Here is another report
Fishing: Cold water continues to impact fishing
By BILL SABO
Fishing Columnist
As much as you hate to read it, I hate to write it. It is getting to the point that I become apologetic about having to talk about the cold water; unfortunately, it remains the headline story.
This thermocline is big. It's bad, it's cold, it's been around the surface for about six weeks and below for two or three more.
It goes all the way from below Canaveral to Virginia. And even the New Jersey reports lamented the cold water hurting their fishery in the last few weeks.
The local television weather people are loathe to report bad things at the beach, but at least one came across with an ocean temperature of 71 degrees on Friday while some the others were still trying to tell us that it was 75-78. Sometimes you have scratch your head and wonder where they get their figures.
Those of you who have been in the water know different -- and know that it has been different for weeks (when looking at the upper figures).
Volusia.org, which is the Volusia County Web site, put the ocean temperature at 61 degrees on Friday. They have consistently been around the mid-60s for the last few weeks and are candid enough to report it. How many times have you heard the local television meteorologists tell you, "The ocean is starting to warm up." By their own incantations, the ocean should be about 90 by now.
Divers have come back from lobster explorations talking about just how bad it is offshore.
If 61 - 75 is the temperature along the beach, imagine how it is when you get to where the water should be colder. Anecdotal reports put the water there in the upper 40s and lower 50s.
Boaters can be confused because their sensors are only a couple of inches into the water where sunlight can raise the figures, but when I hear of a temperature of 75 at the Vilano boat basin, I know there's a flag because that number can exceed 85 during this time of year. It's a very still area, and I have seen it as high as 90 during a summer low tide.
I'm not an alarmist, and I understand that these things happen every now and then; in some ways, it's kind of interesting to live through a phenomenon that may not happen again for decades.
I've searched the Internet for an explanation or theory but so far have not found any. This is not terribly exciting stuff to most people, and explanations will not be written until data have been gathered. That will take some time, but you will be able to tell your children that you lived through it.
That it impacts fishing is indisputable. Does it impact the fish themselves is up to discussion; I won't even say debate, because in the long run it probably doesn't amount to much other than an inconvenience.
That inconvenience can be considerable to those who make their living at fishing, and it demands that all of us -- including columnists -- refine and redefine our models for fishing.
During most other years a guide could take a fare out for some targeted species and dependably fall back to another when the primary wasn't around on a given day.
That's a legitimate nature of the business. The customer catches fish -- hopefully big fish, even if it is a jack -- goes away happy and plans to come back another time.
As for me, I could write a column for any given week of the summer and not even have to be here as long as I didn't give specifics such as names, places, and numbers.
The fish would be here and someone would catch them. These were as close to absolutes as you could get in fishing. It went to the predictability curve, like making February the worst month for almost anything.
But I don't think anyone saw this one coming.
Thermoclines happen and they are important. They bring a lot of detritus up from the bottom (remember Crescent Beach?) and recycle the water column. They fertilize the littoral garden in some perspectives.
I suppose La Nina is a big thermocline. But where do the fish go? I don't know.