Save the stripers? For who, from who? Do they need to be saved? Says who, Stripers Forever and some folks who make money from recreational fishing? The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission doesn't say so. ASMFC manages stripers and seems to be doing a great job. They seem to have done what they were supposed to do with the management of other species too, summer flounder and black sea bass are both considered restored fisheries and this is the year they were supposed to be restored according to our countries most powerful fishing law, the Magnuson Stevens Act, which mandates our fisheries be managed to be sustainable. In the case of striped bass it is one of the best managed fisheries and one that has been well managed since it's restoration in the early 90's. The latest stock assessment says stripers aren't over-fished and that over- fishing is not occurring. In fact - the ASMFC has just voted to discuss increasing the commercial quota.
This bill won't save any bass, if anything by reducing the size limit it will increase, an almost ever increasing recreational removal of these fish. This call for gamefish is a desperate move on the part of for profit recreational concerns, which have seen revenues hit hard with the economic meltdown, less people are spending less money on recreational fishing. The bills creator and proponent Stripers Forever, make incredible and disingenuous claims that are easily and credibly contradicted.
SF claims that closing commercial fishing for striped bass would keep the fishery open for the public, but in reality it would do just the reverse, with no market fish available, the public who doesn't fish would no longer have any access to striped bass. Less than 1% of the public fishes. SF claims that striped bass will still be available from farmed sources, however, farm raised "striped bass" aren't actually striped bass, but a hybrid with significant differences, the biggest being taste, besides who wants to eat a farm raised fish that ate pellets it's whole life and swam around in it's own feces?
The other part of this bill that is so objectionable is the fact that the reality of the striped bass fishery since it's restoration, is that the commercial fishery has been held to a strict limit each year and the landings have remained relatively the same for over 15 years, while the recreational catch has increased nearly 14 times what it was in 1990. Recreational discards of fish that die after being released, are approximately 34% of the annual allowable catch coast wide, which is more than the entire commercial fishery, landings and discards combined. The recreational fishery that uses the largess of the scientifically and regulatorily allowable annual take, in the name of recreation, save the few who harvest for subsistence, comprise less than 1% of the public  and want exclusive access to the fishery,  this hardly seems to be in the best interest of of the fishery or the general public, does it?
 

Mr. Rice:

I don’t know where you’re getting your disinformation.  From the “Commercial Fishing News” perhaps ?  Yes, stripers need to be “saved” from an impending crash.  No one is claiming that the population has crashed.  But all indicators, including ASMFC’s own data, point to a crash in the near future. 

You are correct that the ASMFC “doesn’t say so.”  It never says so about any crash it presides over.  Why do you imagine that it is “doing a great job” when just about every stock it has anything to do with goes to hell?  Summer flounder and black sea bass?  You have got to be kidding!  You haven’t heard about the ASMFC-induced crashes?  Yeah, summer flounder and black sea bass are finally spawning well.  Congratulating ASMFC for that is like congratulating a pilot for a perfect belly landing after he has forgotten to deploy his landing gear. 

ASMFC, which hasn’t revisited striper size and limit regulations in years as the resource steadily declines in biomass and year class mix, now wants to increase the commercial catch of stripers.  That’s “a great job”?  It doesn’t alarm you when you consider (or maybe you have not) the following statistics: In 2008, coastwide, anglers landed (that is, killed and released) 14,107,835 fish, the worst year since 2000.  In the north some guides had to cancel their seasons.  Maine was down from 1,004,780 fish in 2000 to 518,988 in 2008; New Hampshire from 213,868 to 91,433; Massachusetts from 7,563,326 to 4,001,795; Virginia from 1,357,299 to 647,542; North Carolina from 293,080 to 136,699.  In a commercial fishery the value of fish increases as they get harder to catch, so you may see more fish caught as a stock declines.  Recreational landings, on the other hand, tend to follow stock abundance; and, in fact, stock assessments are based on recreational landings.

Each year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service coordinates a cooperative trawling expedition for wintering striped bass off North Carolina.  This is not a population survey; it is strictly a tagging operation.  Still, it’s a good indicator of abundance.  Since 1990 the best catch was 6,275 fish in the year 2000; the worst was 147 in 2009.  The average from 1987 to 2006 was 2,212, but the average for the last three years was 516.  Diseased and grossly malnourished bass are showing up in ever increasing numbers especially in Chesapeake Bay, which produces 75 percent of the coastal population.

