CHARLEY SOARES: A look at exotic species

We’ve got cod boats, bass boats, trap boats and trawlers, gill netters and Scottish pair trawlersbut we don’t have any shrimp boats. If you recall the name Jo Stafford, you are an early 50s kid who had heard the song, “Shrimp boats are a comin’ their sails are in sight. Shrimp boats are a comin' there’s dancing tonight.” That song hit the charts in early 1951 and it was a catchy tune about the anticipation of the shrimp fleet returning to port. If you are a fisherman or a gourmet, you might also be aware that there is no directed shrimp fishery in this part of the country with the exception of a minor fall fishery along the Maine coast.

Some 40 or so years ago I received a call from reporter Irene Myles about a strange creature one of the children near her Coles Riverhome found along the shoreline. I identified it as a Mantis Shrimp, which were fairly common in the lower Taunton River and all of Mt. Hope Bay. In fact, we unearthed a couple of them while digging clams in the lower Coles River just a few weeks ago.

Mantis shrimp are a favorite food of striped bass and can also be eaten by humans, although I’ve never been tempted to try one. I first became familiar with those shrimp in 1964 when a biologist from Mass Marine Fisheries came down to investigate the shrimp I found in the stomach of a striper caught off the Brightman Street Bridge in December of that year. The biologist said the stripers were able to remain around the bridge into the winter months due to the food supply in the form of the shrimp.

During our conversation we discussed the welcome return of the northern weakfish, or squeteague, which had just show up that spring in the Kikimuit, Lees and Coles Rivers. He mentioned the occasional arrival of a few exotic species every year off New Jersey and Maryland and predicted it wouldn’t be long before we saw much more than just the occasional weakfish.

His words came true, loud and clear, in the spring of 1974 when huge tide-runner weakfish invaded the hot water discharge at the Brayton Point power plant. Those big sea trout invaded the west shore of the Lees River and provided great action and table fare for two years until that run died out. In late June of 1964 Paul Capone was aboard my boat for a morning of casting into white water around Sakonnet Point in the pursuit of striped bass that I marketed at the L V Drape fish house on Second Street in Fall River. We had a few small stripers in the fish box as the minimum size at that time was 16 inches with no bag limit. I refer to that as the Wild West of striper fishing and the area from the Cape Cod Canal to Point Judith was Dodge City. It wasn’t until 1983 that the striper minimum size was raised to 18-inches and the following year it went up to 24 inches.

After that, a bag limit was put in place that only permitted two fish over 24-inches until the dark days of the moratorium of 1986 when fisheries managers used a PCB scare to close the fishery. That decision also coincided with the awareness that the striper biomass was critically low so they closed the fishery all together until it was reopened in 1987 with stricter controls that dictated a one fish at 33 inches. Those minimum sizes increased to 38 inches in 1990 before it was lowered to 28 inches in 1996. The two fish at 28 inches was in place for nine years until the one striper a day bag limit was instituted in 2015.

Bluefish, which most anglers take for granted, were a rare if not exotic species on that notable morning in 1964 as neither of us had ever caught one. We were both surprised and thrilled to put five of those four-pound blues in the boat that morning before we headed off to Drapes to sell them. I was ever more amazed to learn that Frank, the buyer paid us 20 cents a pound for the “Native Blues,” and only 15 cents a pound for the stripers. He called the front desk and a clerk took those blues and put then right in the retail showcase because they were the first blues to hit our shores in a very long time.

Those blues were the beginning of a long and very exciting run of choppers that readily tore into almost any plug that moved on or below the surface. A four-pound, 11-ounce bluefish won me a trophy in the Linesiders Bass Club 1964 contest. In today’s world it would take a bluefish of 15 or 16 pounds just to earn a spot on most fishing clubs awards list. This year even the people who cursed and complained about the stress and damage blues inflict on their tackle are worried about the fate of those blue marauders which have been noticeable by their absence.

Those same guys who hold a less than reverential opinion about one of the best fighting fish along our coast, are now worried because they have not seen or caught one all season long. A descendant of a man whose grandfather fished for bluefish with a black cotton gill net believes the blues are at the bottom of their 10-year cycle and I tend to agree with him. With just one bluefish hit all spring and early summer we finally have a massive influx of bluefish in the one- to three-pound class from Jamestown to Westport. These tailor-sized blues are as hungry and nasty as their larger kin and have been taking almost all poppers and jigs tossed in their direction. These juveniles are ideal for the frying pan, oven or smoker and are a delicious treat when properly bled and kept on ice until ready to be processed.

This extremely hot weather has also lured several other species of typically southern fish to visit our waters. We have caught bonito and trigger fish on the west side of the Sakonnet River and have had reports of some Mahi-Mahi caught off Point Judith between the west wall and Block Island. This past Friday while fishing off Newport’s 12-mile drive I had Dan Keighley aboard and he put a half-dozen bluefish in the cooler before he hooked up with a strange visitor.

The fish acted much more like a tarpon than a bluefish and when I saw first color it looked more like a juvenile tarpon than a blue. When I finally put the gaff to it we realized it was a handsome King Mackerel, a species I have never had aboard any of my boats in over 50 years of fishing out of Sakonnet. I have heard of other kings being caught off the Vineyard and the West Falmouth shore this season and with this extreme heat we have been experiencing I would not be surprised to hear, and hopefully see a few Mahi taken from our local waters.

If you have had any interaction with an exotic species send me an e-mail at linesiders2000@yahoo.com.