I have been giving this thought for some time. I am guilty as anyone else for keeping a majority of the bass I caught. Typically I would bring the bigger fish home to show my friends and kids, then grill it and have a little dinner. Honestly the best part for me was showing the fish off to my friends and family. IMHO little stripers 35 inches and under taste the same as the cows. So your wondering where am I going with this. I propose that as a group we take action to protect this fish that brings us so much fun. Instead of taking the big fish home, use circle hooks, wiegh it , measure it, take a picture, tag the fish and let the big girl go.
RISSA sells taging kits for $6.00 at the monthly meetings. I still will keep the occasional fish, nothing over 32 inches though. If you agree state you intentions on this post. Let's not go back to the dark times of past decades. :)

That's all I usually ever do......catch and release.....it is probably a reflection on my lack of culinary skills, but to me Stripers taste like an old sneaker anyway......;)

I hate being the first one to disagree with anything buttttt....... my veiws on this matter are different.

If you take a ride during the commerial season down to the fish houses you'll see 100's of pounds of 20's, 30's and 40# fish, proably many of the same bass that we often throw back. I know two wrongs don't make a right but what I choose to keep or release is up to me as long as I obide by our laws. I never counted how many bass I release vs. the # kept but I can honestly say I throw back far more then I keep.

I too am guilty of being young and dumm keepin more then I should but now times has changed, we are allowed to keep two fish for a reseaon. If you happened to sit through Charlie Soars Semiar this week end, thats one of the things he touched on. I too was brought up eating fish and my family also has. As long as I'm not wasting there is no guilty feelings here. Also, there are those who want to come across as " I am holyer then thou" or is it they just to burnt out or lazy that after fishing they don't want to bother cleaning fish.

Goose,

No problem with your decsion. This is a personal decsion on my part that I wanted to share with the group. I am sure that the commeracial guys will fish as hard as they can until the cause yet another stock collapse and the feds will be urging them right along. Sucks big time.

Trust me....if I liked the taste of Stripers I probably would also practice much more catch and eat then I do.....I do not object to recreational folks keeping their catches.......

i eat fish and if you look in the stores at prices im not going to buy it when i have all this money invested in gear to go get mine i like the idea of conservation ill keep my legal limit and then catch and release and if i ever catch my 50 its going on wall!!

blech! striper sucks especially when its cooked within hours of catching.....

I would MUCH rather have some of that dried up cod from the grocery store that was probably caught at least a week ago (along with tons of other fish that was killed and thrown back for the sharks.....:( :( )

Originally posted by Jenn
blech! striper sucks especially when its cooked within hours of catching.....

nothin taste worst then fresh fish,:hs:... to eash his own I guess

I don,t eat it so I don,t keep it //

but I have no problem for those that use what they take//

might have to keep a few myself this year, mainly fluke & scup///////////////////////

:cool: :cool: :cool:

nothin taste worst then fresh fish,... to eash his own I guess
you ever had a mahi mahi filet about 30 min after it was caught?
if you havent you don't know what its like to eat fresh fish. look at the fish. very good eating:happy: :happy: :happy: :happy:
go to the last post (http://www.striped-bass.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6019&highlight=cozumel)

mike, that last reply of yours must be incorrect. you can't be eating fish.... meat and potato..man. i hope u feel better, than u were down south.

I am compelled to take a quote from from page 163 of "The Striped Bass," by Nick Karas. Lyons & Burford Publishers (New York).



Thomas Morton, writing in 1632, tells us:

The Basse is an excellent Fish, both fresh & salt, one hundred wereof, salted at market, having yielded 5 p. They are so large the head of one will give a good eater a dinner, and for daintiness of diet they excell the Marybones of beefe. There are such multitudes that I have seene stopped into the river close adjoining to my howse, with a sand at one tide, so many as will load a shipe of one hundred tonnes.


If I'm not mistaken, this is an early Plymouth, MA colonist, likely of Puritan stock.

Lemme tell you ... the Puritans weren't exactly Iron Chefs. ;) I think stripers prepared that way would make me :yak: .

Having said that, FRESHLY CULLED stripers aren't bad at all when prepared raw (as sashimi).

I have yet to find a baked/broiled striper recipe that I really like. Lola's Restaurant in Oak Bluffs (MV) has a nice teriyaki recipe.

Nothing beats fried striper in my book. Even so, I release most of the stripers I catch now.

