Do you REALLY think the same type will leave with 1 at 24"?

FL is a different game. they actually have enforcement.

Actually I said 2 in the slot. and one of those can be over 36 or 38" :)



It's true they have a lot more enforcement but I've seen DEM step it up when they had to. It's all about multiple calls. That's why it's so important that people call. I'm not talking about being a nuisance and calling every 5 minutes, but call..wait an hour and if know one shows have your buddy call. The kind of people that poach at places like those are idiots, they keep coming back to the same spot day after day. When DEM knows about something fishy going on they will do a little long distance recon and move in when the violators keep a blatantly short bass. I've watched this go down twice in the last two years at with different people in different places.

Bingo-bango!!

....the fish are being caught by RECREATIONAL fishermen...they DO NOT have commercial licenses; hence, charter boat catches are tallied as recreational...what so hard about that logic??

Chartering is a for-profit *commercial endeavor*. I think that is the point some people are trying to get across. Sure, a charter is a glorified boat ride, but money is involved and they are given special exception in some areas of the regulations that aren't given to your typical recreational fisherman.

Your average recreational fisherman that owns a boat isn't taking a group of buddies out every morning, limiting out on fish, returning to the dock to pick up a different set of buddies and limiting out again... and then repeating that 3-6 days/week.

Yes, the regulations currently have grouped charters with recreational fisherman, but any reasonable person that states a charter boat is no different than your run-of-the-mill recreational fisherman is completely out of their mind. They are given special exception with the regs, make money because of the fish and, as such, should be in a regulatory category of their own.

If ASMFC allows another collapse of the fish stocks, no one is going to be paying for "6-hour boat trips around Cape Cod Bay" and charters will be out of business. Their business depends on killing fish for their customers and they should be regulated as such.

That is what some ASMFC delegates have advocated in the past. But it is a sticky situation to address because it is recreational fishermen who catch/kill the fish...also, because of the economcs of the charter industry, I believe that there has been lobbying against that option.
Then the whole other problem is if they are designated their own category, where does it come from?? The commercial representation will fight against a portion of their quota being lowered by the charter industry, because it has been a traditional recreation-based fishery. Should a portion of the "recreational quota" (which isn't hard capped) be set up for the charter industry, by reducing the estimated catch numbers by lowering rec bag limits?..Then what happens when the charter industry reaches their quota (maybe in the winter, by NC/VI/MD boats)..what do the captains do-stop fishing and move to other species (like R&R comms do)..I am sure that will go over big with the Pt. Jude/Montauk/Chatham fleet....as has been stated many times, everybody is out to protect their own interests, because of the increased socio-economic pressure on the fishery.

The plan in place (Ammendment 6)...may not be perfect, but it is the best we got....

Because no matter what people may think the striped bass is a recovered species....
as indicated below (taken from the ASMFC website)-

"The most recent stock assessment for striped bass was completed in 2009. The update assessment indicated that striped bass are not overfished and overfishing is not occurring. Since 1982, the striped bass population has increased from less than 9 million fish to over 70 million fish in 2004. While abundance has declined some since then, spawning stock biomass (the metric for determining if the stock is overfished) remains well above the threshold and target levels. "

I never said anything about creating a Charter quota.

With regards to that joke of a report from ASMFC, did you go to meeting in Dedham? The meeting where the girl presenting the information admitted that their stock assessment doesn't include mortality from myco or poaching because they "can't put an exact number on it" and are still "trying to figure out an effective way to model it."

The ASMFC stock assessments are a shame. On top of that, current assessments combined with their projected stock assessments show a declining trend in Striped Bass Abundance - and that's without including mortality from myco and poaching. How much worse are the updated assessments going to be and how much steeper of a declining trend will show when these numbers are included?

As one of my PoliSci professors said to our class back in college, "There is no point in referencing the results from a poll to support your argument, if the data from that poll is flawed."

ASMFC creates these nice elaborate charts, powerpoint presentations and holds these hearings demonstrating the health of the stocks based on data that they know is inaccurate. The girl at the meeting tried to avoid blatantly stating this a number of times.

What is not considered is that chaos is job security for a government agency. For example... we could all sit back with a few glasses of scotch and hash out the solution to fix all of the fishery problems in a night- force the implications over a few month and the problem is solved. What a goverment worker never wants to admit is that if they complete their job quickly and solve the problem, they are in effect out of a job. Its not like the hunt for the cure for cancer, where the person is rewarded heavily for his or her findings.... the day that NOAA and ASFMC actually solve all these issues will be the day that 50% of the staff wont have any more work to do. Its all a game and an illusion... or at least thats the way I see it.

