Stripers forever!
 

great video here guys! i enjoyed it, hope you do too! spread it along to whomever, i believe it is important to promote good catch and release.

http://www.thefin.com/Videos/Striper...-Striped-Bass1

Stripers Forever has issues. If one is really involved in the total picture (which is not thier idea of the "picture") one would shy away from this organization.

They are lobbyists for thier interest and user group(s) (guides, fly fisherman Orvis,etc.) and thier history has had a number of times when not unlike George W. Bush, they tend to act of bad or suspicious information and likewise dispense this shall we say slightly manipulated info to the angling public.

A PETA related piscatorial effort preying on young and impressionable minds and others whose experience chasing this great fish is relatively regarded as new to the sport, say the last ten years.

I always practice catch and release, so do many of the folks here, not because I am an ultra-conservationist but simply because I believe fish over 28 inches are not nearly as palatable as fish in the 18 to 22 inch range therefore I consume none and secondly I am fortunate enough to now not have to direct my efforts to fish commercially, which I believe is viable and some day, God forbid I will go back to it if I ever have to.

ATTACHMENT A.

If you want to "save" the striped bass then direct your efforts to menhaden, river herring , seal overpopulation and water quality issues here and especially in the Chesapeake and Hudson. The laws governing the taking of striped bass in each of the atlantic states it traverses must be unified as well

.............flap ..........wish i said that .....sf has it cause ,but its miss directed...... i belong to "commerical forever Dave est.1965".......

I belong to balance, reduce the overall take, on commercials AND recreational. But above all - Fix The Bait!

POGIES FOREVER!

Well said Flap - :kewl:

Those are the real issues impacting the health of the fishery.

A few years ago my wife did a documentary for Friends of the Waterfront on the history of Newport's waterfront, it's access issues and how everything is predicated on fishermen's rights going back to the King Charles Charter of 1661.

I filmed an interview she did with George Mendosa, the retired owner of the Tolman and Mack Fish Trap Co. here in Newport who was in his 80's at the time. George is famous as the Kissing Sailor in the iconic photo taken in Times Square on VJ Day.

At any rate, we got to talking about the amazing abundance of fish in our area years ago, the catch rates for striped bass going back to the late '20's when he was a kid and the current state of the fishery today.

George said the real culprit in the decimation of the stocks wasn't the commercial fisherman despite the finger-pointing - it was the housewife with her laundry detergent and all the other sources of pollution in the estuaries and rivers.

I couldn't agree with him more.

Here's a pre-WWII photo of George and his brothers tending their nets at Green Bridge, where he said the eelgrass was once so thick you could barely row through it, much less use an outboard. You'd be hard put to find eelgrass there today more than a few yards across.

It was the most important estuary on the Island and currently undergoing restoration - hopefully, it will one day recover.

Like Flap said, SF has it's own agenda - and from all I've heard and seen it's not an organization I'd want to be associated with. There are others whose goals are a lot less self-serving.

I think not. This is the "God is on our side so we must be right" argument. Everyone's goals are self-serving, they are just different. Blaming housewives' detergent while you kill as many fish as you are allowed to keep or sell for your own benefit/profit may be accurate, but it is far from altruistic.

Let's face it, we make sport out of salt-water fishing, which is sort of a a patrician concept that was begun in earnest in the middle 1800's by very wealthy men for the sheer pleasure of it and we all spend a considerable amount of time, money and personal energy on that pursuit today.

If we wanted to truly preserve the fishery, we wouldn't put so much effort into dragging 'em around by the lips for our own enjoyment with the attendant risk of C&R mortality if C&R is your thing.

If the proposed saltwater fishing license ever does what it's supposed to do - which is get an accurate assessment of the rec catch rate - I think it will finally put to rest the notion that the recreational sector is completely blameless in stock declines.

This could be a long discussion and I've got other plans for the day, but sure, I realize there are plenty of flies in that particular ointment. Data already available would suggest just that there's plenty of blame to go around on a number of different fronts.

Numbie, none of us, regardless of what we do to put food on the table or keep a roof over our families head, does so without impact on the environment in one way or another.

Discussing altruism is a slippery slope.

