I don't care what the MA fishery and other managers and so called experts say. This the status of the fishing in the NE and in particular this graph is not looking good for the future. If 09 is below average again, I think something serious (in terms of real actions) should be done.

http://www.dnr.state.md.us/dnrnews/pressrelease2008/101608a.html

I agree

Worst juvi index year since 1990. Combine that with the massive breeder kills the last couple years... We have a few more decent years until an 80's repeat. :hs:

As someone that grew up thru the years of no striped bass and commercial fishes, from the backside for years, then years from a boat, and then the past 2 from shore again, I try to pay more attention to all these studies that are done as I really do care about the future of the fish stocks. I will say that from my experience, there are more than plenty of striped bass still around, but in my opinion, the in shore stocks have taken an absolute beating due to the 3 mile limit. It seems that the fish that are "programmed" to be in certain areas just weren't there this year. Again and again the stories of guys trolling squid bars off shore for tuna and slammin big bass are becomin more frequent. This past year has been very strange. The fish that usually set up off Nomans\ Squibby\ Gay head\ Backside just weren't there. Why??? Who knows the true science or explanation of this. Bait changes, water quality\ temps. SEALS???? Who really knows, but somethin changed them this year and I for one who makes a substanial amount of $ from sellin bass, make them a game fish. There are other fish in the sea that are taken worse beatins from draggers than bass. The comm fishin industry in mass is so f'd up that money and politics will never change it. As far as the spawnin issue, the bass I weighed in last weekend (42.5 inches; 39,75#) when they opened it up it was jam packed with butterfish and two big egg sacks. Another million fish that were never laid. Female that never laid, why ??????? That is all I have to say about that.

In my opinion, the dogfish are part of the problem !

the writings on the wall....gamefish status now.

Id like to see Small MPA's off our coast.

throw bottles and tomatoes at me if you wish, but there is no better way to balance out the marine food pyramid than NOT managing one species over another.. it just doesnt work.

the big fish offshore have been common for years. those same clouds of baifish that attract the tuna attract the bass as well.

You can definitely see the cycle up and down for sure looking at that graph. If it holds the same way next year will be lower....yes it is depressing.

My son Thomas is looking for an Eagle scout project. Something diff than making bat houses or collecting cans or whatever. I suggested he start a letter writing campaign to State Reps and Senators to address the bycatch issue and other things hurting the stocks. Don't know what he'll decide on but he wants to do something fish related.

while i agree that we should be scaled down to

1 @ 36", have a tagging/stamp system for any fish over 50#'s, and MoSaxxy should be a gamefish~~~ the aforementioned article was not ALARMING to me at all.

isn't the Chesapeake the smallest of the three breeding estuaries?
what are the 2008 YOY numbers for OBX and The Hudson?

also, the article doesn't say:
there's too many meat tournies going on, the boat guys are killing
the species, and the STOCK ###'s are dangerously LOW.

on the contrary, the fine scientists of MD stated that the ASBass stocks are healthy, that this was an off year due to weather/environment related effects, that dips in reproduction levels are part of the norm/mean, and that their same survey discovered "bumper crop" YOY numbers in '03 and '01!!!

noteworthy, to be sure! yet, the comm's will always win,,,,,,,,,,
WE have no lobbyists; therefore, NO VOICE and even less leverage. the chances of us seeing gamefish status for our beloved prey~ in this LIFEtime ~are on par witha snowball's chance in Ecuador!!!

among the guys I fish with down here, we have been saying something wrong for a couple of years;
we're seeing less and less schoolies in spots that should have large resident populations; at times there was a ton of bait, but no bass on them...

