Bait Fish

THE INDIVIDUAL waterman seems headed in the same direction as the family farmer and may well reach extinction first. Both are being done in by huge industrial-style competitors that benefit from economies of scale. In the case of the watermen, though, the damage is even greater because giant fishing concerns are also wiping out the product. In fact, the Bush administration has conceded the collapse of wild fish populations in U.S. coastal waters, with a proposal that fish farming be permitted in the zone from three miles to 200 miles offshore where most commercial fishermen have traditionally plied their trade.

Three Baltimore research centers have won a $6.3 million federal grant to study toxic Pfiesteria and its effects on human health.Researchers at the University of Maryland medical school, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute will share the five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health.The money will pay for four projects, including studies on Pfiesteria's toxins and their effect on the human brain. It also will fund a state-of-the-art laboratory where water and fish samples can be tested for the presence of the toxic microbe.

The best moment in "Search for the Great Sharks," the new feature at the Maryland Science Center's IMAX theater, is oddly quiet.We are aboard a research vessel floating on a calm sea, as the sky presses down and ocean birds sail overhead. It's a scene of pure, heightened anticipation that stretches out for a long, long moment until . . .Wham! The jaws of a great white shark break the surface and attack a bait fish floating from a surface buoy.That transition from serenity to sudden violence symbolizes why sharks so terrify us, of course -- and why they fascinate us, too."

One of the best lures to call on when you want to collect a stringer of Liberty, Piney Run, Potomac or Carroll farm pond bass is the crankbait."It's always one of my top lures, regardless of the time of year or location of the water," bass pro Paul Elias said.Elias recommends carrying at least three."I want lures that dive to about 5 feet, then one that works at around 10 feet and finally, a deep diver that digs down to 15 feet or more," he said.Nearly all manufacturers put depth information on their crankbait packages, but keep in mind that running depth can vary as much as 2 feet, depending on line size and the length of the cast.

Mixed bag fishing has been good throughout the Chesapeake this summer, but the prime spot again this year for a multi-species trip is the lower third of the bay."We've got just about anything you would want to carry home right now," said Captain Eddie Davis as he steered his Edith Rose down St. Jerome's Creek toward the Potomac River.Davis is a full-time charter captain and one of the best when it comes to prospecting the fishing grounds around the Point Lookout area. Aboard with us early last week were Charlotte Hall fishing fanatic Jim Kundreskas, Jimmy Owens, a Ridge neighbor of Davis', and Annapolis-area professor Sam Blate and his teen-age sons, Alex and Andrew.

Greenpeace has launched flotillas of seafaring activists to save whales in the Arctic Ocean and frustrate nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific. Today, the international environmental action group plans to send protesters in boats with a more humble goal: saving the Chesapeake Bay's population of a cigar-sized bait fish called menhaden. Organizers of the 34-year-old Amsterdam-based organization say they are set to send about 50 people with a giant floating fish skeleton and signs reading "Floating factory fishing is overkill" in 15 boats beside a Reedville, Va., menhaden processing plant.

AYER CREEK - As they have many times during the past three years, a team of Maryland scientists was trolling meandering, marshy waters yesterday, casting handnets for sick menhaden, the 2- to 3-inch silvery bait fish that have come to be seen as a potential warning sign of toxic Pfiesteria piscicida. This time - for the first time - fish with bloody sores and ulcers have begun to turn up in the brackish waters of Maryland's coastal bays near Ocean City. Department of Natural Resources researchers were quick to say there is no evidence the single-celled dinoflagellate, which in 1997 was blamed for one of the state's largest recorded fish kills, has transformed into its toxic form, believed capable of making people sick.

A SMALL Crofton pond is ground zero for a biological invasion that could be disastrous. Someone dumped into the pond a nasty fish that eats everything in sight -- fish, frogs and even birds. The fish, the northern snakehead, can slither over land to other bodies of water and, unchecked by the predators of its native waters in China, might cause the extinction of a number of local species. A Maryland resident dumped two northern snakeheads into the pond more than two years ago because they no longer were wanted as pets, Department of Natural Resources police said.

When 12-year-old Todd Taylor landed a 1 1/2 -pound largemouth bass at the Harford Glen Environmental Education Center in Bel Air last week, the excited cries of the Joppa seventh-grader and his friends rang through the woods along the banks of the Atkisson Reservoir on Winters Run."Remember that feeling," said Larry Feeley, a Perry Hall Middle School science teacher and sports fisherman who was their instructor for a free four-day fishing clinic sponsored by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Marine experts say sharks have not changed their diets or sworn bloody revenge on humans this summer. The rash of shark attacks in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia in recent weeks, they say, has more to do with human behavior than with sharks. "We've got so many people in the water that we just increase the odds of human-shark interactions immensely," said Wes Pratt, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Narragansett, R.I. But the drama of the attacks is irresistible to the news media, and people can be forgiven if they've concluded that sharks are hunting for people.