.............WOW ....i luv that talk ....flap how's bout a rebutal... i gutta idea ..all u do gooders n do baders stop fishing ..theres way to many of you chatching MY fish now..... imo i think its a enviromental inbalance disaster ...what about the cod fish mess ..how about 'codfish forever '

Screw the whales - Save the Pogies!

Winter doldrums are setting in........ever so....quietly

well, at least you guys are getting reminded of saving a species, and not completely ignoring the "message" behind the screen (saving the marine fish in general).

thanks

Exactly. If preserving fish, for the fishes' sake is your priority you shouldn't fish at all. It is not mine, so I fish. Anybody who fishes has their own agenda for doing so, which is why it is disingenuous to point fingers at other user groups/organizations. .

Please! Who is claiming that? :rollem:

Why are you addressing that sentence to me? It implies that I don't realize this simple truth.

Stripers Forever is a somewhat amateurishly run organization that advocates eliminating the sale of striped bass via establishing gamefish status. Gamefish status puts the shaft to guys who fish for money, and to those in the non-fishing public who like to eat striped bass (though farm raised fish may be changing this). Gamefish status is great for guys who like to fish for striped bass, particularly those who are either not very good at it or like to use inefficient means to do it. It is probably also good for a substantially larger sector of the economy that caters to recreational fishing as opposed to that which serves the commercial side. Gamefish status does not automatically improve the fishery, but by eliminating a major user group (as well as the illegal sale of fish) it makes management much easier.

The issue comes down to one of fairness. Is it fair to deny someone the enjoyment of catching and selling fish for profit in order to increase your own success and enjoyment? Is it fair for someone to catch and kill much larger numbers of fish, and profit from doing it, while making it harder for others to enjoy catching and releasing or killing a much smaller individual share of the resource? Although most of us probably would prefer gamefish status, most do not want to hurt the others who use the resource differently......at least until the resource is sufficiently strained to unacceptably impact our own happiness.

Cool video and a good message whether or not you approve of the politics of the organization (which I do not know anything about). CnR is something I applaud and should be done carefully. If this video stops one more idiot from kicking a fish back (probably wont though) I wholeheartedly approve!
I love the boiling water shots... oh man, I cant wait til Spring.

:point: So lets see I can keep two fish at 28" and a commercial fisherman can keep what????

i agree completely! the more we promote these kind of videos, the better!

The problem is, this is where they get a lot of their support, and people do not know their politics.

No different than an RI fishing club and the pogie debate. A lot of blind followers who didn't understand the situation.

Supporting CnR is one thing, being 100% anti commercial is another.

Don't go there. You too can buy a commercial license and keep whatever the law allows. That you choose not to is your choice, that is all. Also keep in mind that the fish kept in a commercial fishery benefit many people besides the guy who catches them. Those people vote, too, so their opinion counts though it is convenient to ignore them. From the general publics' point of view, the optimal use of a public resource almost always involves commercial as well as recreational use.

Well put

Bingo.

Doctor scmoctor! Quit your job and be a Striper educational speaker!:rotf3:

Seriously, this is a point lost on most people. Rod and reel commercial of any species is one of the lowest bycatch and other negative impacts.

I would love to see the striped bass become a gamefish. I like catching them more than eating them. I like catching them more than selling them. I think a nice compromise would be 1 fish at 32". This would do wonders for the resource and most likely be the most agreed upon compromise.

Id like to see a 2 fish limit... a slot at 26-32" and one at 54" plus.. :D

Boy it's cold out isn't it?

:lurk:

if i could i would catch and sell the last striper that swims .. i did it once in the 80s ,and i can do it again ...."commerical forever Dave est. 1965".....

Nice video and good message. I personally have known Brad Burns for many years and first met him on Block one November night in 1985. Just after I released a large bass he came up to me in the darkness and shook my hand. He said something to this effect: "Not many or enough of us would release a fish that size." He just wanted to thank me. There was a very small group that practiced C&R at that time - he was one of the first.

DZ

Zorro rides again. Hope they pointed him in the right direction. :spin:

"Fishermen's rights" are weaker than the power of the dollar.

And as far as people "making money" selling Striped Bass, the only ones making any kind of money are the poachers (That includes guys playing the system and catching in one state waters and selling in another state. Yes. You're poachers.).