1 Fish 36"
Chesapeake is the largest BD, I think you have it backwards in order.
Crack down on poaching/black market sale, and reduce recreational mortality, we still have a much bigger impact than commercial harvest.

whether it is a crash waiting to happen, or a change in the population distribution, something isn't right....

thanks Bryan,
i stand corrected,,,,,,,,,,,,

but am still not convinced that a crash is emminent.

more like a population fluctuation; perhaps, next year the YOY
index will increase marginally, or spike upwards, or continue its downward spiral.
it all seems to be part of the species cycle~~ which is always subject to how we, nature, and weather muckx IT up!!

only time will tell, and it seems that this was an odd year for
S-B changing thier spots a bit. remember how gray/rainy this summer was,
lots of barometric pressh, and foggy, and funky cloud and tidal patterns early on and well into Sept,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

i must say though~~

this was my biggest year of three. not too many years, i know, but
i caught bigger fish, lost more monstahs than last year, and the residents and travelers were right on time this year in the 3-5 places i've been able to document over such a short period. the honey hole was on schedule down to the tide and time from the previous 2 years.

that's from 14" to 43",
from The Hahbah to Cape Ann,
from Stripers to Boos to adult pogies to p-nutz to macks to herrings

a more subtle difference from the previous two years is less of a BITE.
this year there were NO 0:45 to 1:30 long fish till yer arms ache ~bites when and where they were "supposed to be". i prolly just missed them, since work cut down my fishing windows by at least 1/3.

i am sure that many catz got into sum of those sick blasts!!!
you know, a fish with every cast,,,,,,,,,,,or 4 with every six casts.
HUNGRY and hounding the beefiest eeeeeeels of the bunch!!!
:jump: :jump: :jump: :jump:

I think the bass are definitely on the decline. I have never been one to protest the comm guys but it looks to me that something needs to be done to get to gamefish status. The two most important states to address this are MA and MD, these two states account for most of the comm catch not to mention that MD is where most of the breeding takes place. I spent a week fishing on the Chesepeake with a couple "watermen" down there a few years ago. I was there in early May and it was horrifying to see the ways they killed fish. Hook and line, pound nets, seines: it was unbelieveable how many big breeding fish they could take and how easy it was for them to do it. If I could change one thing to help stripers it would be to make the MD comm guys only use hook and line if I couldn't make them a gamefish. Not to mention the 18" limit down there that makes so many fish keepers. Even though the big fish are better breeders keeping one 36" fish is still better than 8 18" fish on one boat. Also the pollution in the Chesapeake needs to be addressed but I think the comm fishing there is a bigger issue. It really looks like we haven't learned from our mistakes in the 80's and if we don't do something soon we are doomed to repeat it. Let's make the limit bigger and work towards gamefish status. Not trying to rant here just offering my opinion.:cheers2:

Before we throw stones at commercials and push gamefish status, maybe we should check out our own glass house.

I saw too many guys keep two big fish this year for 3-4 days running, at the Canal alone. Just because they never had a run of fish like that, and because the law said they could. No one can use the meat from all those fish.

Same thing happens in NJ every spring when they have the pogies penned to the beach. Guys parade big breeders to every tackle shop under the sun, to have their pictures put up on the "Wall of Fame". Then they take the fish home, and it's "wtf am I gonna do with all this meat???" Should have thought it out beforehand. :doh:

well put, Mike,,,,,,,,,,

and i agree, but if we change it to 1 @ 36",
stamps/tags for over 40's/50's, combined with
gamefish status for 3-5 yrs,,,,,,,,,,,,,then run the
same YOY survey in the same estuary and see wtf??

agreed about killing the breeders for the sake of "FAME".

their choice, but i wholeheartedly question the wisdom~~

or the lack thereof.
:uhuh: :uhuh: :uhuh:

Before we throw stones at commercials and push gamefish status, maybe we should check out our own glass house.

I saw too many guys keep two big fish this year for 3-4 days running, at the Canal alone. Just because they never had a run of fish like that, and because the law said they could. No one can use the meat from all those fish.

