little fish. As the summer progressed, I couldn't even catch a slot limit fish," Wright said. Commercial fishermen may catch 75 seatrout per day that are between 15 and 24 inches long. Wright, who fishes exclusively in Mosquito Lagoon, said on his best day this year he caught 35 trout that totaled 70 pounds. In earlier years, a good day would be a 60-fish haul. The results were so bad, he gave up fishing commercially and started guiding recreational clients. "I only fish 20 days of the 90-day season, when I'd normally fish 65 days," Wright said. Still, that was much more time than Oak Hill veteran Neal Goodrich,42, said he went fishing commercially. He decided to stick with guiding for the summer. His brother, Cecil, 62, who runs the family wholesale fish business at Oak Hill, said almost all of the commercial trout fishermen have been having trouble. "It was the worst season in a long time -- very few fishermen caught their limits. Overall, the catch was down 50 percent," Cecil Goodrich said. He blamed the poor seatrout season on the same thing he said caused a dismal blue-crab season this year: high salinity levels caused by the drought. Wright offered the same opinion, saying that somehow the drought sabotaged the past few spawning seasons. Bob Muller, biological administrator at the Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg, confirmed the fishermen's reports. "Our field samplers said they were not seeing as many spotted seatrout this year," Muller said. Muller said one theory was that unusually high temperatures last summer may have affected the fish. "When you have elevated temperatures," he said, "things aren't as active and the spawning activity may have been a little less." Indian River seatrout spawn from April through September, Muller said, with peaks in May and September. Another idea, he said, was that the high temperatures may have killed the small crustaceans that juvenile trout depend upon for food. Or the winter was too cold, with the drought magnifying its effect. "Another possibility was that perhaps the rivers did not provide the thermal refuge in the winter that they usually do because of reduced flow from the drought," Muller said. "The water was cooler and stressed the fish, so they didn't grow as much." He said the scientists would research seatrout population fluctuations in earlier droughts to see if there had been similar impacts. Copyright (c) 2001, Sentinel Communications Co. |