I found another thread on here where guys who fished during the moratorium, talk about what it was like.
http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...e&daysprune=-1

I thought it might be interesting to research articles that were published during that time and talk about how the fishing was. Here is one I found from 1998.



As Fishing Season Starts, a Surge in Striped Bass

By CHARLIE LeDUFF

Published: May 9, 1998





The striped bass are running. That's the word at the bait shops around town. They are coming in from the ocean, and this year they are abundant. They are running into New York Harbor, some feeding in Jamaica Bay before swimming up the mouth of the Hudson and East Rivers to their home streams to spawn.
The striped bass is clean and wild, as any experienced angler knows, and now is the only time of year when there is a reasonable chance to catch one from shore.
But before you think about going after this year's surprising bounty of striped bass, be forewarned: You must get up two hours before dawn, boil your coffee and prepare your gear. You will need your rod, a reel with good strong line -- the mature bass can easily weigh 30 pounds -- assorted lures, a warm jacket, a sound thermos and perhaps cigarettes. Then you wait for your buddy to show up.
This is the way it has always been, the pinhookers say, and this is the way it must be done.
For the New Yorker who either prefers to fish in territorial waters or is prohibited by lack of income and good fortune from making the occasional journey to fresher waters, these are halcyon days not witnessed in decades.

Striped bass season officially opened yesterday, after moribund years in which few fish were caught and the species was thought to be on its way to extinction in local waters. Biologists and people who fish, however, are now reporting that the highly esteemed game fish, with the wits of a mongoose and the characteristic black stripes along its sides, was being caught in large numbers as early as last week.
The Roccus saxatilis population has rebuilt itself, said Byron Young, a marine resources specialist with the State Department of Environmental Conservation. He said the estimate for the total catch of striped bass last year was in excess of 1.3 million fish in New York State. Compare that with less than 200,000 a decade ago.

''The fish are back,'' Mr. Young happily announced. ''It's still being fully exploited, but because of good management techniques, the species is thriving.'' Mr. Young credits this year's bounty to strict size and catch limits on the fish that were begun in the mid-1980's. Today's New York angler may take only one striped bass a day, at a minimum of 28 inches in length.
The striped bass season lasts until mid-December but peaks this month as the fish head back to sea after depositing their eggs and milt. The recent winter was mild, which should have left plenty of food for the fish, according to anglers.
And the men and women who plumb the waters of Jamaica Bay point out that New York's water quality has drastically improved, making it much more hospitable to the fish.
It used to be said that the waters of Jamaica Bay were so foul that they could be bottled and sold as poison. But things have changed. Garbage dumps surrounding the perimeter of the bay have been capped, and raw sewage that used to be pumped directly into the water is now treated at new plants in Rockaway, Bergen Basin, Coney Island and Starrett City. ''The bay has gradually come back,'' said Don Riepe, chief of natural resources at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. ''We're not all the way there yet, but give it 20 years and we might have it solved.''

On the Big Egg Marsh of Jamaica Bay, known to those on land as Broad Channel, the effects of fishing's decline in the last few decades are all too evident: There used to be more than 30 full-service fishing stations a few decades ago, but almost all of them disappeared as the fish left the bay and and property values became too prohibitive to run a mom-and-pop fishing operation.

''Besides, today's fishermen don't like to get wet,'' said Jimmy D'Ambrosio, 55, who runs one of the last remaining fishing stations, on the bay off Cross Bay Boulevard with his wife, Dolores.
Their shop, called Smitty's, is open early, serving the last-minute fishermen who had elected to drink the evening before opening day instead of obtaining the necessary lures. Mr. D'Ambrosio, who was a construction foreman before buying the Prohibition-era shop, not only dispenses bait and lures but also rents boats at $70 a day. The advice, however, is free.
Mr. D'Ambrosio, a Brooklyn native who grew up in Queens, calls himself the king of the crabbers.
''Ten years ago, people said the bay was dead,'' he told some customers. ''It isn't dead. It's alive.''
But business is nevertheless suffering this spring, because the weather has been rough.
''I did better in high-rises,'' he said of his former job, as the rain fell in buckets yesterday morning.
Just past 8 A.M., after the high tide had come in, two of the most hardy fishermen pulled up in their skiff. The water was rough and running back to sea, and their boat drifted with it.
John Walsh, 35, snagged his line, and lost the lure. This was O.K., because the day was as much about camaraderie as success on the seas, with the discussion of family as important as the talk of fish. Spring, after all, has come to New York, and the horseshoe crabs are beginning to nest on the sandy shores.
Despite the cloudy skies, the nearby Cross Bay Bridge was already crowded with fishermen hungry for the striped bass. With the Manhattan skyline in the distance, the close-up view was a stark contrast: it resembled more the wait for cod from the industrial docks of Shanghai or tuna in San Felipe, Mexico, or whitefish in Cross Village, Mich.
By 9 A.M., the rains came, and Mr. Walsh and his friend, Timothy Brighton, headed back to dock, since playing hookey may be all right for schoolboys but not for working men. The fishing wasn't all that great anyway: they had got up late, thrown away a lure, drifted along for two hours and then got soaked to the bone. And the only bite they got all day was back in town at the cafe. But that's O.K., they said, because the fisherman knows there is always tomorrow.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...56C0A96E958260