food for thought
 

An operator of a trap company told me he really just started catching nice bass this past weekend. He said Saturday " they caught a few, maybe three hundred, today they really hit 'em " Here today, gone tomorrow. I know of at least four he didn't get Sunday. I never begrudge anyone a living but how much is too much?

I think the striped bass management team in MA has a good enough handle on what's going on to regulate both the commercial and recreational sectors of striper fishing sustainably. I've seen the methods they use, and all that's lacking is an efficient way to figure out death and removal numbers due to rec fishing. They call and send letters to people within a certain number of miles of the coast, and they also do person-to-person interviews. But really, is there a better way to go about it? It's not like they can use information to contact people who buy fishing licenses -- you don't need a license for salt water striper fishing. Requiring licenses would be way too hard to enforce, but it would build up some nice revenue and help to focus angler surveys. But yeah, what I was getting at is that as long as fishermen, both commercial and recreational, follow the prescribed regulations, that much will never be too much.

You don't really think that money would go back into anything related to fishing, do you? Not in Massachusetts.