Some old club photos from NPSFA just e-mailed to me...

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/npsfa/andywithbass1.jpg]

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/npsfa/needanbros.jpg]

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/npsfa/Martya.jpg]

Bigger versions of those here http://www.striped-bass.com/npsfa/npsfagallery.shtml

Where can I get one of those special markers for writing on fish like in the 2nd picture??????
I figure before I release a bass I'll sign my name.
MZ

LMAO... Actually, it's just a simple permanent marker but the photos are a little elusive. Those are put there not to show the weight but those are really for showing the quarter mile dragstrip times those fish swam on a closed course. If the fish were flipped over, you'd see the speed they went through the trap at :P . Using soap like they do at the dragstrips just didn't work out too well for some reason.

Actually, I was on the phone about an hour ago with Nelson Valles, the club's historian. He was telling me much about these pictures as well as about some others he'll get to me in the future. Those fish were all shore fish and I'm guessing 60s, 70s, and 80s were the decades they were caught. It was a very interesting conversation and one thing he mentioned was a reunion that NPSFA recently put together. The y got members from 30-40 years ago to come in with pictures and stories and they filmed it. It will be aired in the near future on local Rhody channel 13. I'm looking forward to seeing that and will announce when that will happen. The video tapes will be sold and proceeds will go to the clubs take-a -kid-fishing when they get alot of inner city youths out on charters from Galilee for a days fishing... Very inspiring work.

Saltheart, he named three times as many places in Narragansett that you have :P , but I'm sworn to secrecy...

For those interested! While the faces are much older now they are easily known to anyone worth there salt in rhody!!

Picture One-Is Andy Lemar,One of the top dogs in the early eighties on the Island.

Picture Three (from left too right) Is Ken Booth-Marty Wencek And Gene Spring.

The second picture is a tad old for me to know.

The other guys all still fish today!! Andy,The man in the first pic,Is 74 years young!!

The fish in the third picture came form Block island in the early eighties. Thats the only place those guys fished. Marty is more into fresh water fishing now and Gene Spring still fishes his old reliable near bonnet shores nightly in the summer.

I was at the reunion john and it was alot of fun.Im not sure you would have liked all the talk about selling bass however,Thats all those guys did in those days,every fish you see in those pics went to market

Look at those pictures and tell me, Do rhody salties Know how to catch the large ? or what!!

I wish more than anything I could turn back time and only live to fish from 1982 till 1986!! I guess those days will never come back which, is one reason why the interest isnt there for alot of those guys anymore and why the new attitudes towards fishing is slowly but surely turning me off to the sport I have done since I was 16 years old.

If those guys showed that many fish off in this day and age , they would be shot!! And thats unfortunate. Many of those fisherman simply quit When there freedom was taken away by the burecrats in politics , who dont know the difference form a striper and a squid!! When they couldent sell there catch anymore,they hung it up.The goverment has a nasty way of deciding just about everything and in the process nit picking every last freedom we have.Now a fisherman sells his catch and he gets looks that could kill.(Not from me)

All the "newbies" want to save the bass! Its a bandwagon effect,They dont know what there saving and why?? They just know some politician decided the stocks of fish were low because He couldent catch a "Keeper" on his weekend retreat in his million dollar home on the vineyard.BTW,This is the same guy who blocks access to the water and eats fish in a restaurant every chance he gets!!

Sorry,I see those pictures and it conjers up old feelings and a deep respect that I have for those "old timers" Real fisherman.So, sorry for the piss and moan session.Im just old school and alwayes will be !!

I look at that and only Drooooolllll !!!!!!!!

Great info. 74 years young Bill and a class guy to boot. Better not let hime find out that you're listing his bio on the web :P

Thanks for info on the shots...

Bill, you and I have had THAT conversation a million and 1 times sofor the sake of being repetitive...

I know john! I just couldent resist!! The pictures did it!! Those are some nice bass!

john,great pictures, That video your talking about----He was one ofthe guys that we went to thefishing show in warren his name is Dapper and he told us about the night. #^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^& I know where your coming from , I was part of it. If you really knew hoe to fish you proabably sold,. back then there were 3 sizes that went to the Fulton market, 1-6# small 6-15 MEdium, any over were large. I remember one dealer who would only take my large if I had schoolies, alot of times we made more money than the guys with the pickup truck full of cows. this was the late 60s an 70s cows were 10-15 cents if you could find a place to sell them. maybe it wasn't right ,but that all be knew. plus you had the gill netters , the Maryland tiny fish catches the beach netters that polled the nets in my trusk/jeep . there are some of the old still around they just smile when the guys today brag how they smoked them . back then fishinf help raise my family and I have no regrets// Some of the guys still fish , some for fun and others still sell, John Martini , uncle to Gary C 57 stripers over 50#, Ray J use to come to the old RI Fish with his fish in a u-haul. Joe Bettencourt/-- 65 pounder at Beavertail on a worm in a 14 ft skiff.Yeah there was more fish around then but dont be fooled by today . they [we] could fish , paid our dues and were rewarding for it . Some of the charter captains of today , that are making a nicen living from things that they learned as or by meat fisherman// Guys ,, today is another time, PLEASE don't judge from years before that was our way of life, and this is now. I still have memories, and no regrets, some some great friendships and some not so great, but live and learn For the few of us that still fish let us try to enjoy oursleves . we remember the old days but also live in the present. you may never know that tip or a trick or spot that was shown may have come from a old time meat fisherman . Thank for letting me share my feelings/////

No problem. Contrary to #^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&'s statement that I might get the willies hearing about the earlier days. I wish I was there to see it and be a part of it.

