They’re done.
Too easy to annihilate.
Find something else.
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Gamefish status. Plain and simple.
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What's sad about this is that a lot of people on this board are starting
to get old. We remember the moratorium years when there wasn't any thing to fish for (I mean, we didn't even bother to try for stripers back then; we caught 'em occasionally while fishing for bluefish.) But if things go the way they did the last time, a substantial number of folks here (including me) may never see decent striper fishing again in our lifetimes. A truly unique fishing resource squandered again, and we will all regret it for whatever fishing years we have left.

&&the saga continues to the next generation :hang:

Well there is at least one 20-30 lber left in the Westport River, as at high noon right in the middle of the channel coming back in from a morning on my friends boat, this striper was attempting to finish off a 1-2 lb tog. Crazy watching this tog swimming in circles on top with this striper attempting to get a good bite on it. Flat calm made it easy to sit and watch the show until boat traffic pushed them down where I suspect that tog was lunch. Odd to see a large feeding mid day right in the middle of a heavily used channel, but I guess when you really want a tog snack, you make exceptions.

Had the grandkids out a couple dats ago,,,, one of the scup throw backs floundered around the boat for a while,,,, just long enough to get slammed by a big one,,,, never gets old

look at the history of striped bass, this is nothing new,there have been ups and downs since the colonial days.the good news is that with a lack of large fish the egomaniac hunters of large will become a thing of the past,and those of us who love to fish for the sake of fishing can do it in peace

Stripers pulled from the 2020 MV Derby. Last time was 1985-1992.

In 1993, then-Derby President Ed Jerome wrote, “The Derby Committee is proud to have played an influential role in the recovery of the striped bass. When we excluded the striper from our tournament in 1985, it may have been only symbolic, but it sent a message to sportfishing contests and enthusiasts that without a good management plan, this treasured resource would be no more. It was not easy for us at the time, but today’s recovery of the striped bass has made it all worthwhile.”

Yeah, checked their web site. They showed the decline numerically.
In 2002 (my personal peak striper year) they weighed in 800 fish. Last
year it was only 146, more than a 4/5 reduction. This about mirrors
what most people are seeing. Shows clearly that the time for serious
action is well past.

When low to mid 30# fish started winning the shore division, the writing should have been on the wall. This is locking the barn door after the horses got out.

Don’t count me out yet, you old bastard!

It’s kinda crazy, but I remember them being everywhere, then nowhere, then kinda everywhere, and boom! They were everywhere, again.

I ate a lot of bass. Never sold one, but Christ, I ate a lot of those big girls.

I haven’t kept a single bass this year.
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Judging by the first 5 or so years they added bass back into the Derby, the 90s must have been a pretty awesome time to surf fish over there.

not enough
 

At eighty two I've seen some great bass fishen.
Ive seen every one add there two cents to try and fix bass fishen
No one seems to mention seals. There are 30,000 seals eating every day.30,000 seals catching and eating more than one fish since they love the livers.
The embayment's have been wiped out of every type of feed that seals feed on.
Just think,If we thin out the seals then everything can live.
This is not conservation with all these seals.

They sure did a number on Monomoy. Remember catching keepers in that beautiful rip on the beach beside the Chatham lighthouse in 2002.
A few years later, forget it.
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Exactly. Think about all of the species you would get throwing out sand eels in the middle of the day off of Race Point. I remember when the skates and dog fish moved in you couldn’t even dunk bait. We would get flat fish too. All sorts of sculpin. Stripers and or blues every morning at the hump without a doubt. Other then bass coming in at night, you don’t see any of this anymore. Either those fish adapted to stay off shore, and or the seals wiped out the class of fish that had it in their gene pool to feed in close to shore. Probably a combination of both IMHO.
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I catch sculpin like crazy, dude.

Most people are scared trying to unhook them.

Pansy Bastards!
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[QUOTE=RickBomba;1198340]I catch sculpin like crazy, dude.

Most people are scared trying to unhook them.

Pansy Bastards!
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I’m talking outer Cape and from the shore. Everybody knows boat sculpin don’t count bro
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[QUOTE=Rappin Mikey;1198344]Boat sculpin only don’t count if you’re too much of a Sally to unhook them.

Lotsa Sally’s out there...or Karens that helped them get out on the water, too.

Wish we had a mom that would have made it OK in our lives not to work and dream for boating.

Rich
White
Boys
I
Mean
Their
Girls
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I’m just being too much of a #^&#^&#^&#^&head, right now.

We could be looking for beachside bungalows, if we knew how to kiss Karen the right way...
But then again, people like you and I gotsta work for a living.

Muah!
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[QUOTE=RickBomba;1198345]Go to bed

Can’t wait till tax cuts get revoked.

Our kids need more subsidies.

I mean, #^&#^&#^&#^&, if you fought for your tax cuts, then I’d say to deserve it.

I deserve a 32 foot Cc.
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First year was for plaques only, no cash prizes, and they weren't eligible for the Grand. It was 50s across the board 1st to 4th.

Even after they became eligible for the Grand, there were no daily or weekly prizes. I caught a lot of high 30s/low 40s that I released because there was no point to weighing them in.

There was a time in the 1990s when there was an entire population of resident fish from South Jersey to Maine, and even into the Maritimes. Hudson fish and Chesapeake below the Cape. They're gone, too. Those were the mainstays in Rhody. Human greed killed more bass than seals ever could. But they contributed as well.

30,000 seals?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/af...ls/ar-BB17Id5Q

"Skomal said the estimated 250,000 seals now swimming in the Northeastern U.S. are a 25-fold increase from a low in the 1980s, when seal populations were estimated at just 10,000 animals."