Same thing happens in NJ every spring when they have the pogies penned to the beach. Guys parade big breeders to every tackle shop under the sun, to have their pictures put up on the "Wall of Fame". Then they take the fish home, and it's "wtf am I gonna do with all this meat???" Should have thought it out beforehand. :doh:

Your forgetting the part about the back door at the chinese resteraunt..:ss:

It's true rec guys kill a lot of fish too. I think the answer lies in moderating both comm and rec guys. In the short term gamfish status combined with a higher limit on recs will help. This will be especially true if something can be done about the chesapeake bay fish. So many small fish are kept there it's ridiculous. Recs can keep 18" fish so basically every trip results in fish killed who could eventually grow to be breeders. Essentially I just think fewer fish need to be kept. It doesn't matter if these are rec fish, comm fish, 18" fish or 60" fish. If any measure is put into place that results in fewer fish killed we will be in good shape. I like the idea of gamefish status especially because bass don't have as many people who rely on fishing for them for their entire livlihood as say swordfish or cod so it would be easier to employ the sanction. Putting a much stricter rec limit would be just as effective but harder to enforce and in the end maybe more detrimental given how much money rec fishing generates.

Before we throw stones at commercials and push gamefish status, maybe we should check out our own glass house.

Absolutely agree. Everytime this comes up; post the rec landins, post the comm landings, and the impacts are clear, PLUS 8% and higher mortality from every jamoke in the spring and fall throwing treble hooked plugs to 15" fish. "Yeah! I caught and released 50 fish today"! 'Well, 5 of them probably died"


One thought, I grew up during the moratorium;
When someone who fished hard before during and after (like my former and sometimes current surf parter) think something else is up....

How many people who were fishing hard in the 70's think that now has a similar feel to then???

Did anyone actually read the article?

It looks perfectly normal, and it was noted that strong year classes of fish are typically interspersed with low year classes. They're(YOY) not through the roof every year, nor were they ever in the past. 2002 and 2006 were well below average too, but adjacent years were well above.

Size limits are another story all together.

How many people who were fishing hard in the 70's think that now has a similar feel to then???

It has a similar feel to it, but if the Index is accurate, 2003 and 2005 were banner spawns. A spawn like 2003's would have been one of the best of all time, instead of just a "top 10" spawn. Considering that the mean for an "average" spawn was 8.0 back in the 70s, even last year's would have been considered to be an extremely good spawn.

From 1975 until 1989 you had a series of horrible spawns, with one near-average one in 1982. That's one big reason why the fishery crashed. But the Cape sharpies still got their bass, even during the dark days--they were around but you had to work a lot harder to get them, and wade through acres of blues. The moratorium regs were designed to protect that 1982 year class, if you recall (the limit grew with the fish, from 16" fork, then 24" fork, the 33" total length, then 36" total length). If the scientists are correct--always a big if--that one class generated an off-the-charts spawn in 1989, and it grew geometrically from there. So unless whole year classes of the late 90s and 2003, 2005 and 2007 have been decimated (they would have had to have been slaughtered by the Maryland baymen with their 18" limit and poachers, or have died in a massive kill, since they're not legal length for anyone else), we're not on the brink yet IMO.

Just looks like a normal variation to me. Some banner years and some low years appears to be normal.

As I understand it , the chemistry of the water during some critical two week period when the eggs first come out is very critical to the success of a given YOY. If some quirk or pollution makes the PH or othe chemistry detail high during a critical time during the spawning , the numbers crash but if the timing is such that the water is good during the spawn , the numbers boom . It all evens out over a long period. What you need to be careful of is year after year low numbers. A decade of all low numbers and the fishery is crashing.

What you need to be careful of is year after year low numbers. A decade of all low numbers and the fishery is crashing.

Well said.

How many people who were fishing hard in the 70's think that now has a similar feel to then???

The folks I know who fished in the 70's tell me it was all super large fish with zero small fish.
Right now we have, IMO, very good size distribution of fish from schoolies to giants. There seems to be an abundance of 20-30# fish, but many above and below that size too.

No I disagree, a decade of low numbers and your dead, you not crashing...you are dead. You have to be proactive and look at the rates of decline. The so called "average" is not the "goal" The average includes years and years of bad spawns and distorted lows. Just reaching the average is not good enough, particularly when the so called stock is "healthy". Yes we have had a couple good spikes but they are not consistent, this is what is disturbing.

