Atlantic City's Best Back Bay Fishing Adventure

Black Sea Bass

## Black Sea Bass Fish Species (Centropristis Striata) ## Fish Description Black Sea Bass is a member of the Grouper family. They are plump-bodied with an extended pelvic and dorsal fin. The dorsal fin comes with a soft rayed rear section and a spiny forward section, marked with a sequence of white spots and bands. Their body color is gray to black, but the center of the scales is white. During the spawning season, males can turn bright blue in color and have a large hump on their heads. Juveniles are brown and have a dark stripe running down the body. ## Fish Size The Black Seabass can reach about 25 inches in length; weigh more than 8 pounds, although most of them caught is less than 4 pounds in weight. The Black Sea Bass world record catch is 10 lb 4 oz. and was caught in Virginia Beach, January 2000. ## Fun Facts About Black Sea Bass Up until recently, the furthest north the black bass was found was Massachusetts. Because of the warming climate, the bass has ventured up to the Gulf of Maine where the water temperatures have increased over the years. They are born as females then change to males. This generally happens when they reach 9 - 13 inches Social interaction can play a big role in this sex reversal. The removal of the big male from the Black Sea Bass population may cause one or more of the remaining bigger females to change sex and play the male role. The female Black Seabass normally matures at the age of 2 to 5 years and produces about 280,000 pelagic eggs. ## Fish Diet Adult and juvenile Black Sea Bass feed on a variety of invertebrates such as hermit crabs, rock crabs, squid, and razor clams. ## Distribution and Habitat  ## Fishing Method The best time to fish for Black Sea Bass is from late spring to summer when they congregate close to the shore. Underwater structures like jetties, piers, and wrecks, is where you will be likely to find them. The bigger males will be found in deeper water and a rocky bottom. The Black Seabass will put up a good fight until it breaks water. A medium-weight rod that's 6-8 feet long with a reel with a 20-30 pound fused, mono or braided line will be successful. They are mostly bottom feeders although they will occasionally strike at jigs, plugs, and lures including a 2 hook bait rig. Live bait such as squid or fish strips is a very good method. The Federal Recreational Black Sea Bass season is February 1 through 28, and May 15 through December 31. ## Habitat During the summer months, they will gather around sunken wrecks, rocky bottoms, old pilings, and wharves and are most abundant at depths of less than 120 feet. Juvenile seabass tend to prefer estuaries where they feed and avoid predators. During the winter months, they migrate to the more south Atlantic states and offshore. ## Distribution Black Seabass are found on the US eastern seaboard from the Gulf of Maine to the Florida Keys and then to the Gulf of Mexico.

Southern Flounder

Southern Flounder (Paralichthys lethostigma) Fish Description

A Southern Flounder is a flat, oval fish and is a part of the Paralichthyidae family. It is known for having both of its eyes on the left side of its head. It has an underdeveloped pectoral fin or has none at all. It also does not have any spines on its fins, and its caudal fin is separate.

The Southern Flounder is often mistaken as a Summer Flounder but one of its distinguishing factors among other flounders is its numerous light and dark blotches and spots on their dark side. Other flounders have oscillated spots, which is absent in a Southern Flounder.

It is a known predator, and it ambushes its prey from the bottom, camouflaging itself under sand or mud. It feeds on worms, shrimp, blue crabs, and smaller fishes like anchovies, menhaden, and mullets.

Interesting Facts About Southern Flounder

• A female Southern Flounder can lay up to 9,000 eggs at once.
• It can change its color and mimic the substrate they are in. This helps help hide from predators and also hunt for prey.
• Flounders are anguilliform swimmers. They swim using their bodies and caudal fin.
• Its eyes are both found on one side – also called their ocular side.
• Most Southern Flounders are 'left-handed' (both eyes on the left side), but there are also 'right-handed' Southern Flounders in rare cases.
• A male Southern Flounder's life is shorter than its female counterpart. It can live for at most three years only. 
   

Size

A Southern Flounder typically ranges from 15 to 18 inches and can grow as long as 33 inches. Typically, they weigh around 5 lbs. but it recorded an all-tackle weight of 20 lbs—9 oz.

Habitat and Distribution

The Southern Flounder is found in the waters along the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. It is commonly found in sandy, rocky, or muddy bottoms of shallow waters of coastal marine areas, bays, rivers, lakes, and estuaries. This makes it easier to catch and feed on prey. Most adult Southern Flounders prefer staying offshore during the winter season.
 

