Fortescue still calls itself the weakfish capital — but where did the fish go?

Growing up near the Great Egg Harbor River, I knew a man everyone called Beef.

His real name was Irving. Nobody called him that. Beef lived next door and had a gift — he could fix any outboard motor ever made. His driveway was always full of fishermen dropping off engines, and out back he had a shop with every tool known to man, including a big tub where he would hang the motors and tune them until they ran right. Fishermen came and went constantly, and Beef fished too. He was always giving us his catch — usually stripers or weakfish, pulled out of the Delaware Bay and the rivers that fed into it.

We ate a lot of weakfish growing up. Watch out for the small bones.

This past winter I drove through Fortescue in Cumberland County on my Delaware Bay tour and saw the sign: Weakfish Capital of the World. I had heard those days were mostly behind us. The sign is still there. The weakfish, largely, are not.

Then I came across a Facebook post from Frank Ruczynski. Frank is a Fisheries Technician for the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife — and if you fish these waters seriously, you know the name. He is a perennial top honoree in the state's Skillful Angler Recognition Program, having earned Specialist, Master and Elite Angler designations. He has worked as a field editor for NorEast Media and is a respected voice in the regional fishing community for decades. This is not a casual observer. This is someone who has spent his professional life in and around these waters.

Frank spent some time recently in Fortescue reminiscing. One line from his post stopped me cold:

"What I wouldn't give to bring the weakfish back and restore this place to its former glory."

That made me sad. And curious. So I went looking for answers.

SEE ALSO: Exploring New Jersey's forgotten Delaware Bay shore 

What happened to the weakfish

The weakfish — also called sea trout or tiderunner depending on who you ask — was once one of the most abundant fish in Delaware Bay and along the Jersey Shore. Fortescue, a small fishing village in Cumberland County, built its entire identity around them. Charter boats, tackle shops, diners full of fishermen at 5 a.m. — all of it tied to the weakfish run.

The population began collapsing in the late 1980s and has never fully recovered. The species is now considered depleted by federal fishery managers. The causes are genuinely complicated and still debated.

Commercial overfishing played a role in the early years — weakfish were harvested heavily by trawlers before regulations tightened. But the fishermen who know these waters best point to something else entirely: the striped bass.

The striper argument

Striped bass populations surged dramatically following successful conservation efforts beginning in the 1990s. That is mostly good news. But stripers are aggressive predators and juvenile weakfish are a significant part of their diet. The argument made by many Delaware Bay fishermen is straightforward — too many stripers, not enough young weakfish surviving to adulthood.

It is not a fringe theory. Fishery researchers have documented predation pressure from striped bass as a contributing factor in weakfish mortality. The debate now is about balance — how to manage striper populations without undoing thirty years of conservation work, while giving weakfish a fighting chance to recover. There are no easy answers. Both fish matter. Both have passionate constituencies.

Signs of a comeback

Here is the part of the story worth holding onto. Weakfish have been making a gradual comeback in New Jersey waters, with spring prime time as fish stage in Delaware Bay before spreading along the coast. This spring, several reports indicated good numbers of weakfish in the 3 to 5 pound range showing up earlier than usual. Anglers working soft plastics in the backwaters found tiderunner weakfish alongside stripers and bluefish in parts of South Jersey as recently as this month.

It is not the Fortescue of the 1970s. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But the fish are not gone — they are struggling, and there are people working to bring them back.

Frank Ruczynski works for the agency with the most power to help. The fact that a man who has dedicated his professional life to New Jersey's fisheries is standing in Fortescue thinking about what it used to be is not nothing. That is someone who knows exactly what was lost and has not stopped thinking about it.

The sign in Fortescue still says weakfish capital of the world. I hope it is not just a memory. I hope it is still a promise.