A study by the Chesapeake Bay Ecological Foundation, ongoing since 2004, has found that large, migratory female striped bass are remaining in the upper bay all winter, further depleting menhaden and thereby further stressing resident stripers.  The big females are there, explains foundation president Jim Price, because they can’t find menhaden along the coast.  “Winter is the most critical time in a striper’s life cycle because it has to feed heavily to develop its gonads,” he says.  “But many of the fish we see have shrunken belies and are emaciated.  In summer commercial fishermen have to throw out maybe ten percent of their bass.  The fish are in such bad shape that the fillets are thin and white, not fit to eat.”

Tag-recapture data from spring spawning grounds in Maryland and Virginia indicate a precipitous and continuing drop in striper survival.  Fish captured in autumn are physiologically indistinguishable from fish starved in the lab for two months.  This stress makes them vulnerable to mycobacteriosis, a disease that causes loss of scales, skin ulcers, severe weight loss, and lesions on head, spleen, kidney, liver, heart and gonads.  At least 60 percent of the stripers in Chesapeake Bay are infected.  Apparently the plague is being assisted by commercial net fishermen who handle and release diseased fish, then handle and release healthy shorts.  It is moving quickly up the coast, and it seems to be transferable to humans, at least in the form of “fish-handler’s disease” which manifests itself with lymph-node swelling, Lyme-disease-like joint stiffness, and bacterial infection. 

The managers explain the dreadful fishing with anecdotal evidence, claiming the stripers were just everywhere anglers weren’t.  Sure.

We know about farm-raised stripers being hybrids, but if they are inferior in taste, how is it that they sell for the essentially the same price as wild striped bass?

Why do you imagine that the public has a right to buy wild stripers?  Does it have a right to buy wild smallmouth and largemouth bass, wild brook trout, wild grouse, wild venison?

What is called the “commercial striper season” in Mass. is an obscene charade.  It should be called the “recremercial season.”  Even the director of the Division of Marine Fisheries admits it’s about making money for tackle and gas.  A few anglers get to kill 30 breeding-age female bass a day just by sending in their lousy $90.

In 2008 Massachusetts recremercial fishermen reported landing 1,157,814 pounds of striped bass.  Basically this was done by 102 individuals who reported catching at least 3,000 pounds of stripers.  I can’t conceive of a more grossly inequitable distribution of a limited public resource.

Ted-
Back in the 90's the rec's saw a decline, in two years the catch was 1/2 what it had been for the previous two, the fish didn't disapear then either. 
I'd like to address your terming the commercial fishery - "recremercial" -  I agree.  Imagine that?
This isn't our first go around the block Ted, we've had this conversation before.  Let me ask you this-  how can you justify allowing for hire killing of striped bass, with no limit on access on one hand, yet condemn a fishery which is miniscule in scope by comparison?  Both comm'l and charter fisheries intend the same thing, to make a profit from striped bass, the fish's ultimate destination, Larry's freezer, or Mrs. Bakers plate at a restaurant, is irrelevant, no?
 
Back to the recremercial fishery- You had the attention of the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Commission, when you brought this up before, they discussed your article at committee, you should have followed up on it......What I don't get from you and the rest of the gamefish proponents is your absolue refusal to understand that there are some people who fish for stripers commercially who do make their living from fishing and are not hobby fishermen and also are at odds with Ma DMF over this issue?
Ted- it's a lot harder to catch a cod than it is to catch a striper these days, so why isn't anyone calling for gamefish for them?  It's ridiculous, that's why. So is this striper gamefish bill.
I wanted to tell you off in spades today, but I'm not figghting to preserve my hobby Ted, I am fighting for my right to make a living and striped bass are part of that since I was in School, not for gas money and bait, but to pay my mortgage and put food on my table.
I don't begrudge you or anyone else their right to recreationally fish and I have always been a friend to the recreational community, offering to help folks on the water and off. The spirit of cooperation will get us all a lot farther than what the folks at SF are attempting, you are a smart man, you should know better and act that way.
Sincerely,
John Rice
 
 
 

“Back in the 90's the rec's saw a decline, in two years the catch was 1/2 what it had been for the previous two, the fish didn't disappear then either.”  John: You okay with stripers just crashing so long as they don’t “disappear.”  And who said they’re gonna disappear?  They didn’t even “disappear” the last time the managers told use everything was fine and dandy--in the 1970s.  We even caught one or two a season.

I don’t “justify allowing for-hire killing of striped bass.”  The heavy-tackle charter captains and the headboat captains kill far more fish than the recremercials.  That slaughter needs to be drastically reduced.  I favor a one-fish @ 36-inch limit coastwide.

