I think the C+R mortality rate is way over stated by the Com side. We fish jigs , almost always get a mouth hook , release the fish immediately and seldom actually pick up big ones to dangle from their lips. Done right , catch and release can have a very low mortality rate. Lastly , if by chance a C+R guy does get a fish that's likely mortally wounded , that fish becomes one of the two or three they keep every year.

The huge majority of receational fisherman are lucky to catch a striper or two all year. I have been doing it for a very long time and I know many guys who catch nothing or maybe a fish or two in the fall. If you subtract the Recs who can not and do not catch fish , you probably are dealing with less than half of the estimated number of recreational striper fisherman.

Well, there's definitely a learning curve on stripers but that's pretty bad if you are only catching a fish or two. Even the googans throwing chunks and clams into the surf on 2 ounce bank sinkers, that eventually just wash up on the beach, tend to catch a few fish a day (albeit small fish).

I've done lots of striper fishing with leadhead bucktail jigs and various rubbers from shore. I really enjoy it in the spring; it's far from harmless though. My experience is 20% of the fish or so get hooked deep in the throat. How many of them die is anyone's guess.

Average tide early season like that is probably only a couple fish, but when it's on you can easily catch 20. Guys willing to wade into the water (not me, if I'm going in it's by boat) do alot better. Some seem to be there every tide, catching schoolie after schoolie on flys and various artificial's.

A different catch and release crowd shows up once the season gets going, a fleet flyroddin shallow water in the early AM - same deal, schoolie after schoolie.. They actually seem to be targeting the small fish - and that goes on for months.

All that C&R does produce mortality, and it's on a huge scale for a long season. I firmly believe that the numbers showing commercial striper fishing is a drop in the bucket are correct.

Jon

You're joking right?

If I'm a striper, I like my chances one helluva lot better getting caught by some dude with a fly rod than by any other method out there.

What do you mean by that? From what I'm reading, and what I'm seeing, things are fine. The only thing I've heard (and I've yet to see it really backed up) is there may be a decline, possibly just due to normal cycles, of schoolie sized fish. The current year classes coming down south are massive, in a few years we'll be inundated with small fish again.

For sure there are plenty of large fish around, they just may not be where you are expecting them. Take a cruise through Stellwagen up in a tower during the summer. Huge schools of large striped bass just outside of state waters, some years for whatever reason it happens. When tuna fishing at times they've been practically as bad as dogfish.

My night bite sucked last season; lots of small fish 25 - 30 inches, the bruisers just didn't want to gather for our boats, and we spent a lot time running away from little fish and searching, although some guys were doing well. During the day though the bite in rips of the Merrimack was outstanding with plenty of large fish available. So, they were around, just not where we always wanted them to be. Bite in the rips was probably was similar at night, but I try and avoid fishing rips at night. Commercial season was more of an open water bite up my end. Anyway, plenty of fish, just some of the patterns changed, and it makes people think there's a problem.

Jon

So you'd rather inhale a small "J" hook, possibly deep depending on nothing more than luck, and then are played out until exhaustion on light tackle?

I think I'd rather be one of those bass that hits a squid bar with a 14/0 Jobu, planed out on a 130, and released in 45 seconds ;)..

Back to the point, when you are talking commercial versus recreational the difference is small numbers of fish targeted and harvested over a short season versus large numbers of fish caught and injured over an entire season.

Commercial fishing is over and done with in 2-3 weeks; legal sized fish are targeted, harvested, the quota is filled, and it's over. It might appear wrong to see tote after tote of dead stripers heading to market, but that's just a knee-jerk reaction.

Even if you completely discount release mortality (which on the recreational side more fish actually die post-release than are harvested while on the commercial side it's only 10%), the harvest on the rec side is something like 7X the commercial fishery. If you count release mortality it's >15X the commercial fishery.

Why focus your attention on the something that accounts for < 10% of the total Striper mortality? I'm not saying it needs to be fixed, but the real issue in the northeast Striper fishery (if there was one) would be mortality generated by Catch and Release fishing. It accounts for more dead Stripers than the commercial and recreational harvest combined.

Jon

So your saying that your illegally fishing for stripers in the protected waters of the EEZ.Those fish have been there for yrs and it's one of the schools that we're trying to protect. So they don't get wiped out like the other schools have. When hard cores up n down the coast aren't seeing fish there's a problem. just cause your sittin on a protected school in waters that are closed to striper fishing doesn't mean the fishery is in good shape.Your sounding like one of those charter guys in jearsy an Virginia that head out to closed waters an hammer big wintering stripers then as soon as they see enforsement people coming cut the bellys open and throw the fish over board.An thats ok as long as they don't get caught ask them they'll tell you that. about like you fishing for stripers in the EEZ.

Oh an by the way you seem to overlook the real numbers when it comes to parety. commercial striper fishermen aren't even a fraction of a percent of those fishing for stripers. so the true damge by such a small group is actually pretty Da- large.

Learn to read man. If I'm out on the bank they are a nuisance fish (ie I equated them to dogfish). We don't target them, we actually end up running because they'll endlessly hammer all our live baits.

The fact that Stellwagen is protected has nothing to do with the reason there are numbers of fish there. These things have tails and they migrate, and sometimes it's not into your historical honey hole. for whatever reason (wish I knew) sometimes more seem to decide to spend the season offshore rather than head into the harbors, rivers, and bays..

Again, the commercial fishery is open to anyone who wants in. Some years it's more than others. If you want in, join the party, else don't hate just 'cause you can't catch a Striper > 34 inches.

