The much-anticipated stock assessment.....
 

....appears to be in.

ASMFC says, everything's hunky-dory.

No further mortality restrictions coming before a "more comprehensive" stock assessment sometime in 2013.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pb...NEWS/111150311

:wall:

The 2011 Atlantic striped stock assessment update indicates that the resource remains in good condition with the female spawning stock biomass (SSB) estimate at 109% of the SSB target and 137% of the SSB threshold. The estimated fishing mortality rate (F) in 2010 was 0.23, below both the target (0.30) and threshold (0.34).

Full story here: Striped Bass Stock Assessment Update | BoatingLocal.com

The pressure is off the ASMFC after this recent YOY bonanza.

Although the current female spawning stock is dropping fast, in several years a new influx will be coming and they can probably squeak by without hitting their mandatory cutback level.

Trouble is that the quality of the fishery is going to drop seriously, at least for larger (say 20lb) fish for about a decade.
For those that target larger fish, the fish we that we have now, are what we are going to be fishing on for the next 8-10 years. Still, since the current fish have now produced a saving year class, they are expendable as far as the ASMFC is concerned.

Sadly, current regulations have taken a tremendous toll on the good year classes of the early 2000's. Continuing those same regulations on the meager classes that are out there now seems destined to deplete them and leave us with a fishery composed primarily of small fish from this year's class (with a limited remnant of true trophy fish from the last good year class) during the later half of this decade.

Bottom line is that the quality of the recreational fishery is not a management goal of the ASMFC. This decision is an expected result once this year's YOY came back so promising.

Deja vu. Once the 1982 and the remnants of other year classes produced the bumper crop 1989 YOY class, the moratorium ended, and shortly thereafter the 36" limit went bye-bye. The 82 class became expendable.

But, when you consider that ASMFC has this mandate to manage the fishery for "maximum sustainable yield", what option do they have? That mandate has to change, and it won't. That's the reality of it. There are bigger economic interests at stake than guys like us who many of the managers see as leisure-time dabblers and hobbyists.

Exactly. But at least we can enjoy seal watching so what do we have to complain about?

Sad. Just sad.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

No words can describe how angry I am about the current state of all fishery management, esp in MA.
:wall: :cens: :af: :splat:

Well said

Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Here is how the state reps voted on doing nothing. As expected Augustine was the number one person pushing to stop any changes. All of the New England states except for Mass voted to move forward with at least some form of action. The report noted that Maine and NH have seen a sharp decline in the numbers and I would say the same is true for much of the North shore. I put in about 75 nights in NH and compared to 2005 my numbers were down by about 70%.

Motion to Substitute:
Substitute motion to postpone further action on this addendum until completion of the next
benchmark stock assessment.
Motion made by Mr. Augustine and seconded by Mr. Johnson. Motion carries (Roll call Vote: In favor –
MA, NY, NJ, MD, PRFC, VA, NC, USFWS, NMFS; Opposed – ME, NH, RI, CT, PA, DE).

It is such a shame. Obviously I am happy about the YOY class for the future, but unless something is done we will keep going through these drastic peaks and valleys. And, we are definitely heading toward (or are already in) a valley. All could be avoided if both rec. and comm. fisherman were made to take a little less. I do not even think that it would have to be drastic.

Those of us who fish cape cod bay by boat will continue to tell you that there's more large striped bass than we've ever seen.

millions of fish.

The fish are there, the bait is not. We have the bait.

Wasn't there a time when the large fish weren't concentrated into only a few small areas?

Now that the assessment is completed there going to be a s-b striper cup next year?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

7 days/nights fishing Block Island + 2 days/nights fishing Montauk = 0 bass ..not a bump ,, not a drop .. nothing to see here folks ,.. everything is fine .. ( not counting bluefish , thank God for bluefish )...

Glad to hear everything is fine. :lama:

What a joke...

:bs::mad:

I always stay away from these threads, dont have the knowledge and insight many here do. Here is my question -
Do you disagree with the stock assesment or the lack of action to address the decline? Seems like 2 different issues.

Back in 1984, if I was in charge of things, and I judged the health of the fishery on what I saw on some days in the Canal, there never would have been a moratorium.

Stuff like this makes me think game fish may be the only way.

We'll see.

It sure is working out real well down in NJ. :hs: I would bet you that NJ probably has the highest rec mortality of any state, including NY and Mass.

No one in the AMSFC owns a rod and reel....I betcha!!!:wall:

The stock assessment I performed for the entire season past flies in the face of the conclusions reached by the ASMFC!!! The sky has fallen....just wondering when it will hit bottom???:jump1:

You guys actually sound upset that the stock assessment didn't show a crash.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Problem Jay is it should have shown there is a problem yet it did not! I would love to know where the AMSFC gets their information? Most I know that are out there fishing alot feel as I do...something is wrong and we need to act now instead of waiting for it to get worse.

OR.....the stock assessment showed what alot of other people think (myself included) that there are a heck of alot more Stripers out there than some people think.

Boat guy Jay? Surf fishermen are seeing things differently for sure.

Yes - and that's the big difference. I believe the stock assessement when they talk about total #'s because we are seeing sh*tloads of bass offshore - often times in places we never really saw them before.

I agree yes there are fish places....offshore. My biggest bone in contention is that they need to tighten regulations starting with the 2 a day at 28" and roll it back to 1 a day at 34"!!! Some will say 34" some will say 36"......it can only help. The fishing overall is not what it was 5-6 years ago and that is a certainty!

