Good news for the future ?
 

http://news.maryland.gov/dnr/2014/10...eproduction-2/

Good read

I read it as polishing a turd... we just squeaked to 'average' and it is healthy 2014? BS

Wow just under the moving average. I guess everything must be fine now, no need for tighter regulations...

Convenient this come out just prior to the vote. Status quo...

At the meetings they said this was gonna come out mid-November. I still think we are gonna see the 25% cut and 1 @ 32" rec

Those horrible spawning years around the last moratorium don't really help things when you look for an "average". Polishing a turd is a great description
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When politics is involved there is always turd polishing going on! Its all bull#^&#^&#^&#^& and they expect the public to gobble it up like Pavlov's dog......and most do!!!:tm:

Furthermore. The term "average" can be viewed 2 ways. A statistical average or "just average" meaning not bad. Not good. That chart is a statistical average and means nothing when you are using data from years that bass were almost put on the endangered species list.
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Exactly, it really means nothing of overall health of the species and numbers but more a snapshot of where they are at recently. It's all relative to the current situation.

Sort of like the argument I just had with someone yesterday about pay raises. Their argument was that a % raise on performance was the only way to fairly issues raises. I say how so? Most of us have experienced a work situation where one person was grossly overpaid to begin with and one underpaid. Even if underpaid performs better and therefore gets a better % raise every year they may still never reach the same pay rate as the underperforming, overpaid person.

Jenn I,ll give ya that [BIG] raise ><><><><:uhuh:

Guess this crew is a "the glass is half empty" type?

Reality check please!!! Down here in Jersey there are NO fish! The LBI Classic Tournament has now gone 16 days without a single weigh in, north of us has nothing also. Spring time was just as bad and according to this survey we are on the road to recovery?? Well you can take these surveys and wipe your :bshake: with them!!! Welcome to the 80's boys or even worse.

No, it is not a 'crash' in YOY compared to previous surveys, but don't proclaim the year a 'healthy reproduction' right in the headline when you are still below the long-term average

One average stat does not a recovery make ?

What's the difference between an optimist and a pessimist ?

The pessimist is better informed !
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I like that.

FWIW, my take on it is that it confirms my suspicions that the current SSB has the ability to produce good year classes.

The glass is more than 1/2 empty, Mike. Truth is that neither you nor I will likely be fishing on these fish once they are large. Our fish are already out there......what is left of them.....and these good year classes just give the fish managers justification to kill them more quickly.

How do you get from below average to good? It's not the average year classes that are sustaining the SSB it's the few well above average years from around 1993 to 2003. 2011 was the only "good" year class we have seen in the last 8 or 9 years.

It's also no longer the current SSB as a good number of the breeding age fish from 1993 to 2003 that were responsible for the 2014 YOY numbers were killed of this season with relatively few fish maturing to replace them.

has the ability and will are two different things

time will tell

Remember that those 1993 and on great year classes were produced by the abysmally low SSB of the moratorium years.

some people will just never f #^&#^&#^&#^&#^& get it ><><><><:gorez:

Yes that is true and we got very lucky that those great years came when they did. There is clearly a large amount of variability in the YOY numbers regardless of the size of the SSB. What is scary looking at the numbers and charts is that we have only had one good YOY class in the last 8-9 years and that was with SSB at numbers that were, with the exception of the last couple of years, well above average. We are quickly decimating the population of older fish that currently make up the SSB and there are few fish in the pipeline to replace them. It is possible that we could get very lucky again and have a few banner years from a very low SSB but I don't really think of that is a good management plan.

Interesting report. But, it's only speaking to MD and VA. A comprehensive report broken down by state from ME to NC would a very interesting read. ;-)

I can save you the effort of trying to find it, the YOY index for all of the states, except for NY, is zero. All of the migrating striped bass come from the Chesapeake bay spawn. NY has a breeding population in the Hudson river but they don't migrate very far, most never get more than 50 miles from the river.

What you don't seem to understand is that the spawning success of the species in the Chessie is determined by the weather. Last I looked there was nothing we could do to control that. The point I was trying to make is that when we get the right weather even a very low SSB can produce huge YOY indexes.

Which is why this chart is useless, and why the true data which should be used to judge the health if the fishery should come from actual fisherman who are involved with the fish on a daily basis. When you have a huge majority of fishermen yelling that there is a problem, then there is a problem. The greater problem (just like the last moratorium) is the commercial fishermen and charter boat owners who say that everything is fine because they see dollar signs.

I'd much rather be remembered as the guy who fought for the health if the fishery than the guy who fought for the health of his profits.
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While the weather does play an important part in spawning success it has no place in management discussions because it is entirely beyond our control. You obviously can't manage a species based on the weather so focus on the factors that an be influenced.

History does show that a low SSB can produce a big YOY index given ideal conditions but it doesn't mean that it will happen again.

Mike ,, as far as the Hudson fish traveling ...........I have aplace I fish along with a few members on the site ...........Its a 90% holdover fishery ............5 to 10 years ago we could catch fish til we were just tired .........it has been a steady decline to the point that we went from a fishery that could equal 100 fish a day per boat if you wanted to do that to actually being shut-out .
I,ve had conversations with Bob ;Got Stripers , Who in my opinion is the best jig & plastic fisherman I have ever met .
He told me he had also gotten skunked & its at a point that we no longer make that trip .
That,s not a exception ..its the normal just about everywhere ............Just because BI held a huge amount of cows for the majority of the season ........ all that proves there [were] still holding places & all it really did by the massive killing of the large fish by rec,s commercials & charter boats .........was put a BIG dent in the breeding population of the S/B
also the place we fished for years as a holdover fishery I know of 6 fish that had been tagged .I personally had two >>>>>>>>>>>>>>all the fish were tagged in the Hudson river ><><:hang OH btw this fishery is in MA .a hell of alot further than 50 miles from the Hudson ><><>

:claps:

What does that have to do with anything I said?