Southern Flounder -  Fishing Techniques

The best technique to catch a Southern Flounder is still fishing or drift fishing since they settle at the water's bottom. Anglers can use live fish and artificial lures as bait. It is best to use a single-hooked, slip lead, or free-line rig with heads ranging from  1/4 "- 3/8".  It is advised to use light-to-medium lines with reels that can spool 150 yards per 10 lbs. Anglers can also fly fish using medium lines.

Bull minnows, mullets, and shrimps are the best baits to catch flatfish like flounders.

Spotted Weakfish

Spotted Weakfish (Cynoscion nebulosus) Fish Description

The Spotted Weakfish (Cynoscion nebulosus) is a popular gamefish commonly found in the coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico as well as in the South-eastern United States—from Maryland to Florida. Its popularity as a target by both recreational anglers and commercial fishers is due to its abundance in the said waters, the relative ease to catch the fish, and the excellent flavor of its flesh. Though the fish is also often called spotted seatrout, it is actually not a trout but a member of the drum fish family, which is known for making a croaking or drumming noise.

The Spotted Weakfish can easily be distinguished from other fish species through its compressed elongated body that is speckled with irregular faint spots on the top half. It’s mostly metallic silver in color but the upper half has a dark grayish or bluish tinge and the lower half is tan or white. Its dorsal fin is long and segmented into two parts—with the front part upright and spiny, and the back part leaning to the hind part of the fish. And like all Sciaenids or drumfish, it has a long lateral line that is faint and runs from the head to the tail base.

Diet and Size

Spotted Weakfish are known to be ambush predators wherein they would lunge at their prey who happen to pass by their turf. Their prey mainly consists of fishes and crustaceans, including shrimp, anchovies, pinfish, silverside, mullet, croaker, silver trout, snapper, gobies, sheepshead, grunts, toadfish, and mojarras.

Spotted Weakfish can grow as much as three and a half feet in length and weigh as much as seventeen and a half pounds. The average size, however, tends to be between twelve to sixteen inches in length.

Spotted Weakfish Interesting Facts

• The biggest Spotted Weakfish on record weighs seventeen pounds and seven ounces, measuring thirty-nine inches long.
• The world record Spotted Weakfish was caught by Orlando angler Craig Carson off Fort Pierce Inlet in Florida.
• Their average lifespan is between eight to ten years.
• They have large canine-like teeth that they use to grab unsuspecting prey.
• Their meat is said to have an excellent taste and best cooked by steaming, broiling, or baking.
• They are often found to have “spaghetti worms”, which are actually quite harmless to humans and these can easily be picked out when the fish is filleted.
• Aside from humans, known predators of the fish include striped bass, alligator gar, barracuda, porpoises, and sharks as well as seabirds such as cormorants and pelicans.
• The Spotted Weakfish spawns starting from spring until late summer. It usually spawns at night, with the males announcing their presence by making croaking sounds two hours before sunset. Although it would often stay in the oceanic coastal waters most of its life, it would move to bays and estuaries during spawning season. A single female can produce between 15,000 to 1,100,000 eggs per spawning and the eggs would hatch in just about eighteen hours after fertilization. The young spotted weakfish would form small schools of about fifty individuals per school and would stick together until they reach juvenile stage, in which they would head to their natural habitat of seagrass beds, sandy bottoms, muddy bottoms, and reefs.

Fishing Tips

Spotted Weakfish can easily be caught via fly-fishing as the fish is known to attack colorful lures, especially when they’re in hunting mode. They also tend to hunt from the bottom to the surface of the water so you wouldn’t really need to add weight to your lure as they’ll just try to get to your bait once they spot it. The best way to attract the fish to your area is to make it look like you’re your bait is just swimming casually near the water surface and the best way to do this is by retrieving slowly. But as soon as you see the fish approaching, reel in a little bit faster to make it seem like your lure is a fleeing fish and the Spotted Weakfish will try to strike faster and harder, thus, the hook will set to the fish’s mouth much deeper. You need to do this since the fish’s mouth is known to be soft, making it easy for hooks to pull loose, especially if the hook is not embedded in the mouth tightly.  

Habitat and Distribution

The Spotted Weakfish is endemic in the Western Atlantic Ocean, particularly from Massachusetts to South Florida; as well as within the inlets and estuaries along the country’s Atlantic seaboard. They can also be found within the entire Gulf of Mexico.

As a demersal fish, the Spotted Weakfish prefers to swim on or near the ocean floor, although they are found swimming near the surface when they’re hunting—which is actually quite often. The fish likes to hunt in shallow coastal and estuarine—in both salt and brackish—waters over sandy bottoms and seagrass with depths of up to thirty-three feet. They also tend to move closer to the shores and the shallower parts of the water during warm summer months and will only move to deeper parts of the ocean when it gets colder.