All this compounded by:

Comm discard going unreported and ignored.

comm black market. (which is also unreported but quite large actually)

Comm R&R exploiting their:
a) limits (by selling under their wife's, kids and even dogs licences when the fishing is good)
b) size limit...selling many sub 34" fish are taken and not sold to dealers but passed on to unlicensed entities (restaurants and other unlic'ed buyers)

Extreme bunker usage: These bunker guys (both buyers and sellers) are raping the resource that wasn't even here a few years ago. What bothers me is how hard it is being hit day after day and there is no reporting. Tackle shops (many unlic'ed) and fishermen are buying up bait from unlic'ed guys with nets and time on their hands and reselling for a quick buck and no one is saying boo. I estimate over 4000 bunker per day (conservative) were being used buy our small comm SB fleet daily and we don't even have bunker around this island.

MA DMF regs on comm fishing for RI and out of area guys is insane. I don't get it, how come they get to pound the living hell out of my back yard yet we can't fish theirs? Kick them out.

EEZ has been exploited foe decades and this year there was a lot of moaning from charter guys who "have been doing this for 20 years" and now got stopped and hassled every time out. It is about time they obey the law. Take away their charter ticket if the law is broken ONCE!

As far as the Rec take...show me the REAL numbers. There are a lot of OLD assumptions (developed by those with commercial interests) that come up how many fish recs take. Personally I see today's fishery by recs as largely catch and release and to be honest...most guys don't catch that many and don't go fishing very often. After going to a fluke meeting and listening to their logic on that species ("well...recs can tak 6 fish a day X 4 man per boat X 7 days a week for 168 fish per week!"...I swear this is what was said) What planet are these people on. What % of the recs fishes like that ? Sure some guys take a few fish home if they get lucky but it is not a day after day event with the same guys.
I would like to see it move to 1 fish in conjunction with stopping all R&R comm fishing for SB. The SB market could easily be made up just with the discarded by-catch. This would lower the number of ya-hoos and me-toos out there, take a huge burden off of the enforcement and improve the bait situation as well. Why are fishermen allowed to discard anything edible only to die? You know you see crowds of people protesting the few sharks that were brought in to a shark tourney (which, personally, I think is one the most conservative shark events going) but you don't hear squat about all the live edible fish shoveled over the side only to go belly up

It is not hard to see the writing on the wall. I was there in the late 60's 70s and 80's and I would like to see the fishery actually improve and stop exploitation for personal gain regardless of the "historical fishery" aspects. IMO you can not ignore the damage the comm guys are doing. The comm guys are complaining all the time that they are over restrict and can't fish enough days and the fishing sucks compared to the "good old days" when there were swordfish and tuna right offshore, codfish were plentiful, and bassfishing was strong...well it is the way it is today because they pounded the hell out of it during the "good old days". Most of these fishermen are short sighted uneducated morons who frankly are in it for a quick buck and they don't care about tomorrow. Get as much as you can as fast as you can and get the hell out of my way. This is their credo.

This is just a summary of a few the problems in my view. I can tell you it is time to take action. You know they will not know there is a problem until it is too late. The YOY index is a rear-view window to the fishery and you need to be VERY CONSERVATIVE with this resource....OT and somewhat unrelated but look how well did the "experts" did predicting these bank failures. They didn't downgrade a thing until the bottom fell completely out...thanks for the headsup.

ahh, I feel better now.

What jumps out at me from looking at the graph is that the peak years post 1996 are in steady decline. Although not indicative of a certain 'crash', it certainly is not a good sign of things to come should this trend continue.

Best to be proactive - 1 fish for all recs would be a good starting point.

Edit: Not getting into all the commercial factors, just read Sandman's post.

Great post Sandman.:claps:

Well said Mr Sandman. :cheers:

Historically speaking, there have been three major crashes of striped-bass stocks in the last hundred years.

