I stand by my original statement that the pogie is the stripers #1 source of food.

This from a study done in Virginia by the National Coalition for Marine Conservation around the same time period as the Mass Gov. study.

"Why striped bass are starving"

1.Up to 90% of striped bass on the East Coast spawn in Chesapeake Bay.

2.The diet of large striped bass is 70-80% menhaden.Most of this consumption is of juveniles.

3.The Chesapeake produces nearly half of each new generation of menhaden.

4.70% of Atlantic menhaden are caught in Chesapeake Bay and adjacent waters.

5.The population of juvenile menhaden (age 0-1) is in decline reaching an historic low in 2001.

Conclusion:The resurgent population of rockfish is not finding enough to eat.
It could lead to a future collapse in the fishery.

ever hear of maryland crabs?? thats what they eat down there :humpty:

Pogies matter but it aint the only thing they eat, bass have survived much before us and will do so after we are gone...Pogies are important, I am not going to get into a pissing match here..Bass eat many different things and adapt well

Do you have the link to the study, basswipe? All I can find on the "www.savethefish.org" are those facts, but no mention of a study. I would be leery as to what information I believe, coming from a special interest group. Facts can always be used and omitted to support or refute a certain point. Not to say that I disagree with the fact that baitfish need some help. If you're looking for more information on striped bass or baitfish, I'd shoot for studies done by universities, and, yes, the government. Political action groups don't always provide the most accurate information, even if they ARE angler groups made up of people like us.

I don't know whether anyone up in this area knew what a pogie was before the early 70s. They just weren't around. Bass fishing in the 50s and 60s was pretty damn good despite there being no pogies up here. The irony was, as pogies began to become plentiful, the bass were going into decline.

Canalman, fact, yes Virginia they did weigh 25 ( 22 to 25 on average)pounds if you have no personal experience in the recent ( last 30 years) then you wouldn't know. No I am not a googan, googans only make statements like yours. Now that being said, the tremendous influx of baby pogies that happens to coincide with the study would only serve to show that that was what school fish are and were eating. Duh! am I the only one that remembers the giant schools of baby pogies we were infested with 3-4 years ago?MikeP.,I am sure you must remember in the sixties all the harbors of the cape had large pogies, the canal was inundated with whiting, especially in June, unfortunately we don't get those runs anymore. Every year the squid run on Billingsgate and Cape Cod bay was tremendous. ( I have seen a resurgence in Squid in Barnstable in May these last two years) Noting that in this study was started, as usual, by the feds, when the problem was already well under way. Of course they are eating lobsters and crabs, first off lobsters are everywhere in rocky terrain, hell they even inhabit channel walls in sand and mud having burrows such as line Nauset inlet and Barnstable harbor channels. But pogies are, if they are available in sizes other than peanut, thier preferred food.

Studys done on the low end of bait cycles will only show what is self evident. If there are only peanut bunker then that's all your going to find in thier stomachs. Remember these are done by grad students not someone who spends most of his life on the water. They have only the data they collect there and then and can only postulate a thoery from that. History rarely gets involved though it should. Kinda like the seal population problem we have now. They are protected but no one on the federal scientific side can say for sure 100% what the historical population was. :claps: I love it.

Amen,Amen,Amen

Flap, how many of us here even know what a whiting looks like? It's been a while. I remember jigging pogies in Wellfleet harbor in the late 60's early 70's from a canoe. Jumped out landed barefoot on the oyster shells and tooke the rest of the season to heal. If I can find it , I have a photo of rows and rows of pogeys washed up Bayside after an all-day blitz in Truro, looks like a silver highway from high water to low water marks..

back in the day the 36" fish i caught( and sold )averaged about 22-23 lbs. a fat one could go 25lbs. :humpty:

The Chesapeake crab population is down 80% this year.

i agree, bass eat what is in front of them, but I still stand by the fact that pogies are a superior food source.. Feed a bass pogies for a year, and feed another bass crabs for a year- which one would you think would weigh more, and be more healty???

thats all i got to say/ :lurk:

Eben read above!!

In the late 60s I remember drifting in Huntington Harbor over schools of bunker and spearing them with a frog gig, chunking them for blues. You could always find the schools.