\n<\/p>\n
\u201cExotic,\u201d according to its Oxford Dictionary definition, means \u201coriginating in or characteristic of a distant foreign country.\u201d Considering this, I always laugh about how commonly the word is thrown around in the fishing world. Every time someone catches a species in an area or body of water where it traditionally doesn\u2019t belong, it\u2019s labeled \u201cexotic.\u201d Meanwhile, true exotics like snakeheads and Asian carp are labeled \u201cinvasive,\u201d which isn\u2019t wrong, but they are also genuine exotics originating in other countries. Technically, a wayward tarpon caught far north of Florida isn\u2019t exotic. Nor is a barracuda caught off the coast of New York. But one has still managed to make recent headlines as part of the ever-growing trend of \u201cexotic\u201d species popping up in the news.<\/p>\n
The 19-pound barracuda caught by angler Jonathan Rogers<\/a> is the first of its kind and the largest fish ever recorded in the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection\u2019s Exotic Marine record category<\/a>. Just a few weeks prior, a tarpon caught in the Massachusetts\u2019s surf also made rounds<\/a> in the media. While not all these out-of-place catches make national news, if you\u2019re plugged into the fishing world, you hear about them often, especially on social media. This begs the question of whether climate change is sending more \u201cexotics\u201d to places where they shouldn\u2019t be, or if we simply hear about them faster thanks to the speed at which information travels. I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle.<\/p>\n There is a place in southern New Jersey\u2014my home state\u2014called Tarpon Cove within Delaware Bay. The tidal creek leading into it is called Tarpon Gut. Jog a few hours north to Brooklyn, New York, and you\u2019ll find Sheepshead Bay along the southern shore of Long Island. Neither of these locations were named randomly. At some point in history, tarpon cruised in and out of Tarpon Gut, and Sheepshead Bay was rife with sheepshead. Both species, however, are now and have been considered southern fish for many decades. It\u2019s only been within the last 20 years or so that sheepshead have come back on the radar of New Jersey and southern New York anglers. And I\u2019m not talking about occasional sightings\u2014they exist in numbers strong enough to be fully targetable, yet most people still consider them \u201cexotic.\u201d Fingers are quickly pointed at rising temperatures bringing these fish back, though nobody can say for certain that\u2019s the sole reason.<\/p>\n More telling is the historic northern population of red drum, also known as redfish. From the early 1900s through the early 1950s, you\u2019d be hard pressed to find written accounts of catching striped bass in the surf between central New Jersey and Delaware. During those years, these were strong states for redfish, with Delaware Bay serving has a prime breeding ground for what locals called \u201cchannel bass\u201d back then. Then, they seemingly vanished within that range, and, over time, their old haunts became prime striper territory. Why? Were we experiencing global cooling, as striped bass prefer much cooler water than reds? More likely it\u2019s because commercial fishing and traffic on their breeding grounds, coupled with pollution, killed off the vital eel grass redfish require to thrive and breed. Over the last few years, however, more and more reds\u2014large ones, too\u2014are being caught in this historic zone. Is it because water temperatures are rising or because something missing that the redfish needed has returned?<\/p>\n To be very clear, I firmly believe in global warming and climate change. It is, to me, undeniable, but I\u2019m also fascinated with the short- and long-term cyclical nature of fisheries. Is warming water attracting more southern species like kingfish to places like Cape Cod<\/a>? Absolutely. But anglers seem to look at these catches as something recent and novel when that\u2019s really not the case. We just hear about more of them these days.<\/p>\n From first grade through my senior year of high school, I spent every weekend on my family boat at the Jersey Shore. Without fail, something \u201cexotic\u201d would hit the dock every year between August and October. The ocean was always at its warmest during this time, and a shifting Gulf Stream had the potential to hurl all kinds of abnormal visitors to the area. We\u2019d spot angelfish cruising around the dock pilings.\u00a0 I can recall popping into the local tackle shop to see Polaroid photos of a tarpon landed on nearby Brigantine Beach, and this would have been the early 1990s. One day while chasing snapper bluefish, I wound up with a juvenile barracuda on my line. Had this happened during the social media age, that little barracuda might have spread through the Northeast fishing community like wildfire. But back in those days, news of a New Jersey tarpon only traveled within the local fishing scene, and, to the best of my recollection, it never even made the local paper.<\/p>\nOld Haunts<\/h2>\n
Southern Charm<\/h2>\n