The first occurred just around the turn of the century in the late 1890's and precipitated the closing of the famous striped-bass bass clubs like the West Island Club, Cuttyhunk and Graves Point Club among others. Many of you are familiar with the historic photo of the Graves Point Fishing Club that depicts a shore-based catch of ten bass with an average weight of 49.5 lbs. in a single tide in 1881. The astounding abundance would predictably come to a halt in later years - I have read through club records from that period and the inevitable decline from boom to bust is bemoaned in the logs by the keepers of the clubs in view of their amazing catch records of years past using tackle that we would now call primitive.

Those clubs that subsequently closed due to the lack of striped bass were either sold or fell into disrepair as the wealthy sportsmen of the day found other pursuits. Interestingly enough, it was shortly after this crash that Charles Church landed his world record bass, made all the more amazing at the time given the scarcity of bass of any size. I have an old photo of my great-grandfather, who was a photographer at that point in time in Newport, holding up an emaciated striped bass aboard his boat Abeoma during that period and the look of disdain and disappointment on his face is unmistakable. It speaks volumes to me.

The stocks appeared to have rebounded after the First War. If you look at my avatar, it’s from a postcard produced from a photo taken at T. Suffern Taylor's bass stand at Brenton Point (and hence the name "Taylor's Point" for that particular area) and the date was 1921. That resurgence in striped bass stocks appears to have lasted through the early '30's and then crashed again, only to come back post-WWII, when the troops came back home and turned to salt-water fishing as a past-time.

The third precipitous crash was, as we all know and some experienced, was in the '80's, when bass were scarce and monster bluefish were in abundance.

I remember fishing with my late father-in-law aboard Jay O'Brien's White Water and we boated 800 pounds of middle and upper teens blues in an hour and a half, most of which went to market. We ran through a full tote of pogies in no time flat and then started using the few butterfish in the bottom of the tote and finally ran out of boat room for any more blues. My FIL took high hook with a 19 1/2 lb. gorilla that day which was a thrill for an old die-hard muskie man like him from the mid-west. His photo from that day still hangs in my tackle room.

That same year Capt. Jay caught a 52 lb. bass, again, all the more impressive given the scarcity of bass of that size and it hangs mounted today - or so I'm told - in KJ's Pub, the former Starboard Tack, that Jay owned. The photo I took of Jay hoisting his trophy bass that day at dockside was the image used for the bronze plaque on the centerpiece at the Mariner's Memorial on the Ocean Drive - and from that high point you can see Graves Point, Taylor's Point, Price's Neck and the Pt Judith and Beavertail Lights – all those legendary spots where bassmen long ago plied their trade and caught fish that are still admired today. Those men are gone now and their catches fade into time. The only thing we have left now are ghosts of men and stripers past.

As some of you know, I’ve been working on an illustrated lecture off and on for the last several years on the historic striped bass clubs of Rhode Island and the surrounding islands. I can say that I truly fell down a rabbit hole on this one and the subject was both broader and deeper than I could have ever possibly imagined.

Every story must have a point – I know, and you’d probably like to know what mine is here if you’ve labored through this – and the point is that ultimately, the rise and fall of the great striped bass clubs is a cautionary tale. All the research I’ve done so far brings us back to what many of us feel is going on now conservation and it’s immediate importance. I’ve felt something wrong myself, as you all have, and it concerns me. I really believe history is repeating itself.

There’s no one thing to point a finger at and you have all touched on the important ones.

Overfishing – on the rec side, I’m afraid, is one. We’ve met the enemy and it is us.

Inaccurate stock assessment is another. Hopefully the soon to be enacted saltwater license will help to gather better catch records from the recreational side and adjust the regs accordingly.

Uncontrolled harvest of forage species is another. Google Omega Protein and see what you come up with regarding the reduction fishery for menhaden. It’s pretty shocking.

