Fishermen

The 38th East Coast Commercial Fishermen's & Aquaculture Trade Exposition will be held Friday through next Sunday at the Roland E. Powell Convention Center in Ocean City . More than 50 vendors are expected to have their wares on display during the weekend event, which is expected to attract commercial fishermen, charter boat captains, aquaculturists, scientists and educators. Among the events held during the weekend will be seminars for aquaculturists and commercial fishing.

The Coast Guard suspended its search Thursday for two men missing in waters about 15 miles off the coast of Assateague Island after their fishing boat sank a day earlier. The broken-down fishing vessel was battling 20-foot waves and 50 mph wind gusts in the Atlantic Ocean when a wave knocked North Carolina fisherman Patrick Small off the deck. From the water, Small saw another wave strike the boat, shearing off the pilot house with two other men inside, he told rescuers. The men, Walter Tate, 80, and his nephew, Stephen Tate, 60, of New Bern, N.C., were deemed lost at sea after a search at first light Thursday found nothing but debris, including the floating front half of the vessel, Coast Guard officials said.

Should fishermen be able to own, buy and sell fish like stocks and bonds - BEFORE they catch them? That's the idea behind individual fishing quotas, the latest market-based environmental solution to get political traction. IFQs, used in New Zealand, Alaska, British Columbia and elsewhere, give individual watermen an exclusive share of the legal catch for a particular species, generally based on what they caught in the past. Fishermen can catch their quota in a few weeks, if they can, and then do something else.

In a move hailed by conservationists, East Coast regulators ordered Friday a 20 percent reduction in the commercial catch of Atlantic menhaden, despite warnings that the cutback would cost some fishermen their jobs and may affect crabbers in the Chesapeake Bay. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, meeting before a packed ballroom of partisans in a Southeast Baltimore hotel, ended years of debate over whether the fish were in trouble and...

ROCK HALL -- A full moon was just beginning to set on a still-dark Chesapeake Bay yesterday when, for the first time in five years, commercial fisherman Ronnie Fithian and his crew laid off their drift nets just south of the Bay Bridge.It took only a few minutes for the 400 yards of white nylon mesh net to disappear off the stern of the fiberglass workboat. Lead weights quickly pulled it 65 feet down into some of the deepest and warmest waters in the Upper Chesapeake, where schools of rockfish once were commonly found in the dead of winter.

KEELUNG, Taiwan -- As he prepared his nets for the next day's work, Lin Che-ch'iu shook his head at the thought that China was conducting missile tests in nearby waters."

NEWLYN, England -- "The Bloody Nut of Newlyn" taught his son well.Michael Williams would laugh at gales and set a course with nothing more than his watch, compass, map and guile, using wire stretched tight to hear the "ping-ping" of a school of fish waiting to be hauled from the sea.Now, the father remains ashore, as the son named Shaun sets sail, carrying on a 250-year-old family fishing tradition now hooked up to satellites and computers and bound by...

ANNAPOLIS -- Why is the 1990 recreational season for striped bass ending Sunday at 8 p.m.? The basic reason, according to sources in the Department of Natural Resources and on the Striped Bass Advisory Board, is simple enough: Too many fishermen caught too many fish.But the explanation of why so many fishermen caught so many fish in so little time is a more complicated matter -- and one that has not been fully researched by fisheries managers.BIt seems there are three major factors that will close the fishery 10 days into a five-week season: The population of striped bass in the bay is healthy and large, the rockfish being caught are big and fishing areas in the Chesapeake and its tributaries were not restricted for this first season in more than five years.

The Duck Man called early last week to say that the fishing for blues was hot from the shoreline at Thomas Point Park, which was good, because the bass fishing on the Potomac River a few days before had been miserable, the outboard on the fishing boat had become balky from too much bay trolling -- and, well, bank fishing seemed like a great idea at the time.The Duck Man, some might say, is consumed with the higher mathematics of North America's population of mallards, canvasbacks, wood ducks, black ducks, sea ducks and so on. But he also has an eye for preserving the marine species of the Chesapeake Bay estuary.

More than 75 Maryland fishermen came to the Department of Natural Resources' headquarters building in Annapolis last night to discuss three options for the future of rockfish, but found that fishery managers no longer had the time to listen.Pete Jensen, deputy director of DNR's Fisheries Service, said early in the two-hour meeting that a decision on preferred catch limits for the 1997 seasons already had been made."DNR will support and vote for Option 2 at the upcoming Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission [meeting]

Cary deRussy, the former publisher of Fishing in Maryland magazine, died of emphysema complications Oct. 10 at Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin. The former Mays Chapel resident was 70. Born Wilson Cary Nicholas deRussy in Baltimore and raised in Ruxton, he was a 1960 graduate of St. Paul's School, where he was on the wrestling, cross country and tennis teams. He earned a photography degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1964. Family members said that during the Vietnam War, he joined the CIA and spent two years in Saigon working with the Special Forces.

