June 13, 2016 — During a day of fishing on Long Island Sound earlier this month, Richie Nickerson of Niantic caught 10 legal-sized scup, a black sea bass and a northern kingfish — all species he wasn’t likely to land when he first started angling in these waters 30 years ago.
Tony Murphy of Berlin, who fished from the Black Hawk charter boat with Nickerson, also reeled in a haul of scup, also called porgies, as did most of the other 38 fishermen on board that day.
“It used to be we’d strictly catch bluefish and striped bass,” Murphy said. “But now, there are just so many porgies.”
Scup, black sea bass and northern kingfish are just three of the species once more prevalent in warmer mid-Atlantic waters that are now becoming abundant in Long Island Sound.
As the warmer-water species move in, they compete for food and habitat with cold-water species, such as winter flounder and cod, that are now becoming scarce.
“Everything’s changing,” said Greg Dubrule, owner and captain of the Black Hawk, which takes daily boatloads of anglers into the Sound from its docks on the Niantic River.
“There’s no question that, because of the warmer water, we’re seeing more scup and black sea bass, which had always been a New Jersey and southern Long Island fish,” he said.
“Our mainstay used to be winter flounder and cod, but now it’s sea bass, scup and fluke,” he added, “and we’re catching a lot of trigger fish, which we never used to see.”