And last, but hardly least, is water quality and the degradation of important estuarine systems that will make it impossible for another rebound in time for some of us to enjoy the next rebound and perhaps prevent our children – and grandchildren – from ever enjoying what we thought was a limitless resource.

There are too many people here voicing the same opinion on the state of striped bass stocks.

So what exactly is it that we have to do? What would you all recommend beyond what we’ve already said? We have a pretty strong community here at S-B, what can we do to help?

If anyone has any ideas on a concrete course of action, feel free to make a suggestion.

That, as Forrest Gump said, is all I have to say about that.

Very well said Mr. Sandman. And you can take your OTW meat fish bass tournament and your MV Derby out also. How about another "Mystery Prize" awarded on some regular schedule in your Derby (is it daily??)-- go kill another fish and register it, in the hope that the fishing and the fisherman that night didn't do much. Wow, your name might be drqwn out of a hat and you can win a plug.

Well SAID, Crafty!!
:claps: :claps: :claps:

and i've been preaching PROACTION for over a year, now.

a very simple indicator regarding menhaden is the noticeable
increase in available inshore forage for SB over the past two years
simply, perhaps, because Jerzee did what they did,,,,,,,,,,,,ask the Rhody anglers
how nice it is to be slamming COWS from the rocks??

i would wager that Mass has gotten better too, and that is without putting an end to the atrocities that Omega Protein and their greedy-arsed reduction boats wreak on the Prime Forage Species for stripers, yearly, on the Outer Banks. push them outside the 3 mile corridor for 5 years and then take some new stock assesments of BOTH, bunker and stripers. in my view, THEY can go pound rice patties and generate their industry from soy,,,,,,,,,,,,,,LEAVE THE MENHADEN ALONE!!!

on a side note ~~kudos to the ASFMC for setting a limit last year for The Gansett Bay. it was a nice move and it "seemed" to have made a difference last year for us shore-bound rec's.

this is just one step of what i feel should be a three pronged attack that would proactively impact our beloved estuaries, majestic species, and the food chain that has been indiscriminately decimated for the past 60 years, +/-, and is in need of sum serious conservative measures.

the last two steps have been spoken about ad infinitum and would involve a change in the fishery mngmnt, imho, to include 1 @ 36" and a slot and stamp/tag system for any fish over 40". perhaps 1/week, 4/year, 2/month let the marine biologists come up with something that is moderately conservative for 5 years regarding the Cows,,,,,,,,,,and at the end of that time frame we could go either up or down based on what the numbers tell us. though i do believe that even "the best" science is an educated GUESS "at best", and can be manipulated to serve its "master".

finally, with gamefish status and a moratorium to the comm's industry for the same five years how harmful can it be to the oceans, estuaries, forage, and stripeys to remove that sort of pressure to the species, environment, and food cycle if these guys were to have to find another line of work? haven't they dictated the damage for lo these many years with only slight decreases in the tonnage they are allowed to haul? while there are multiple variables to consider and livelihoods and pastimes that weigh in the balance, just ONCE i'd like to see the "powers that be" stand up for OUR precious and LIMITED resources over the bulging pockets of their own wallets and the expanding bottomlines of their constituency.

couldn't WE for once be the generation that ACTS first and SAVES our resources; instead of taking the position of closing the barn doors after the entire contents have been been burnt to the ground and the only the cindered silhouettes remain?

the answers are most assuredly numerous and varied,
based upon WHO you ask,,,,,,,,,,,but how hard is it REALLY

to do what's RIGHT for the majority ~to include nature and fish within said majority~ and federally subsidize (we did it for The Heartland in the 80's, the monies could come from our looming licensing fees) the comm's losses for the five year period that may ultimately BENEFIT this generation AND the generations to come ~~for MANY lifetimes???

just sum thoughts, gents,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
aren't ya sorry you asked now, Crafty??
:uhuh: :uhuh: :uhuh:

we have a lot of opinions here and that's great but what I think is important is that there is an underlying feeling that some measure needs to be taken. The push for change will definitely come from large groups like us. We just need to figure out who the hell to talk to.