Wake up people
 

In a nut shell the main focus of all concerned is this.

The YOY of the current 110 million pounds of female striped bass is the same as when the total abundance of female striped bass was 40 million pounds.

Of course the bass are above the threshold BUT something is up.

It would behoove all of us to pay attention to this, It now takes 3 times the amount of spawning bass to yield the same YOY as it normally took.

Female biomass has dropped 20% since 2004.

75% of all bass spawn in the Chesapeake.
70% of that is infected with Mycobacteriosis, (a bacterium of a group that includes the causative agents of leprosy and tuberculosis ) not sure of fatality numbers.

All this I got from ASMFC paperwork that they gave out at their public meeting.

We would be myopic to think the abundance of NOW is sustainable as the years go on.

If we can stop acting like our congress we just might be able to get something accomplished.

Sure its a commercial endeavor, but it is not commercial fishing, no more than your bait shop or fuel dock is commercial fishing.Their business depends on fish, but they are not selling fish.

I was at a local restaurant a week ago sitting at the bar havinig some beers BS'ing with the bartender. Somehow it came up that I was heading out that night to go fishing with a buddy. He then gave me his card and said if you get any fish give me a call and we'll give you gift certificates or money for fish. Then he said hold on let me check with the chef and see if we need any tongiht. Came back and said they had enough for tongiht but if I caught anything this week to bring it in. Restaurants are an issue. And youd be suprised how many rec fisherman are supplying them.

And the bait shops that have tackle and bait that focuses on striped bass will go out of business just as quickly as charters will when the bass disappear again.

The recs generally kill as much as they can,just to kill.
I have a neighbor who has a summer house in Plymouth.He and his family were walking the canal in the spring during a blitz of epic proportions.He was offered fish by people he didn't even know just so they could kill more.Wonderful right?

The comms kill a lot and are sneaky too.
I was in the Fischers Island area fishing last fall when I saw a boat overloaded with people. My host informed me he sees this gentleman frequently out in the area with a similar crew. He will literally take anybody near the dock fishing in order to get max fish per person on his boat. He went on to say he goes out a few times per day. Yeah it adds up.

There is no hope for the fishery.End of story.

If that guy is selling the fish he isn't commercial he's a recreational poacher!

Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that there is no "real" science behind any of the numbers attributed to recreation fishermen. The numbers reported and used by the ASMFC are pure speculation and not grounded in reality.

When was the last time anyone here was surveyed by any of the reporting agencies with regard to their recreational fishing habits, annual take, and # of fish caught and released recreationally? When was the last time anyone here responded to such a survey honestly?

Who's to say that the recs who do happen to get surveyed are indicative of the recreational fisherman in general? Those folks you see bailing fish at the canal, piss me off, and are in no way representative of me or any of the guys I've ever fished with.

To generalize recreational fishermen in this way is obsurd, and anyone who makes such a statement is not in touch with reality. Some people acting stupidly during a blitz is not representative of the majority of recreational fishermen coast wide. Period. Some of us, more of us than anyone knows, actually respect the fishery and have it's best interest at heart.

I fish on average 2-3 nights a week. I have followed the migration, spring & fall from New York to Maine several years in a row. I know how to catch fish from the surf and am not inexperienced at doing so. I took 3 fish home last season. I have not killed one yet this season,,, but I probably will keep one for the table before the season is over. I have released multiple fish over 50lbs, and countless 40s. I represent a coastwide group of likeminded surfcasters who are true sportsmen, and am not afraid to stand up for what I believe and know to be true (those of you who were at the ASMFC meetings in both MA and RI can attest to this). I'm am not speaking out of school here.

Spawning recruitment the last couple years, according to ASMFC data, has been as low as it was back in the mid to late 80's, in spite of a much higher female spawning stock biomass. The ASMFC cannot say why. It is obvious to any objective observer that it is indicative of serious issues in the spawning grounds. The total coastal abundance has been dropping since 2004, and will only continue to decline if something is not done to 1. improve/protect the spawning grounds, 2. reduce the harvest of BOTH the recreational and commercial sectors, 3. protect the forage fish upon which striped bass feed and not allow them to continue to be plundered, 4. find a way to stop the spread of mycobacteriosis.