-WW

mahi mahi -- eat it
Cod -- eat it
Yellow fin / Blue fin -- eat it
Flounder -- eat it
Bluefish -- I need to be hungry to eat it
Striper -- I need to be famish to eat it......\

:D

I think releasing big fish is good. They got the good genes and are probably loaded with PCBs anyway. I like keeping the 30-40" fish for the table. We'll see what happens if I ever get a 40. Same with Blues, I like letting the Slammers go. Now Fluke is a different story - they all hit the pan.

I tryed s#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&g on a boiled head.......not bad! :) One of the best tasting peices of meat is right behind the fishes head.

It all depends on the day of the week for me. I'm off Sundays and Mondays.
If I catch a keper on a Sunday, it's coming home for dinner. I only do this on days that I know that the fish will go straight to the grill.
When I fish with Rappin Mike, he usually takes his keeper as well as mine and plans to arrange for a grill festival at my house:smash: .
In the overall scheme of things, though, they almost all go back.
They sure taste good coming in, :D Rick

If I catch a keeper, it's dinner, if I catch two keepers in one day, the second one goes back to the sea.

Goose - "One of the best tasting peices of meat is right behind the fishes head"
I think they're called the medallions, the big circles of meat behind the eyes. I agree, delicious.

A couple of hours marinating striper filets in italian dressing, then grilling it up, it does not get much better for me.

REALLY Fresh Striper is excellent and my wife loves preparing it various ways and we enjoy eating it too. I do occasionally keep a fish between 20-28 pounds which I think is still a good quality fish to eat and allows me twice as much meat as one of the smaller 30-34 inch fish and it lasts longer in my freezer between fish.... So I keep one mid sized fish - 20-30 pounds - and release a LOT of rat keepers (that would be released anyway).... I think the "smaller is better tasting" is a bit overrated unless you are talking 20-26 inch slot sized fish that many states don't have anyway....

Duke - I like your thinking but I'd rather keep one 25 #er than 3 or 4 12's for the same amount of filets...

I like to eat Striper, unfortunately my chef doesn't, luckily I have several friends who like it and will share a fish back with me when it is cooked....

Is there a link to a "recipes" page, because I release most of my Stripers mainly due to my inability to properly prepare them for the table.

I would still practice catch and release for the vast majority, but mainly becuase of the work for me associated with cleaning, filetting, etc.

Here ya go: http://www.striped-bass.com/recipes.shtml

Oh, Striper is EXCELLENT in that Portugese Rice & Oil & Potato dish that is normally done with Cod - Freaking excellent :kewl:

John where is that Portuguese recipe???:confused:

So,

Let me get this right... I start a thread about conservation and we end up trading recipes. WTF!!:wall:

Maybe we were all thinking about HUMAN conservation......:smash: All in all, I do practice catch and relaease for the majority (90%) of the fish I am lucky to snag.....

I only keep them for tournaments

S77 - I wish I knew - its awesome - usually done with cod...

IFG - most tournaments I release a fish unless I think it will win... I've been out with a few people in tourneys and released fish that would be in the prizes but won't keep unless I have a good chance to win... One reason we have a C & R tourney...

Most of mine swim away but the ones that don't go on the grill. I usually get a couple meals for 2 out of a keeper on the smaller side (~10-12#) so that's what I keep.

I didn't see this one on the recipes link. It's worth a try.

- Marinade in olive oil and lemon juice for 15 min
- Place 2 strips of bacon on foil
- Striper filet on top
- Sprinkle w Paul Prudhomme's Seafood Magic
- Cover with sliced red onion
- Add teaspoon of lemon juice
- Wrap up the foil and cook on upper rack of grill over low flame for ~20 min.

Tuna, Cod, Tog, Flounder, Wahoo, Ling, Whiting, Sea Bass, mako, Swordfish, and tilefish go on the table, Bass, blues, and weakies usually go back or goto a freind that asked for some fresh filet.

It dosn't happen often
Can I have some more info on the C and R Tourny

One exception I make is when I get a fish that looks good for a daily prize in the Derby, I keep it. And a big reason for that is their fillet program, where you can donate a fish and they flash-freeze the fillets and distribute them over the winter to Island hospices, the hospital, the elderly etc.

IFG - details will be out in a month or so but the short version is that we have 4 meets where we mutilate perfectly good food and follow that with Catch & Release jaunts along the shorline. Site members only, people fish together in smaller groups, catch a fish and quickly release after another member measures (why you need to fish with someone from the site)... We have 2 legs one each in Mass & Rhody in early summer and one each - Mass & Rhody - in late summer / fall...

:D

Keep me informed and how's that article coming