When the rain had finished and the sun came out in the Rondout last week, an assortment of locals gathered, gently bobbing their fishing poles up and down over the railing on the Eddyville bridge. Down in the water, the end of their fishing lines were fastened with Sabiki rigs, a Japanese style of lure characterized by multiple hooks and shiny materials fastened to the same line and weighted down with a molded lead stone called a sinker.
Moving the line up and down, a technique called jigging, creates the illusion of life. Some schooling types of baitfish find these lures irresistible. Because the movement inflames their predatory instincts, pairs and groups often attack the lures simultaneously.
Two kinds of herring, Bluebacks and Alewives are currently running back up the Hudson River from the ocean in search of their freshwater origins. Searching for the right tributary, hoping to spawn more herring, these have swam up the Rondout to find an artificial weir confronting them which most will not be able to swim over. This bottleneck assures success for the fisherfolk.
Up on the bridge, the fishing poles bend, and the anglers reel the pitiful fish up, up, up as they thrash around, trying to break free of the hook through a cheek. Every now and then one succeeds, thrashing free, sunlight glancing off the scales, to fall back down to the water and swim away.
Tommy Rogers of Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, one of the people fishing for herring that day, said friends of his had received a ticket for fishing in the same spot the previous day.
“They was out there dranking beer, as one does, jiggin’ when a [Department of Environmental Conservation] police officer saunters up to them, Annie Oakleys and all. He didn’t say nothin’ about the beers. He’s just interested in their buckets. And he give ‘em tickets. They was fishin’ without a license.”
March 15 to June 15 is the official season for fishing for herring. Ten per day is the limit. To be an angler in good standing with the law, anyone fishing must have at least a recreational marine fishing registry license. It costs nothing, and it can be obtained online and downloaded directly to your computer @decals.east.licensing.app.
Another angler with a Sabiki rig, Phillip Schoettle-Greene is crestfallen with the news that he recently learned. The DEC recommends eating no more than one meal of herring every month. PCBs, the bioaccumulating forever-plastic molecules dumped into the Hudson River for more than 30 years are the reason behind the proscription.
As the herring is a migratory fish which lives the rest of its life in the ocean, it is considered safer to eat than the fish that live in the Hudson River year-round like Catfish and Walleye.
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