“You had the attention of the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Commission.”  How would I have known that?  They never contacted me.  Why do you imagine that I refuse to admit that there are “some people who fish for stripers commercially who do make their living from fishing and are not hobby fishermen.”  We’re talking numbers.  Only about 100 of ‘em go after stripers in any serious way.  Commercial fishermen are “at odds” with the division only because they want unsustainable quotas for other species.  Why do you imagine that making stripers gamefish is “ridiculous”?  Almost half the states in striper range have done so.  Finally, how about all the people and industries that would benefit in hard economic times from a robust and sustainable striper population?  A grossly inequitable distribution of a limited resource caused by the current recremercial season denies their “rights.”

Having read some of the above commontary and as a pure recreational person I find it rather presumpstious that on one hand we speak about saving the stocks of Striped bass by making them a game fish . Yet on the other side of the argument you make referance to the lack of forage fish to sustain a healthy resource. Understanding that by making striped bass a game fish [ie only recreational folks can keep them] it may increase the numbers of stripers in the resource to a point where by the present numbers of forage fish would not be able to support a steady and good supply of food for the stripers.
By your own emission this is already a serious problem in the resource now where the striped bass is developing genetic markers upon which make them more suseptable to health problems due to a lack of a a adequate food supply.
My question that has yet to be answered by any of those that find making striped bass a game fish for those that make a commercial living from guiding services,chartering, for the express purpose of increasing there bottom line , These folks, as far as I am concerned are no more recreational then  those we have in Massachusetts that are allowed to purchase a license to sell bass on a part time basis.
What will be the over all affect of increasing the bass resource on a declining food[forage] supply on the long term health of the striped bass resource itself and why only the striped bass. Why not make other species that are in far more trouble then striped bass a game fish as well?
If the inaquate food supply results in a further stressed Striped bass population and the off spring become genetically marked for future problems we have not even seen as of yet, will we start to do something about the food supply or perhaps find another reason to say the aquatic resource is further out of balance because we have to many bass in the water and not enough forage fish to support our selfish one sided actions in making the striped bass a sport fish?/
Do we protect the chicken or the eggs?
If the bass do not have an adequate food supply the reproduction cycle will become affected, thus leaving us with genetically weakened off spring that only increases the chances of further decline going forward.
Then all of the commercial charter and guide services will no longer need to be concerned about the bottom line , because you will be out of business from  making a commercial living  yourselves. This for me is a power grab from one commercial endeaver to another with out consideration of the cause and affect of what your action will produce in the end for the over all health of the Striped bass resource itself.
 
 
 

Hi Carl:

Who’s talking about “saving” stripers by making them a game fish?  It’s a matter of reducing mortality all around.  And, especially with the Mass. recremercial season, it’s a matter of stopping a grossly inequitable distribution of a limited public resource.  So, as I read it, your theory is that we should continue to the degrade the striper stock so that we can continue to degrade forage fish stocks.  That way everything will balance out.  Maybe we can get them both to zero.  Sorry, that doesn’t make sense to me.  What I have suggested in my piece and elsewhere is to manage stripers AND their forage for a normal age and size structure rather than MSY--i.e. dead-on-the-dock poundage.  That’s an entirely new and radical concept for managers and commercial fishermen.  But recs pushed them into it once--with the one-fish @ 36-inch limit.  And it worked.  The stripers came back big time.  I certainly agree that charter captains (and I’m not talking about the light-tackle guys who release their fish) are not recreational.  They’re in the business of killing fish--a limit of breeder bass for each client and, often, for themselves and their mates.  “Why not make other species that are in far more trouble than striped bass gamefish as well?”  Well, I think we should--bluefin tuna, for example.  The other fish that are in trouble aren’t gamefish.  “Haddock, cod, flounder?”  C’mon.  Genuine gamefish that WERE in desperate trouble and were designated gamefish have come back in spades--redfish, for instance.  Making striped bass a gamefish is selfish?  Are you suggesting that almost half the states in the striper’s range that have done this have acted selfishly?  How about barely more than 100 Mass. recremercial fishermen taking a million pounds of breeding-age females a season merely by sending in their lousy $90.  That’s not selfish?  Yeah, maybe a few of them really need money.  How about the many more people who really need money who are suffering economically because the striper stock has steadily dwindled?  (Have you spoken to any FORMER Maine striper guides?)  The only “power grab” was seen in NJ, where rec. anglers succeeded in making stripers a gamefish, then hogged the commercial quota for themselves.  Recs. kill far more stripers than commercial fishermen simply because they far outnumber commercial fishermen.  They strongly favor a reduced limit.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the ReelTime thread on the subject indicates almost unanimous approval for one fish @ 36 inches; and there are some commercial crazies posting there.  That’s a small but indicative poll.  By the way, recs (and I don’t mean the charter captains in the business of fish killing) never wanted the two-fish limit in the first place.  It was forced down their throats by the commercial-management axis to make the reopening of the commercial season appear equitable.

