“I actually caught not a lot, 2 weakfish this year myself in the New England surf, which is more than I catch in 5 years combined unfortunately most years, but there’s been a lot of weakfish in southern New England late summer. How has the New Jersey weakfish bite been this year?” – Toby Lapinski (8:04)
“Poor, exceptionally poor; I didn’t see 1 and back in the…70s-90s, I would catch 200-300 a season on a fly rod up to 11 lb. This year [2025] I heard of 1 caught. I saw the picture of it but physically I didn’t see any taken at all and…I do a lot of fluke fishing in the summer…in the spring we’re using bucktails and…soft baits and you would catch them by accident but this year almost nonexistent from what I’m hearing…I’m hoping it’s cyclical. Growing up, I think the 1st ones I started catching were in the late ’60s and it peaked in the ’80s-’90s and then they kinda disappeared. The regulations were really bad on it. Back then, it was 14 fish at 14 in. which was a bad regulation…now we’re down to 1…that’s almost like a moratorium, that 1 fish, because they’re almost not around, and really nobody’s really trying to target them. You would only catch them by accident right now.” – ShellE Caris (8:23)
“Yeah I was just wondering because just in general, it’s generally better… [for] weakfish down in your area on an average season of late. Maybe, hopefully the body of them just moved up here and they’re doing a little better than we think?” – Toby (9:40)
“Hopefully it will be a good spawn, but…also the netters, not to pick on a commercial fishery but they’re a vulnerable fish, and when they leave the back bays, they school up in these gigantic schools and the netters just wipe them out. So, that happened back then. I think that’s another factor for the decline.” – ShellE (9:51)