Just off Stonington, where Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island converge at the eastern margin of Long Island Sound, a fisherman can traverse the borders of all three states in just minutes. With each border crossed, anglers must observe a new set of fishing regulations or risk an encounter with an environmental conservation officer, today’s version of an old-fashioned game warden.
Connecticut’s border with Rhode Island is in a sliver of water at the very mouth of the Sound, too distant for most Connecticut fishermen. It’s the maritime border with New York that is the real issue.
Not only does it run the full length of the state, but closer than many fishermen realize. Slanting northeast, it clips Six Mile Reef, one of the Sound’s most popular fishing spots, just a mile and a half off Clinton. It is so close off southeastern Connecticut that is halfway between Fishers Island and the mainland.
This odd geography means that as often as not, Connecticut anglers in the area are fishing in New York as well as in their home state. When they do, they must be aware that the legal length, possession limit and season for a fish caught in one state may not be the same in the other.
Every year sport fishermen from Connecticut anglers fined by New York for violations committed because of a boundary they cannot see.
It’s easy to make an honest mistake. A 16-inch black sea bass that is a legal catch in Connecticut waters, for instance, is not lawful in New York, or Rhode Island where the size limit is a half inch longer is 16.5-inches.
The most sought-after bottom fish in the Sound, the black sea bass is a poster fish for a species caught in a tangle of differing fishery management programs and regulations.
That’s what a Westbrook fisherman and his friend found out last summer when they unknowingly strayed across the New York State border line while fishing a black sea bass hot spot about mid-way between Mattituck, Long Island, and Madison last June.
They assumed they were in Connecticut waters, where sea bass season opens May 18. They were not and New York environmental police pinched them for fishing ahead of the Empire State’s season opener, June 23. The Westbrook duo paid a $75 fine for three sea bass.
“We had no idea we were in New York,” says the fisherman, who asked not to be identified. “We even waved at the New York officers.”
The two Connecticut anglers were among many fishermen blitzed by New York conservation officers off Mattituck last year before that state’s black sea bass season opened June 23. Many of the best fishing grounds for this fish are in New York, close to the border between the two states, which draws boats from Connecticut – and New York watchdogs.
Asked if there was a specific focus for enforcement on Mattituck , the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Division of Law Enforcement would not comment. The department instead offered a canned reply that it “conducts routine patrols in waters across the state” to enforce fishing regulations.
That may be, but enforcement last season was cheered on by the Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney, whose successful prosecution of the captain of Lucky Hook charter out of Clinton, Michael Tenedine, received wide media coverage as a result. The fine levied exceeded $3,000.
Tierney, who has a knack for news-making, called the black sea bass “a protected species due to overfishing.” In truth, while it was once rare, it now is so abundant it is gobbling down young lobster and flounder and virtually any other life form that can fit into its gaping maw.
The prosecution, said Tierney in a press release, was part of his “Everblue Initiative,’ a campaign “to protect the more than 60 per cent of Suffolk County square mileage that is water… [from] those who selfishly seek to profit off of our natural heritage.” Tierney’s office did not reply to several inquiries about whether or not he will resume his campaign against fishing violations this season.
The charter owner, Tony Notaro, claims that the vessel was in Connecticut waters with all lines out of the water.
Many Connecticut fishermen – charter and party boat captains as well as individual anglers — fume over what they say is undue zeal by New York authorities, who energetically patrol the border state lines when the sea bass season is open in Connecticut but not New York.
A charter captain from Clinton, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, told CT Examiner that he beat charges of illegal fishing in New York waters because the time on New York officers’ photographs of their GPS when the arrest occurred differed from what they cited in court, so the case was tossed. The charter captain claims he was in Connecticut waters at the time and that it’s a case of overzealous prosecution.
Anglers also gripe about Connecticut’s Fisheries Division. Hang around docks on the Connecticut shoreline and you typically hear fishermen grouse about fishing biologists of both states for what they see as a senseless lack of regulatory conformity.
“It would be nice to have uniform regulations,” says Dr. Justin Davis, chief of Connecticut’s Bureau of Natural Resources and former head of fisheries agreed, “but there are real differences in factors such as the size and distribution of the fish that are available.”
In reality, state biologists who bear the brunt of that ire get a bad rap. The individual states do not have the final say in managing marine fisheries. The regulations the states are tasked with enforcing are but last pieces in a complex jigsaw puzzle that is the process of regional marine fisheries management.
“I work on this full time and it’s still difficult to understand,” says Michael Waine, Atlantic Fisheries Policy Director for the American Sportfishing Association. He is the voice of the sportfishing industry before the regional marine fisheries management apparatus .
A sprawling, multi-layered bureaucracy—both federal and state—drives the fishing regulations for species like black sea bass, churning out endless reports, assessments, and rulings. At the bottom of this totem pole sit state agencies, their hands tied by two interstate heavyweights—the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC)—and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries, the undisputed alpha of the hierarchy.
NOAA Fisheries rule federal waters, from three to 200 miles out, under the federal Magnuson-Stevens Act, approving fishery management plans for federal waters. The ASMFC handles state waters, to three miles, for 15 Atlantic states, including Connecticut and New York, yet operates under a different federal law, the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act.
The Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act provides the federal government authority over state fisheries as a stop gap if they do not follow ASMFC’s plans. In fact, under the act, a state that fails to comply with a plan for a fishery risks a federal shutdown.
So complex is the process that when CT Examiner asked a NOAA public affairs office to explain it he explained that no one person could provide a complete picture and that an explanation would “require input from multiple experts across the agency.” That came after NOAA originally stonewalled the request.
CT Examiner eventually received an emailed reply of mostly boilerplate with no detailed explanation of the processes involved.
Because most inshore sport fish also are also abundant in federal waters, the ASMFC consults with the appropriate RFMCs to merge management through a joint plan for each species. The RFMC concerned with most Sound sportfish, including summer flounder, scup and black sea bass, is the Mid-Atlantic. Confusingly though, Connecticut is not a voting member of the MAFMC, but is a voting member of ASMFC and these two bodies make majority decisions to arrive at a preferred outcome that ultimately NOAA approves..
Oddly, Connecticut does vote on the New England RFMC, which is mostly concerned with commercially important offshore groundfish, such as cod and hake, not fished in Connecticut waters.
NOAA touts how smoothly councils and commissions work together but that’s not always the case. The MAFMC, claiming it was bound to do so by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, wanted more restrictive total allowable catch and harvest levels on black sea bass for 2025 than the ASMFC, which operates under the Atlantic Coastal Act. In the end, after considerable jockeying, the opposing parties decided to keep the 2024 status quo, pending changes next year.
Fishery management plans are developed through a multi-layered process, with input from the public, scientists, states, and fishery stakeholders. Multiple committees, subcommittees, boards, sections, panels and teams have a hand in the final product.
The process attempts to balance conservation with the needs of sportsmen, charter operators and others who want access to fisheries. Individuals and charter captains, for example, may push for different possession limits. Fisheries managers from both states say that politicking by different interests has as much impact on management as science.
Both councils and commissions are made up of members with an interest in fisheries, ranging from biologists from state and federal agencies to charter boat captains, anglers and commercial fishermen. There are multiple axes to grind by members and intense lobbying occurs, with various states, individual sportsman and the charter industry representatives jockeying in favor their own particular interests.
Mike Pirri, who captains the Flying Connie, a Clinton-based charter, says that during development of regulations he is online with the commission for meeting three to four days a week.
Michael Waine credits Justin Davis for strong representation of Connecticut’s interests. “Connecticut is well positioned in these discussions because of his leadership,” says Waine.
The states have give and take when pushing for how they tailor their regulations to fit to management plans from above. There are different ways for the states to do that, says Davis. As a result, he says, the states sometimes go “marching off in different directions” on regulations.
By way of example, Davis cites how Connecticut uses different rules for black sea bass than New York. The aim of both is to satisfy sustainable harvest levels from the ASMFC and anglers. They do it with different measures.
Best fishing for sea bass starts in spring in the western Sound and then moves east. So, says Davis, Connecticut opens its season then, so anglers in the west and mid-Sound can have a good shot at prime fishing.
To keep within its harvest allocation, Connecticut closes its sea bass fishing to individual fishermen for a couple of weeks, starting June 23, when New York’s opens. “Thankfully “For-Hire” is still allowed to harvest during the two week Connecticut recreational closure,” says T.J. Karbowski, who runs Rock & Roll Charters out of Clinton.
The Connecticut sea bass season for individuals ends November 28, and for party and charter boats, December 31, as in New York. Possession on party and charter boats is five fish per person, seven for the final month of the season.
For-hire boats receive a break because ASMFC decisions allow them to stay open for businesses purposes. Justification for the exemption is that they also fish for several species that are open when sea bass is closed.
New York opts for later opening but a longer season in all, until the end of the year. As well, New York opts for a larger size limit and lower possession limit, although possession increases later in the season.
If the state wants uniformity on black sea bass, says Rachel Sysak, New York DEC’s Marine Finfish Unit Leader, “Connecticut would have to adopt more restrictive size and possession limits or forgo an opportunity to relax regulations in a year when management allows states to do so for black sea bass.”
Twice as many sea bass are caught in New York as Connecticut. Because of higher harvest, says Sysak, New York has to have stricter rules to stay within limits of the overall management plan.
It seems paradoxical but while, spurred by warming waters, sea bass numbers are exploding, regulations are increasingly restrictive. “Sea bass are expanding so fast science can’t catch up,” says Davis. As sea bass have spread northward,” says Sysak, the catch allocations allotted to each state have not caught up.
Waine says that fisheries management in general relies on “imprecise data to drive precise management.” Surveys ranging from sampling fish by trawl to reports by anglers play a huge part in developing management policies such as harvest allocations. Much of the information leading to regulations is based on assessments and estimates of recreational catch amounts derived from interviews with anglers. There is considerable statistical uncertainty involved.
But one thing is certain, as the fishing season gears up so will complaining by Connecticut anglers confused about the regulatory mess many of them feel ruins a good day’s fishing. Nonetheless, they’ll still have to face the fact that while fish do not recognize political boundaries, the polities that manage them do.