Not exactly a news story - A real recollection by someone who fished back then. His name is Frank Theo. He made these comments on youtube. I agree.

" I disagree with the bass biomass of yesterdays versus today's stats. I use to go out and fish on my friends brothers boat. He used to commercial fish for bass during the 1970's and he'd take us out on his Mako 22.

He was averaging 500 to 1000 LBS of bass a day at 75 cents to a $1.50 a pound. He was making $500 to $1000 a day catching Striped Bass boxing and selling the fish to restaurants and the Fulton Fish Market. The legal size was 17 inches per fish and no limit on how many you can keep.

During the 1970's through the early 1980's when I was I kid I'd fish tins off the beaches here in NYC and catch tons of snappers mixed with schoolies. Back during the 1970's through the 1980's, only charter boats fished for Stripers. The majority of party boats fished for bluefish out of Sheepshead Bay. Nobody targeted bass the way they do today.

The thing that helped the bass population for a short while was in 1981 the DEC stopped bass fishing by restricting anglers one fish per man @ 36 inches. The fish were taken off the market for human consumption because bass are a polluted fish and have a high level of PCB's. The fish are contaminated from all the nickel cadmium buried and dumped under ground by the GE plant in the Hudson river where the bass breed."