I also think that if people back then had the ability to see how things turned out, maybe the change would have happened sooner. I would love to see so many fish around that I could see the surf rolling with 50 and 60 pound bass and that a "trophy" wasn't any fish under 70. If there was a massive overabundance of fish, I'd consider selling some too. But unfortuantely, things are not like that and are not likely to become like that. Just my opinion. My feelings are not against commercial fishing. Just overly stupid practices and excess. Rhody commercial bass anglers only get 3/day in a very short season. That's not excessive. To have some Mass guys to be allowed 40 fish, that's excessive. To have guys in Maryland fill tubs and tubs of 18 inch fish, that too is excessive. There needs to be a balance and that is not what's happening here. And the battle all too often seems to be just rec -v- comm with little word about the fish itself.

That's my beef with the system....

The past is past, it's been written and it cannot be changed. The important thing is to make sure that it is doesn't happen again where a fishery gets nearly wiped out or worse, that it happens with everybody beating their chest and taking more than their fair share... Anyway, the pictures were put up for a glimpse at a good point in the past to something or sometime that will hopefully happen again. It is also a glimpse at a club that more than it's share of sharpies working the beaches and boulders of Rhody. Not to force any issues...

I don't think any negative judgement should be made of the fisherman back then. As far as anyone knew, fish stocks were inexhaustible and there was no science to dispute that.

I've been reading some really cool books about the history of commercial fishing, including a book called "Cod" that I highly recommend. I have alot of respect for the people who have made a living in that industry. What a tough, tough existence. Imagine if anytime that computer on your desk could blow up and kill you... or your keyboards just took a finger or two here and again. These folks had and still have steel... guts...or something that rhymes with that. I also have a great respect for the complexity of debate: to fish or not fish!

The thing is that now the science does exist. The facts are that the ocean is not the unlimited bounty that our fathers/grandfathers/and so on believed. Cod, swordfish, tuna, stripers... snook in the south... all these species and more have taken a turn being decimated by overfishing. This is not opinion, this is fact. The fish aren't there... those trawler nets find everything down there and the ain't finding much fish and what they find is smaller and smaller.

And size regulations? What a joke... is throwing back a dead juvenile cod or swordfish helping the population? The large scale ships and methods such as longlining will inherently destroy stocks... and just about everything else out there.

Man has fished with hook and line for thousands of years. It took technology in the 20th century to do the heavy damage. But being left with this damage, we have to be careful of the fragile stocks we have remaining.

Commercial fisherman don't hold rights to these resources, yet they deserve to make a living... that's what they've known and done for hundreds of years. Hence the complexity of the issue. But hey, if left unregulated, these folks will have to find new ways to make a living sooner or later anyways, 'cause when those fish are all but gone, where will they turn?

And conservationists have to keep fighting, even when things are good or improving, because the other side is always fighting just as hard for de-regulation of the industry.

We shouldn't hold a grudge against anyone because things aren't like the good ol' days, but we should understand why and take a lesson from those reasons.

Another country heard from...

I got nothing against people who fish according to todays regulations. i got nothing against people who fished long ago according to whatever regs were in place in those days. People who take fish outside the law should be educated then turned in if they persist in breaking the law. Its pretty cut and dry to me.

Now , the subject of the regulations themselves is something I'm not happy with. As John has mentioned above , 40 fish per day per boat in Mass is not good for the fishery. The massisve loads of small fish allowed in Maryland and other southern states is not good for the fisheries. That means we need to get on the case of the regulators , not the guys fishing under those regulations.

IKts just that we are supposed to know these days. My son is two months old. I want hime to be able to see a big blitz of bass and be allowed to fish it too. I'm hoping to see a massive blitz of big fish too...

But it's also just not being selfish and I'm not singling out ANY group because I think there is more than enough of that going around...

Now back to the pics, 60+ pounder, dagnabbit, I WANT ONE (or four) :P

geez.......I am going to agree with E#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^& :o it is so true that in this day and age if those photos were shown someone would be shot!!!in the early eighties (and mind you I was still pretty young at the time) I can remember fishing with my father and we would fish until we were about to collapse! Any way one day I was showing an old photo "of the good ole days" to a friend of mine and he totally went off the deep end! I wont EVEN BEGIN to tell you some of the things he said to me ( I dont think I could anyway) At the time I really didnt think much of it (I dont think many people did) but see I grew up with my fathers thinking (he was raised on a farm) that you had to work for what you had. We always had a garden and livestock , so even though fishing was "fun" it was still like a source of food for us. Yes, we camped on the Cape...but we had a freezer we brought to the campground and every fish we caught and kept was not wasted....either it went home with us our one of my parents friends that also camped with us!!!!! It wasn't really something I thought much about till now! Now I realize that those days are gone, and I dont comdemn our behavior,but I do believe it does need attention in this day and age so we can continue to enjoy the sport............that my 2cents.

I don't want to seem negative who in the past or today work hard on the water to feed their families and to try to enjoy a comfortable life. I also don't hold that against people when they show me pictures like these up above. Jenn, that person that got all worked up when you showed him that old photo may have a little trouble seperating the past from the present. What would get me sick, is when you have someone abusing the current regs. Or when the regs are a out of whack, like 40 fish per day on bass....

JMHO...