Originally Posted by
Monty
Great read by Capt. John McMurray
Here is the text of the article.
Extremely frustrating
But the point is, striped bass, which are becoming more and more contracted/concentrated as they decline, and more and more susceptible, have literally no sanctuary anymore.
But I will note again that because of the bouts of good fishing I described above, it?s hard to convince managers that this is indeed a serious situation that requires management action now, rather than when they finally figure out that overfishing is occurring and/or that the stock is overfished. As I?ve mentioned before, managers don?t have the perspective we have, and most just don?t spend the time on the water we do.
So yes, I?ve had some of the best days of striped bass fishing in my life in the last three years. Days where I?ve seen more 40s and 50s in the space of a day or two than I?ve ever seen in my entire life. The above described fishing is a good example of that. But while such concentrations of fish are intense, they are restricted to very specific areas, and they are generally short lived. And that makes sense given all the good year-classes we had in the nineties and even early two-thousands and the poor to average ones we?ve had during the last 8 years (with the anomalous exception of 2011 of course). As we fish on these larger older fish, they get fewer and fewer, and show up in fewer places along the coast, but when they show up, boy do they show up. And herein lies the problem, and why we will likely see an accelerated slide.
Years ago, when such bait concentrations occurred and stripers got on them, it was generally an island-wide event. In the ?good-old-days? in Oct we?d have solid fishing from Montauk to Sandy Hook, NJ. In other words there was a wide distribution of fish, like there should be when you have a healthy population.
Now, because the stock has contracted (note, this is not anecdotal, a peer-reviewed stock assessment has confirmed a sharp decline since 2006), what we have are exactly these sorts of short but intense slugs of fish showing at very specific areas. And here?s what really sucks about that. Because of the internet, smart-phones etc., when such good fishing does occur, the word gets out so quick that every freak?n boat in the region is on them the very next day, if not that afternoon. And they are all ?limiting-out? (I hate that phrase!) every single day, especially the party boats, who often take in excess of 100 fares and run more than one trip a day. Because we?ve had 8 years of average to below average young-of-the-year indices, we really just don?t have much in the way of schoolies anymore. So when these bodies of fish do show, they are pretty much all keepers, and most people feel entitled to keep their two per person.
Unfortunately, those of us who thrive on releasing most of the stripers we catch are without-a-doubt a minority. For a long time the catch-and-release thing seemed like it was catching on/growing. But it stalled once stripers got a bit more difficult to find. I?d even argue that the catch and release crowd has shrunk during the last few years, for reasons of which I?m not quite sure. What?s really irritating is that there are plenty of boneheads out there who refer to such anglers as ?elitists? for not wanting to kill every darn keeper they catch. You tell me how having some foresight, or simply wanting these fish to be around so that our kids might be able to catch a few is ?elitist?!?
The striped bass situation will likely get considerably worse before it gets any better. History has been pretty clear that ASMFC doesn?t take significant action until the situation is quite dire, and there?s no reason to believe it will be any different here. What?s really unfortunate is that managers are probably looking at such fishing reports off of Fire Island and thinking ?there are plenty of fish around, the stock is fine?.
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