Too many people do not understand the severity of the threat mycobacteriosis poses to the striped bass fishery. Some studies have indicated that it is 100% fatal within 5 years of contraction. If this statistic is even close to being correct, we will be losing MORE THAN 50% of ALL striped bass, coastwide, within the next 5 years. Even if it is only fatal in 75% of cases, this WILL crash the spawning stock biomass below the ASMFC's threshold, even if all striped bass harvest was halted TODAY. If you think I'm crying wolf here, prove me wrong.

We need to be working together for the good of our beloved striped bass. We need to stop the bickering and in-fighting and look at this objectively. Put aside your selfishness and your own agendas, take a good hard look at the facts.

The subject of mycobacteriosis always seems to come up in any discussion of the state of the striped bass fishery. I do not dispute the claims of scientists and others when this discussion comes up. My thoughts are the following.

I have been fishing for striped bass for a long time (commercially AND for the fun of it also...in the spring-plugs, plastics, flies). I would say on the average, I catch upwards of 500-1000 bass a year, i.e., sell what I can legally, let the rest go. I may have seen 2 or 3 cases of fungus affected fish in all the years I have been fishing. All others are healthy, clean, great coloring, etc. The past couple of years most of the fish are fat (not racers like a few years ago)....all these fish have been caught in MA, RI. Most of the fishermen I know are as productive as I am (if not more)...and in all cases, they agree with my observations.

What I would like to know, is if anybody else is seeing mycobacteriosis in the fish they are catching....I am not being cynical, I would like to know what others are seeing....

Not everyone with a cold presents with the sniffles and a cough.

From what I understand, the red sores on fish are a sign of an advanced infection.

Now, to be fair, I still think ASMFC is incompetent and their reports are pathetically inaccurate. With that in mind, I guarantee their estimates for a 70% infection rate are off. Let's say they are off by a factor of 2, I'd still say a 35% or so infection rate is pretty significant.

Either way, 70% or 35%, there will be a significant impact on mortality furthering an already downward trend in abundance. The only difference is that one will probably thrust the bass to critical levels while the other may almost completely wipe out the species.

I'll show my ignorance here.....always learning. To the question: While I spend far less time on the water than you do, consequently not catching as many as you do, I do usually catch. For the past 6 years that I've been fishing hard, I have not seen the signs of the disease. The bass that have the high percentage of infection are Chesapeake bass, yes? Are the chesapeake bass the fish we see here all season, part of the season, never? Art

Art, out of all the bass put on my boat in a season I may only see 2 or 3 that have sores mentioned... Hate to say it but they are all caught in the NJ / NY Bight area... I fish the Chesapeke and have not caught any that show symptoms down there in the last few years...

Key words in there: "that show symptoms". You can't always look at a person and know if they are sick or not, you can't just look at a bass to know if it has myco or not.

From a Virginia Institute of Marine Science FAQ about Mycobateriosis (my emphasis added):
We have all probably held tons of fish infected with myco and had no clue because only advanced infections have outward signs.

The VIMS FAQ also states a 76% infection rate of Chesapeake Bay bass as of 2001.

According to tagging done by ASMFC, a majority of the bass we see are from the Chesapeake Bay.

If anyone is interested, http://www.maine.gov/dmr/recreationa...ts/mycoFAQ.pdf

...Okay, thats what I needed to know-if the ALL stages of the disease is visible to the naked eye; hopefully, more research will give a better picture of the effect of it on the striped bass fishery.

thanks, i did not know that

What we really need is a better public advisories regarding the PCB concentration in large striped bass. This should include warnings on restaurant menus and at counters in fish stores. These large fish contain chemicals that damage brains and cause cancer. The levels vary from fish to fish and can be shockingly high (so using an average doesn't protect you). The bigger the fish, the worse it is (how many kids are getting a dose from all those 60lb fish? Would you feed one to your family?). Shouldn't consumers be aware of this? Why is MA the only state without an advisory? Most other states have one......but the public is probably unaware. So why no warnings on restaurant menus and at the counters of fish stores? Who is benefiting from that policy? Who is being harmed? Fish Consumption Advisory for Striped Bass, Bluefish In Atlantic Coastal Waters - Southern Maryland Headline News


Make that info more public and I think the over-killing issue would shrink quickly.

This pretty much sums it up for how I feel although I would say many or possbily more than half of recs kill as much as they can,just to kill. Scary but true.