And I don't agree that because a huge majority of the fishermen say there is a problem, then there really is a problem. Most of the fishermen who say there is a problem have gotten used to the fishery when the SSB was at 250% of the objective. Back in the 50's and 60s there were far fewer fish being caught and that was considered normal.

Oh and BTW - I generally don't do striped bass charters, so I'm not putting $$ before the health of the fishery.

Mike, I believe you have caught Hudson fish in MA, but numerous tagging studies have shown that 90% of the Hudson fish don't move further than 50 miles from the mouth of the river. I have caught Hudson fish (with tags) off of Montauk, where they shouldn't be. But I think that the fish you and I caught were part of the 10% that got lost. :)

Weather plays a huge role in lots of activities, which are all managed either by the government or privately. Ignoring the impact of weather on any given weather dependent activity is sure to bring a management failure. What the managers are trying to do right now is to keep the SSB high enough so when we do get the right weather there will be huge spawning success.

Blinded by science !
Statistics can be used to dance to many tunes.
But as someone who has been obsessed with chasing this fish since the late 60's, I'll trust the empirical evidence. The near shore fishery for bass is a shadow of what was. Many spots that would hold decent fish even in the lean years are seldom producing at all. Some still do but in general these fish are not as wide spread as the past.
We are too greedy to back off a bit. The keep em all attitude I've seen this year is more than I can recall seeing. As long as you can score $100 a fish, good luck with the culling, stacking, highgrading and poaching. Non enforceable and the fines are to lame to be a deterrent. A part of me wants this fishery to go right down the tubes, just to teach us all a Fn lesson. 😠
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Lets look at forage fish for a second, the devistation netting has done to bait fish must have a major effect on the near shore Bass fishery and population health. Boston Harbor used to be LOADED with pogies and void of seals. I'm not 40 yet and used to see front end loaders scooping up tons of beached pogies off Wollaston beach in the past as they beached themselves during blitzes from Bass and Blues. The river hearing were almost whiped out as well and are now coming back. Don't underestimate the effects of Weather, forage and natural preditors like a fast growing seal population that needs to eat. There are others ways to protect the population as attacking rod and reel fisherman (including all rec, charter and comm) is not the only answer. We should all be coming together to fight these pressures as well.
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My point was that we can't comment on or discuss weather options for managing the species because it is completely out of our hands. We have no way of knowing if the right weather is going to come next year or in 20 years.

What we do know is that SSB is declining quickly and we also know that there are relatively few smaller fish in the pipeline to replace the big fish that are being killed off at an alarming rate under the current regulations.

As A marine Bioligest [sp] stated last year ..................... &&& to me this really sums it up .

aside from the deadly electronics , the use of the internet & cell phones / which he said just made a guy/or gal a fisherman & a call away from the fish .

he put it very bluntly ........NOW there is waaaaaaaaaaay to many fisherman &&&& not enough bass :fishin:

Well, if you believe the stock assessment, the SSB is NOT declining quickly, in fact it will rise starting in 2016.

But, FWIW, I support the full reduction next year, not because I think its the best option, but because it is the most prudent move on the table. I would have much preferred any other option that had more than a 51% chance of reaching its goal.

Another way of stating it: For the 7th time in 9 years, the juvenile index fell below the 61 year average, though this year only fell about 6% below the average.

I received this yesterday.

Stripers Forever
Dear Paul,

MD has just released the 2014 young of the year figures for striped bass. The graph below shows the arithmetic mean numbers:
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The 2014 number is 11.02. This is sure to be a great number for the spin doctors. Looking at it positively this may be the best of the last three years, but in reality this is another very mediocre number and certainly not one that will allow continuing harvesting striped bass at current levels. One of our SF board members once said that a classic sign of a species in trouble is when both the lows and the highs of spawning success are in decline. The average of the last 3 years is now about 5.9 which is only slightly better than the levels experienced during the crash of the late 70s and 80s and just half of the long term average of 11.8 taken from 1957 through 2014.

In the graph above you will note that the large years happened quite regularly throughout the 1990s; these big years were needed to produce the great fishing that encouraged angler participation, tackle sales, and sustained the guiding industry. In fact there were five years within the 15 year period of 1989 to 2003 that had a young of the year count above 20. In the 11 years from 2004 through 2014, there has been only 1.

Of extra concern is that while that one year class – 2011- was very large those fish should be about 17 or 18 inches this fall and they should be everywhere, but no one seems to be finding that to be the case. In fact the entire summer of 2014 was very spotty for school bass fishing. Some locations along the coast reported quite a few while many normally good spots had almost none or only a few good days. However many there will be as three year olds there will surely be many fewer in the future as they are harvested first in the Chesapeake Bay and later the coastal fisheries. So in summary we feel that while the 2014 year class is not bad news, it provides no reason to abandon the major reductions in harvest the ASMFC will be contemplating on Wed. 10/29.

Click here to view the MD DNR young of the year page. Click on either geometric or arithmetic mean to download the excel document. (If the pages opens up and asks for a password, but just X that window out and the document will open up anyway.)

Thank you for your support.

​Brad Burns, President

Stripers Forever, a non-profit, internet-based conservation organization, seeks game fish status for wild striped bass on the Atlantic Coast in order to significantly reduce striper mortality, to provide optimum and sustainable public fishing opportunities for anglers from Maine to North Carolina, and to secure the greatest socio-economic value possible from the fishery.
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Stripers Forever PO Box 2781 South Portland, ME 04116-2781
stripers@stripersforever.org
Stripers Forever, P O Box 2781, South Portland, ME 04116-2781, USA

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