I tried to be as fair and impartial as I could here. Those who know me know I have a problem with people who feel the law is written for others to follow, and not them.

I realize the majority of commercial fishermen, and recreationals, are honest and want to follow the laws.

However, I know of both recs and comms who have very creative ways of disregarding the laws and getting away with it. This becomes a bigger problem where you have an activity like fishing, where it's very difficult to have universal compliance.

There aren't enough officers in the field. People who disregard the law regularly know they have a slim chance of getting caught for fishing violations. The fines are so small that it's almost worth it to cheat for the dishonest ones. They view it as the cost of doing business.

These are some of the questions that arose for the state of MA, based on the responses from both sides:



1. Negative tourism impact from closing down commercial fishing.
I think this is a poor argument, and simply can't be supported by the numbers. Look at any of the other states that have shut comm fishing down. I don't believe any of them have been economically harmed by it, in terms of aggregate dollars coming into the state from fishing.

2. People have to eat wild striped bass or they won't come to MA.
I don't think that argument holds water. Mass is a beautiful state, and a preferred destination for many families. There might be some unhappy people. I would bet that it wouldn't change net tourism dollar inflow or tourism traffic into the state if this were changed.

3. The striped bass stock is sustainable.
I heard that phrase so many times by Comms my head was spinning.

IMO the problem with the concept of sustainability is that they use MSY as a benchmark. Simplified, that means that they are managing the resource for the "hypothesized" maximum yield that won't cause the biomass numbers to go down.

Fisheries terms explained here:
http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...ead.php?t=5533

This is faulty science, people. It's attributable to the management practices of the NMFS, ASMFC, and NOAA. The way to realistically manage the biomass for future growth is complex. It would require a series of newer calculations, such as predicted entrants into the fishing world, growth of that unknown number, and the variance and standard deviation of that growth rate.
It becomes complicated when you consider all the other variables that can affect fishing results, such as weather, bait migration, etc, etc. So it's not clear how these variables are factored into the equation.

Fisheries management is also a fallacy if you don't look at the global biomasses of inter-dependent species when making these decisions.

Simply repeating a mantra that:
The numbers are screwed up because they don't take into account a,b,c, d, e, and f...gets us nowhere.

I don't have the answers for that. I wanted to make note of it for the historical record.



4. The big bass are all offshore because that's where the bait is:
I hear this so many times from people it causes my head to spin as well.

If that were empirically true, then every time you had large schools of bait, you would consistently find good numbers of large bass underneath. Although other bait will be targeted, bunker are the preferred food source for the biggest bass because they're the easiest meal.

Big bass are lazy, ask author H Bruce Franklin. The charter boat guys and professional fishermen know this as well, and that's why they'll get their biggest bass near high bait concentrations.

Also, this statement that the bass are where the bait is in MA, should be always true for large concentrations in any state, if the biomass and numbers of large bass are statistically accurate. That simply was not true last year for NJ. At times, with water temps being optimal, there were miles of bunker schools off the coast of NJ, with only a few big bass under them.

That to me indicates a problem. There will always be a Captain who claims they found bass anyway.
This goes to the M&M theory, where of course the biggest bass will always be found in the middle of the highest bait concentrations. The important indicator of a stock's health is the edges of the bowl, representing its geographic range, and not just a few hot spots in the middle.

M&M theory explained here:
http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...p?t=760&page=5
http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...p?t=760&page=7