PLUM ISLAND — For roughly 50 years, patrons walking into Surfland Bait and Tackle on Plum Island have been greeted by a wall of fame for fishermen — photographs of 50-pound striped bass caught locally and weighed at the shop.
The most recent photo was placed on the wall yesterday, and the fish was quite a whopper: a 61-pound, 8-ounce striped bass.
"A 60-pounder is very, very rare," said Kay Moulton, who opened the shop with husband Ray decades ago. "I only have two 60-pounders on my wall."
It's been only in the past few years that the size of the biggest striped bass landed by local fishermen has grown to similar proportions of those once caught routinely in the 1960s and '70s.
As overfishing and other factors led to the decline of bass in the 1970s and 1980s, scientists estimated the number of fish had dropped to around 5 million by the early '80s, far less than the 40 million population estimated by fishery scientists last year.
The recovery of the fishery, said to be one of the most successful in history, is linked to imposed limits on the size and number of fish that could be kept all along the Atlantic seaboard. As those fish have matured, the big ones have returned.
The recent 60-pounder was caught by Atkinson, N.H., resident Bill Kendrek, who was fishing in the Merrimack River on his 22-foot motorboat at night with live eel as bait. It's the heaviest one Moulton has weighed since 1986.
Kendrek has had good luck recently with his bait of choice, as he caught a 51-pounder on July 30, according to Moulton.
Like yesterday's catch, the bass was caught at night on the Merrimack on a live eel.
Photos of all fish weighed in at Surfland are placed on the wall. But only those featuring a fish weighing 50 pounds or more stay on the wall permanently. Others are taken down at the end of the year and placed in an album. It serves as a living diary for Moulton, who says she is especially proud when patrons come in and are able to find photos of themselves from years past.
"I have kids who say, 'I'm going to be up there one of these days,'" Moulton said.
What makes Kendrek's 60-pounder all the more impressive is that the Merrimack bass population has been on the decrease over the years, Moulton said.
Exactly why this has been happening has been an ongoing mystery to Moulton and others at the iconic bait and tackle shop. Moulton has her theories, though: pollution and bad spawning seasons.
"Right now we're very short of small (16- to 18-inch) fish; a lot of the fellows are very concerned," Moulton said.
Moulton ruled out one potential cause — this time, it's not overfishing, she believes.
"I've heard so many theories that I don't know what's true," Moulton said.
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