Charter Boat

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Maryland's lucrative and popular trophy striped bass season will be a shell of its former self this spring after regulators decided yesterday to drastically reduce the state's catch. By a vote of 7-6, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission rejected a proposal by Maryland to eliminate the spring quota and allow recreational fishing under regulations similar to other Eastern Seaboard states. Instead, it overwhelmingly approved a target quota of 30,000 fish - about half the total catch in each of the past two years.

Maryland's popular and lucrative spring striped bass season will be one week shorter and a bit more complicated for Chesapeake Bay anglers this year to prevent the overfishing of the past two years that raised the ire of regulators. The Department of Natural Resources is expected to receive permission from state lawmakers and the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission for a season that substitutes a "slot" of 28 inches to 35 inches for a minimum-size restriction. The season will begin later, on April 21, which is expected to save 18,000 fish.

The boat ran steadily north on Chesapeake Bay toward home port. Three- to four-foot seas helped push it along, and a steady southwest wind cooled the rising heat of a morning in early autumn.The $200,000 boat was new, the day was still young and the crew aboard was experienced. But disaster lay ahead.Abruptly the engines quit, the boat settled by the stern and sank. Those aboard had only time to make a single mayday call on the marine radio, grab life preservers and jump clear.It was an unusual scenario faced by few skippers and crews of the more than 200,000 boats registered in Maryland.

KIDS HEADING back to school today can take solace in that summer isn't officially over until the pools all close. So there is at least one more weekend of summer, and then a couple of more weeks after that before fall really checks in at the autumnal equinox.Autumn in Annapolis means boatyards and dealers are getting ready for the October boat shows.The United States Sailboat Show will celebrate its 30th year as the oldest and largest sailboat show in the country.One of the more recent traditions that sailors, in particular, look forward to is the 11-year-old Boat Accessory Market (BAM)

After weeks of tempest over a plan to move the last two crabbing vessels at City Dock, Annapolis Mayor Dean L. Johnson has orchestrated a game of musical boats to allow them to remain.City officials began talking in March about moving the boats of Charlie Meiklejohn, who has tied up at City Dock for 52 years, and his stepson, Alexander Parkinson, to make room for a 54-foot charter boat that would pay a higher slip fee, $500 a month vs. the watermen's $50.Meiklejohn, 68, was going to have to tie up 90 feet from his current spot, and Parkinson was to be relegated to Eastport.

OCEAN CITY -- Strict new rules for marlin, bluefin tuna, swordfish, sharks and other game fish have Ocean City charter boat captains complaining that heavy-handed federal oversight is threatening their business.About a month before the regulations take effect June 1, recreational anglers and charter boat operators are waiting for final word from the National Marine Fisheries Service about which species of fish they will be allowed to catch and keep and how long the seasons will be."I've seen the regulations get tighter and tighter over the years," said Bob Gowar, chief captain at the Ocean City Fishing Center, where 35 charter boat captains tie up. "The recreational fishermen take the beating on everything that goes down."

WITH MEMORIAL Day upon us, the boating season on the Chesapeake Bay has officially begun. But the beauty of living in Annapolis and south county is that there are plenty of opportunities to get out on a boat almost year round.Even if you don't have your own boat, there are vast fleets of charter and rental boats you can take out for a couple of hours or a couple of weeks; sailing schools and powerboat schools, where you can learn the basics in one weekend or a week; and then there is the best boating bargain in town: the water taxis that take you for a ride across Annapolis Harbor for $1.50 a person.

Blackbeard and his fellow pirates were lured to the British Virgin Islands for the same reasons we were: hidden coves, calm waters and some 50 islands within sight of one another, most ringed with pristine white sand beaches.Unlike the pirates, we weren't looking for a cave to stash pieces of eight. We came to sail the clear, blue waters that draw yachters and divers from around the world, increasingly these days with their children aboard."We're spending a lot more time together on the boat than we would at a big resort with kids' activities," observed Joan Williams, a Virginia working mom of two who was anchored nearby.

TILGHMAN -- Capt. Bud Harrison was standing along the starboard quarter of his charter boat Beaudacious early last week as a news crew from a Washington television station began conducting an interview on the spring rockfish season.What, Channel 7 reporter Brad Bell asked, were the advantages of going out with a charter boat, as opposed to shoreline fishing or taking out one's own boat?"When you go with a pro, he knows where the fish have been moving, what they have been biting on, and because of that he usually can catch "Harrison had been speaking calmly when the rod positioned in the holder immediately behind him bent deeply and the reel quickly gave out line.

In the spring of the year, rockfish capture the imagination and, hopefully, the hooks of recreational and charter-boat fishermen in Maryland's waters of the Chesapeake Bay, as a series of three seasons begin to unfold into the summer and fall.This year is no different for recreational and charter-boat fishermen, who most likely can look forward to 32-inch minimum trophy season from April 26 to May 31, a split second season at a 28-inch minimum from June 1 to June 16 and 26-inch minimum from June 17 to July 4, and a fall season at an 18-inch minimum running from early September into November.