Richard N. Novotny Sr., former executive director of the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishing Association who also lobbied on behalf of state recreational fishermen, died Sunday of kidney failure at Ivy Hall Geriatric & Rehabilitation Center in Middle River. The longtime Essex resident was 67. "He was highly regarded, and when Rich was in a leadership role, he helped form a strong relationship between [the Department of Natural Resources] and the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishing Association.

The 38th East Coast Commercial Fishermen's & Aquaculture Trade Exposition will be held Friday through next Sunday at the Roland E. Powell Convention Center in Ocean City . More than 50 vendors are expected to have their wares on display during the weekend event, which is expected to attract commercial fishermen, charter boat captains, aquaculturists, scientists and educators. Among the events held during the weekend will be seminars for aquaculturists and commercial fishing.

Something positive resulted from last month's battle with Mother Nature: more places to catch trout this fall. More than 27,000 trout will be stocked throughout the state starting this month. Most of the trout will be either rainbow or golden trout weighing an average of one pound each. There will also be about 1,500 brown trout weighing about a pound each, as well as 300 rainbow and golden trout weighing two to three pounds each. Approximately 1,000 additional trout will be donated by The Freshwater Institute in West Virginia, a research facility.

The Department of Natural Resources will announce today that it has made its own large catch — 60 recreational fishermen involved in a variety of illegal activities on Maryland's waterways in the past five months. As a result, the agency has proposed suspending their licenses for anywhere from 30 days to a year depending on the seriousness of the crime. It marks the first time that the DNR has proposed recreational licenses be suspended since the legislature empowered it to do so more than two years ago. Those who are in jeopardy of losing their licenses have been notified by mail and have 30 days to request an administrative hearing.

Nine recreational anglers from out of state were charged with fishing for striped bass in protected waters during a weekend sting operation in the Choptank River south of Denton, just one week before the start of Maryland's spring season. Working on tips from the public, Natural Resources Police officers shot video of the alleged poachers fishing on known spawning grounds and intercepted them as they returned to shore at Ganeys Wharf. Police say one angler caught 20 striped bass.

Fiery speeches cut through the smoke-filled room as more than 90 sport and tournament fishermen, along with several tackle shop owners, met in Hampstead this week to angrily demand the reopening of Baltimore's reservoirs to boating.By the end of the evening, many of the fishermen had decided to join the local group that sponsored the meeting, to push government officials on reservoir policies and become what one leader called "the anglers' voice."Fishermen from Carroll, neighboring counties, and Pennsylvania, packed the Hampstead Fire Hall for the meeting Wednesday night.

BOSTON -- A group of Democratic Massachusetts lawmakers has asked the federal government for $100 million to help thousands of fishermen threatened by the collapse of cod stocks in the Gulf of Maine.In a letter sent last week, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and four other members of Congress urged the administration to include in the federal budget for 2000 an emergency relief package for fishermen and cities that rely on the cod stocks economically.Regulators voted last week to bar fishing in several spawning grounds off the coast of New England in an effort to stop the collapse of the cod supplies.

Out there, they may grind it out at work or remain persistently unemployed, have all manner of romantic or familial trouble, and feel burdened by everything from taxes to traffic. But here, on the banks of a sparkling river on the first day of put-and-take trout fishing season, all is well. For many of Maryland's anglers, Saturday dawned as their very own New Year's Day. "We don't rush. We talk about life. We've had a lot of issues over the years — marriages, kids, divorces — but this is another year," said Gino Secola, 62, lingering in the parking lot with fishing buddy Bob Blasetti, 53, after wrapping up a successful morning on the Patapsco River.

Pardon Dee Tochterman if she doesn't have time for more than a quick hello. She has worms to wash. Thousands of them. Every day from spring to late fall, Tochterman is the head worm wrangler at T.G. Tochterman & Sons, the 94-year-old tackle shop on Eastern Avenue. Her specialty is bloodworms, the nasty critters from the mud flats of Maine and Canada that squirt blood and bite. Anglers love them. But the fish of the Chesapeake Bay — stripers, spot and croaker — love them even more.