My sentiments exactly, I notice over the years I'm catching more keepers and less shorts. Most of the shorts this year are maybe 3 years old. I’m not seeing many 4 to 8 years old fish. And hardly any fishes older then 10 years old (my luck is not that good for this size fish, it could be me.). If the 2011 YOY is true, it could be fun fishing in 4 or 5 years from now, keeper size in 8 years. bigger fish will be rare . We need to start protecting these fish to have a better then average YOY. And the way I'm seeing fish being kept or killed (N.C.) we could be headed for disaster.

The only reason the 2011 YOY was good is that all conditions were meet to have this striped bass spawn succeed as it did. Why were 2004 to 2010 not as good?