They were on top of it last time the species collapsed and we were just being silly .. I did great at the canal in the spring ..(not in the fall) .. Fishing the canal, your fishing a funnel .. kind of cheating .

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! "
"All is well, all is well"



As far as rec mortality and game fish goes....this can be simply regulated and throttled to whatever mortality is acceptable while maintaining the bulk of the economic benefit. NJ chose not to do this and take "all their fish" before anyone else can catch them.

IMO, they technically DO NOT have a game fish status:

New Jersey is allocated a commercial harvest quota of striped bass under the Striped Bass Interstate Fisheries Management Plan as administered by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). Since New Jersey does not allow netting or sale of striped bass, this quota was transferred to the recreational fishing sector resulting in the origin of the SBBP. <<<<<FIRST MISTAKE!!! Where is the conservation here????

The current allocation from ASMFC is 321,750 pounds to be distributed between individual anglers and party/charter boats. Should NJ overshoot this quota in 2011, any overage would be subtracted from the 2012 quota. Although this program does allow for the harvest of an additional striped bass for New Jersey anglers, the Division encourages catch and release whenever possible so this species can prosper for future generations.


I ask you why does any angler need that many big striped bass to take home?




the banner below has said this for years.

Just some points:

1. Agree with Jay, there are a ton of fish "out further", BUT, the surf casters have seen an overall decline in catching.

2. The decline in shore fish probably has to do more with other factors - where does the bait go (sand eels are not burying themselves close to shore at the end of the Cape anymore), changes in bottom configuration and current flow, dare I say "seals", and some even believe the outflow pipe has affected the water in our area (???).

3. The data - does show a decline, maybe not to pre-set "we must act" levels, but if it is declining and seems to be on a trend, why not act now? Make some changes to try and reverse the trend.

4. The HAMMER does not have to come down crazy - but as a pretty active charter captain, making the limit 1 per person is not that big a deal, and I'll leave the size determinations to the scientists. I have seen way too many fish taken - and we keep telling our customers "that will be a lot of fillets" and they keep saying "we'll eat it" and at the end of the trip they look at the pile of fillets and say "do you guys want any, there's too much for us".

Not an easy issue for sure, but my vote would be for some moderate changes in both the recreational side and "commercial" side.

Avg inshore temps were high this year.
Usually find Bass around sandspit any day/any time, but the water temps were waaay up.
Same running the beach of Nonquit. Dead quiet, hot water.

I tend to side with a post DZ recently put up about wetsuiters. I think the same can be true about the boat guy. I think those fish offshore have always been there and are not a true representation of the overall health of the stocks. The inshore fishery has disappeared for whatever reason, how long before the boat guys start seeing a decrease?

And just another point to think about. Ken Abrahams( I think that's his name) has an interesting theory that the same "families" of fish return to the same areas every year. I would be interested to see if those fish that took a pounding off Chatham are there next year....

If my fridge doesn't have anything I want to eat in it, I'm probably gonna go to the store....

Yeah but buying new groceries doesn't cost 20 grand...

Copied and pasted from another site:

On the other hand, we do have a way to get away from anecdotal evidence and look at more objective information, and that's the NMFS trawl survey that is conducted each fall. I just got a copy of the results of the 2010 survey yesterday. If bass were offshore, as we hear, they should be showing up in greater numbers at the appropriate sampling sites. It's not happening. There was one huge catch in a single sample--and that was about 2 1/2 miles off Fire Island, and coincided with the big sand eel bite that occurred there last fall. Otherwise, bass in the near-offshore samples were scattered and few, as one would expect if the fish were not offshore in significant numbers, except for certain hotspots of local abundance. Also, when the trawl fishery for bass was being debated at MRAC, the trawler captains assured us, without exception, that once they used up their tags, they could essentially avoid catching bass as bycatch mearely by moving off the beach, because there were very ferw fish out there. In order to believe that the bass really are out in deep water, we'd have to assume that the trawlers were commenting in bad faith before MRAC in order to influence the adoption of a regulatilon that they favored, and I know that a lot of people would object if we accused them of being dishonest about such a thing...

Exactly my point. You get people that say: "You're just not looking in the right spot." or "Inside the bay is loaded with bass and so are the areas off Orleans and Chatham." That's like looking up into the night sky, counting the stars you can see and saying "I counted 250 stars so that's how many stars exist." For a fish that has a range in-excess of 1000 miles, basing the health of the stock on how the fishing inside Cape Cod Bay was is just silly.

The ocean is vast and these tiny snap-shot opinions of the health of the stock based on personal experience is useless.

Hi Jay,
Same thing happend in the early 1980s - if you fished near Block you would have never thought there was a problem. Only thing was that Block at the time was the ONLY place that had bass. If the current stock assessment was based only on surf fishing this fishery would have been probably been shut down a few years back. We're seeing "range constriction" - in another words the extreme ends of the migration route see a decrease in fish first, hence Maine, NH, and now the Cape, Vineyard. Now I'm talking surf bass here... not boats which can find any school of fish with increasingly sophisticated electronics. Surfcasters are the "canary in the coal mine" and we're starting to cough (do canaries cough? ;) well you know what I mean. Could it be other factors like seals, baitfish presence? Sure it could - but they're more like a related factor - not a cause. And seals may just be filling the predator "void" left by lack of bass. And we all know bass will eat anything present - schools of baitfish just concentrate them. The numbers are what they are - I'm glad the YOY #s are up because I feel we're going to need them.

DZ