One officer. That's what folks representing recreational anglers, charter boat captains and watermen all begged for Tuesday night from the head of Natural Resources Police. After years of watching outlaws of all persuasions steal fish and oysters from Maryland waterways only to see overworked prosecutors and distracted judges set them free (the bad guys, not the sea critters), members of the Task Force on Fisheries Management pleaded for help. "If you can't enforce the laws that protect natural resources, you can't manage the resource," said Brian Keehn, a charter boat captain.

A Talbot County Council member who ran on a platform of creating a healthier Chesapeake Bay pleaded guilty yesterday in Anne Arundel District Court to 34 charges that he failed to pay oyster inspection and export taxes. Levin Faulkner "Little Bud" Harrison IV agreed to pay back taxes totaling $3,943 and was fined $5,000 and placed on unsupervised probation before judgment that will expire July 9. Harrison is manager of Harrison Brothers Oyster Co., a processing and packing firm, and vice president of Harrison's Country Inn and Sportfishing Center on Tilghman Island, a popular destination for powerful national and state politicians that serves oysters nine ways.

ABOARD THE R/V RACHEL CARSON - There may be a swifter, quieter, smoother ride on the Chesapeake Bay, but you'd have to know a dolphin to snag one. With a cold front bearing down and sheets of rain showing up in yellow and green waves on the radar, the state's new 81-foot research vessel, cruised lickety-split from Solomons to Annapolis for yesterday's christening. Two hours and change (like two pennies and a nickel) - 45 nautical miles - from dock to dock. Capt. Mike Reusing, the maestro at the controls of the $4.3 million floating laboratory, maintained a steady 21-knot pace, powered by twin jet-propulsion engines.

George T. Cord Jr., a retired owner of a medical records data processing firm and a licensed charter boat captain, died Tuesday of pneumonia at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 90. Mr. Cord was born in Baltimore and raised on Robb Street. He was a graduate of Baltimore public schools. He enlisted in the Army Air Forces and spent the war years in China as an aircraft mechanic repairing B-29 bombers. After the war, he returned to Baltimore and worked for many years as a salesman for Remington Rand before establishing Microfilm Associates in the 1970s.

Call them the Buddy Regs. What else do you give to the man who has everything because he takes what he wants? Thanks to the fish-stealing antics of charter boat Capt. Buddy Harrison last summer - and the slap on the wrist he received as punishment - fired-up fishermen and fisheries officials agreed to revise Maryland's penalty system. The proposed changes will be unveiled Tuesday night at the Department of Natural Resources' Annapolis headquarters. They are the product of more than six months of work by recreational anglers, watermen and charter boat captains.

As the spring striped bass season opens today, Maryland anglers are walking a tightrope stretched fishing-line thin between short-term success and long-term failure. In three of the past four years, the state has exceeded its spring allotment of striped bass - also known as rockfish. The 50 percent overages the past two years incurred the wrath of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission regional fishing regulators, who threatened to clamp down on Chesapeake Bay anglers. In a last-ditch effort to prove it can police itself, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources has instituted rules to cap the catch at 30,000 fish, about half the total catch in each of the past two years.

Maryland's popular and lucrative spring striped bass season will be one week shorter and a bit more complicated for Chesapeake Bay anglers this year to prevent the overfishing of the past two years that raised the ire of regulators. The Department of Natural Resources is expected to receive permission from state lawmakers and the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission for a season that substitutes a "slot" of 28 inches to 35 inches for a minimum-size restriction. The season will begin later, on April 21, which is expected to save 18,000 fish.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Maryland's lucrative and popular trophy striped bass season will be a shell of its former self this spring after regulators decided yesterday to drastically reduce the state's catch. By a vote of 7-6, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission rejected a proposal by Maryland to eliminate the spring quota and allow recreational fishing under regulations similar to other Eastern Seaboard states. Instead, it overwhelmingly approved a target quota of 30,000 fish - about half the total catch in each of the past two years.

If next week's meeting of regional fisheries regulators were an episode of I Love Lucy with Maryland playing the role of the zany redhead, you can almost guess what the opening line would be: "Loocie, you got a lot of 'splainin to do." It was just seven months ago in a gloomy hotel ballroom in Northern Virginia that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission heard Maryland promise to make good on exceeding its 2005 spring striped bass quota - by 29,720 fish - and to never do it again.

Chew on this: A flesh-eating piranha was caught this week in a Dundalk park pond. Inches from the tall reeds along the shore of Stansbury Pond and just to the left of an abandoned beach ball, William Murphy landed a lean, mean, eating machine, 3 1/2 pounds and 16 inches long. There's probably only one piranha - probably an aquarium discard, experts say. But that's what they said about the northern snakehead, the alien critter that made the federal government's most-wanted fish list in 2002.