Over the past month I've heard more and more about this special interest group called Stripers Forever.  I have to say that the more posts I read by it's members, the more I discount them as a factual group.   The more I read, the more I feel their purpose is about personal gain.  Pretty disappointed really.
My beliefs;  Until something is done to curb the fishing of striper forage such as Pogies and efforts made on cleaning up the fertilizer and other chemical discharges in the Cheasapeake Bay, nothing will prevent a crash in the Striper stocks.   "Diseased and grossly malnourished bass are showing up in ever increasing numbers especially in Chesapeake Bay, which produces 75 percent of the coastal population."   If Stripers Forever want to make a real  impact, START HERE!  Renaming a fish classification is loonacy to think it will save a species.  That's governmental, legaleze double speak.  We need action, not words.
Up on the North shore of Massachusetts we had anbundance of stripers this past Summer.  We also had a sharp increase in the number of recreational fishermen.  In August the numbers dropped sharply but not due to a lack of fish.  We had an extremely large numbers of mackeral just off shore which the stripers found and gorged themsleves on, keeping them out of the traditional areas we fish.  In my opinion the stock is healthy, but I'm concerned about the lack of smaller fish in the mix.
There are some interesting facts and figures related to the commercial Hook and Line fishery.  I was surprised to find that most of the MA commercials don't sell anything or very little and that the bulk of the pounds sold fall to about 250 fishermen.  Out of this 250 , a low percentage sell more than a thousand  pounds.  The 1.2 million pound quota is normally filled in less than 4 weeks which tells me that there are a large number of bass to be caught.  Check the Mass.gov for accurate numbers and explanation, it's an interesting read.
On my boat last year, as with most years, we only lost  one small fish that we couldn't revive and I suspect that many of the commercials can boast the same release stats.  In the off season, we fish recreationally just like everyone else.  I generally don't see my catch numbers decrease in the offseason, the only difference is we can make a few dollars to offset our recreational fishing during the short selling window.  This cash allows me to fish longer each year and to develop a better sense of the availability of fish annually.  Hey, we're not villans as some here would portray us.
If Rep. Mathew Patrick wants to waste his time on issues that are based purely on emotion and not address the real issues behind a pending crash in the striper stocks, so be it.  We'll see what happens on his next election bid.  Personally, I feel he should focus his efforts on job initiatives and growing the economy.  Pandering to special interest do-gooders is a dangerous proposition in this political climate.
Good Luck Matt!

Gaffed: You presume to speak intelligently about striper management and you only heard about Stripers Forever a month ago?  Where you been?  The Congo?  And your use of the term “special-interest group” would seem to indicate: 1. you imagine that groups exist that lack a special interest; and 2. you imagine that having a special interest (in this case rebuilding a stock headed toward collapse) is somehow worthy of contempt.  Why do you imagine that Stripers Forever is not also pushing for sustainable forage fish management and a clean Chesapeake?  It is, as you’d know if you had bothered to learn anything about the outfit.  And why do you imagine that if stripers suffer from multiple threats, it is wrong to attempt to solve one of them?  By that logic we should ignore AIDS because cancer kills more people.  “Renaming a fish classification is lunacy?”  Are you suggesting that almost half the states in the striper’s range that have renamed it a gamefish are populated by lunatics?  And who says renaming the striper a gamefish in Mass. “will save the species”?  Not Stripers Forever.  So you saw some stripers eating some mackerel and, with this evidence, you confidently proclaim the “stock is healthy.”  Oy vey!  You do have it right about the low percentage of recremercial fishermen killing about 1.5 million pounds of stripers a year.  That’s the whole point!  The recremercial season is a grossly inequitable distribution of a limited resource.  Why can’t you guys grasp this simple concept?  Who said you were “villains”?  You’re just guys who want some extra cash (as do we all) and who are okay with swapping the lives of a lot of breeding-age female bass for that cash.  Stripers Forever and I are not okay with that.  By the way, there is no better way to “grow the economy” than to create healthy, sustainable sport fisheries.  A striper caught by a genuine recreational angler is worth 200 times more to the economy that a striper caught and sold for food.