When he grew up, there wasn't a lot of interest in fish conservation. People fished less for sport and more for food. The country was coming off the economic downturn from overseas war involvement. People felt poor, and they were poor, relative to how we live today. So fishing, as well as hunting, was a valued way to bring protein home for the family.

Gradually, awareness increased about overfishing. First, the 200 mile limit was passed in the 1970's to keep the foreigners, like the Russians, from decimating our groundfish. Unfortunately, by that time it was a free-for-all offshore. After the Russians were pushed out, our US commercial fishermen continued to over-fish cod, whiting, and ling.

This was also happening to an extent with the striped bass. There was a feeling that striped bass were an infinite resource. Less attention was paid to things like biomass, YOY, and birth and fecundity rates.

Some groups noticed their yearly striped bass catches declining. There grew a grassroots conservation movement along the East Coast. One of the most famous conservationists, Bob Pond, has been mentioned here in several threads.

The opinions of these guys were not popular, to say the least. Eventually a drop in catches and bigger bass was so noticable that fishing clubs began to get involved in signing petitions and raising awareness. This was not enough to stem the decline in the striped bass biomass, and eventually in the early 1980's a Coast-wide moratorium was declared closing striped bass fishing down.


Because of this, clubs like Stevens Surfsters, and many others like them, tried to get legislators involved in protecting bass so the moratium would hopefully never happen again. Finchaser worked with his club, along with the JCAA, and several old-timers who are members here and on other sites, to push for the protection of striped bass in federal waters (3 mi limit) and to get the out-of-state bunker boats restricted to where they could net bunker in NJ and NY waters.

Bunker boats
http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...highlight=jcaa

Moratorium
http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...***-Moratorium

Striped bass a Gamefish in Federal waters
http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...of-1984-HB2655


This grassroots coalition managed to get some significant pieces of conservation-minded legislation passed in the 1980's. This, along with the moratorium and stricter regs, resulted in an unprecedented comeback of the striped bass, said to be one of the greatest comebacks of all times.


Anyone who has participated in the Spring run of cow striped bass which come into the NJ surf zone from May - June, owes some of their success to guys like Finchaser and all the unsung or uncredited club members who toiled quietly and patiently in the background. Their patience and persistence, sometimes required for years of meetings, grew the biomass to the highest level it achieved sometime in the early 1990's. We owe a debt of gratitude to all these fine folks who took the time to think of our fishing future. They didn't get discouraged, and kept pushing and pushing until they got results.




During the middle part of the 2000 decade, some of these old timers again started to notice a decline in the breadth of different year bass classes. It was enough to cause concern. Finchaser and scores of other fishermen began writing about it...
http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...e-Striped-Bass