Jon

Sounds like another boat fisherman that's never walked the surf. As far as size goes well I'll match my 50's to yours anyday LOL.An I'm not talkin inches either LOL. Most of them came from place no boat can go.

Inches and lbs practically the same thing with fish that size.. Lots of > 40 lb fish, never a 50.

Yep boat fisherman for sure, only learned how to catch the early season schoolies that way (I think it's easier from the beach than from a boat).

You can cover alot more ground in a boat though, like I said, the fish seem to be around just not always where we want them to be.

Jon

"Only guys that fish from shore should be able to fish." "Only fly fisherman should be able to keep stripers." "The big bag commercial guys are greedy and doing all the damage."

Sounds like Occupy S-B here...

You can tell it is off season. Think I'll go out and catch another one or two today...6 more days to our season and big fish are here.

Todays word of the day kids, is "Braggadocio".

Can anyone use it in a sentence ? I need to go stick a pencil in my eye. :rollem:

LOL

:deadhorse:

Enough. This is like arguing with a bunch of wasted sped students.

I fish jigs and plastic almost exclusively. If I deep hooked 20% of what I hooked, I'd have to re-think my approach. I'd say that 97% to 99% of the fish I land are jaw hooked. And when they inhale it, they're hooked in the roof of the mouth, in the hard cartilege, not in the gills. If you're deep hooking 20% of what you land on jigs, with all due respect, you're doing something wrong. Maybe you're fishing mono and don't feel them until they have it swallowed?

If by "rubber" you mean those small Storm or Tsunami swim shads, yeah, fish inhale them. If you care about what you release, don't use them or at least crush the barb. Or use the ones that are 6" to 9" and target bigger fish.

those of you who think that fly fishing for stripers is the way to go, "Are So Wrong."

Fly fishing puts more stress on a fish then any other way of recreational fishing. They stress that fish out by the time it is landed. Most take three times as long to bring a fish to shore.

riff_raff.... You make a lot of sense, so most will not agree with you.
Out beyond the three mile limit stripers are as much a nuisance as dogfish. Shore fishermen will always complain that they do not catch enough big fish. They never will.

I use an off set hook and my percentage of lip hooked fish is like yours.

I walked the rocky shore many times, maybe more then you. you can't beat the boat fishing. :)

Well I doubt it but thats ok.LOL I've done the boat thing too. Nicer out on the rocks in the middle of the night. No crowds some nice fish at times and its peacefull.But when you let that sweet fish swim away and she stays close by well it's something you never see on a boat.

Where is all this hostility coming from???

It's not even Jan and we are having Flame Wars. I LOVE IT.:rotflmao::rotflmao::rotflmao::rotflmao:

OK, I will grant you that there is one large body of bass, dead in the center of their mid-season migratory range. This is your proof that the coastwide fishery is in great shape. Even back in the 80s, there were 6 million bass, and they were very likely concentrated in CC Bay all summer long.

You never judge the health of any fish stocks by how plentiful they are in the midpoint of their migratory range in summer, or at the southern end of it in the pre-spawn winter. You judge it by how many resident fish there are, in mid-season, on the ends of their range. Maine to Cape May.

And those of us who have been around a long time--guys like me, stripermaniac, piemma, DZ and others---heard your fathers and uncles singing that "there are plenty of bass around, they're not in trouble" song back in the late 70s and through the moratorium years.

But I'm not going to debate the point with people who view a microcosm of the fishery and judge it healthy. Even if they don't have an agenda. I don't have one. I see "gamefish" as nothing more than a feel-good thing that will not significantly reduce mortality. Recs can be just as short-sighted as anyone.

Well, you said it well Mike. One of the keys to reducing C&R mortality is crushing the barbs. Even if the fish is hooked in the roof of it's mouth you can reach in and take out a Storm or Tsunami very quickly.

It always amazes me to see guys fishing with 3 treble hooks on a pencil popper and not crushing the barbs. Even if you are an absolute expert at C&R, 3 trebles do a ton of damage. 1 treble in the middle and a Siwash on the tail with all the barbs crushed and at least the fish has a chance of surviving.

all my bards on lures are crinched. Why do people have to use a gaff on stripers or bluefish? It is beyond me.

I think that a fish could even survive being hooked in the gills if there's just one small barbless hook involved. The real damage to the gills gets done when the barb tears them when you remove the hook. The small puncture that a barbless hook makes might not prove fatal.

One of my friends from NJ has this to say about 3 hooked lures--the belly hook is for bass, the tail hook is for blues, and the middle one is for fingers.

I've never gaffed a bass. Some people are afraid to put their hands anywhere near a blue's mouth. I used to be one of them, but you learn over time.

About the only place I see gaffs used anymore in on the Breachways an boats. In Maine you can't even have them on the boat striperfishing as they're illegal. most breachway gaffs are a long pole with a 10/0 or bigger on it with no barb for lip gaffing the fish so you don't get washed off the rocks into the opening.I haven't used a gaff for over 30 yrs even in the
breachways. Ron

Only time I ever use a gaff is tuna. Bass or blue you really got to be sh#%ting me.
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I love lip gaffs. I hate nets. Haven't gotten into the boga thing.
If you ever find a Pompanette "Spin Gaff" buy it. I'll trade you something good for it.

I just started a new group called Stripers For-No-One

It's like a AA 12 step program because in a few years we are all going to need it, there will be no fish left to catch

So we can go to meetings sit around and tell fish stories