Started the salt in mid 50's upto late 60's. Even spent 5 days of our honeymoon fishing BI in Oct 61. Started a family and went over to trout until 1993 when i went back to stripers and never looked back.

In answer to your questions, used to kill every fish i caught/ young bragging rights etc.Over the last 20 years it's all been release. They say you get soft in your old age about killing, but i think it's a new found reference for life.

Imho, cycles have a big affect, but the fishing pressure of surf, high tech boats,party boats, especially over the last 8-10 years, has taken a very heavy toal.

My earliest memories of fishing are around 1959 fishing for flounder and fluke in the GSB of LI.i was 4 years old at the time.my father gave up the surf the year i was born and brought a boat. i started surf fishing about 10 years ago.i can always remeber the old timers saying that when there were blowfish around the weakfish would disappear,so i guess they must have thought that fishing was cyclic.we never sold fish but keep everthing we caught. we ate fish 2 to three times a week year round. i am the youngest of seven and had plenty of relatives that we keep in fish.evertime i hear people complain of overfishing i think of all the species of fish that have disappeared that were not fished for commercially or recreationally.i think water quality had as much to do with it as overfishing.i think today that C@R is much bigger on the internet than in real life. sure the guys that post on these forums might practice it but most people i see on the beach or in boats keep there limits Sandman funny thing that every area on the south shore of LI that was closed because of pollution to clamming were opened at some pointeven though i doubt the water quality improved. maybe because it was cheaper to wipe these areas out then police them.maybe keeping fish should be banned for recs if they are doing it for fun and have a commercial fishery , rod and reel only for all species.i bet that would never happen