Caught!
 

Just finished the book "Caught". Entertaining read and somewhat disturbing at the end. The author did a good job of portraying himself as a selfish bass fisherman who sells everything he can catch on the black market.
The disturbing part comes in the last chapter and an especially good Afterword written by Zack Harvey.
Zack is a knowledgeable writer and great striper fisherman who knows his stuff.
Both Zack and Jeff Nichols go into details about he striper population being in grave danger and a moratorium being on the horizon, etc, etc.

Now this isn't big news. We all know the stocks are down and fishing, though still decent if you know the right places, is nowhere near where it was from 2004 to 2008. What was disturbing to me was that I had not seen it put in such succinct terms previously. I think that in 5 years, if something isn't done immediately, we will all be Bluefishermen rather than Striper fishermen.

Probably not. The 2011 year class is large enough that there likely will be reasonable numbers of fish to be caught. They'll weigh about 10-11 lbs by then. The ASMFC is counting on this which is why they are in no rush to reign in mortality. The large fish will have been all killed under current guidelines (and in accordance with current law as MM is sure to point out) so the quality of the fishery will likely be poor.

A more realistic scenario is that in 5 years we all will be bluefishermen by choice...........if we want to catch a fish that can pull drag.

Good point George.

sounds like a must read.

dont look now but bluefish are not exactly over populated either ... dog fish anyone?

I can remember all we caught in 90 and 91 were Blues. One morning I caught 5 schoolies at Deep Hole. I went to a bait shop in Narr called Top of the Dock (gone now) and told the guy behind the counter that I had caught 5 schoolies. He called me a liar to my face and threw me out of the shop for spreading false rumors.
I have t think we are headed in that direction.

Myself personally , I won't be buying a book so someone can profit even further after making a ton of money from poaching stripers while also being a large part of the problem we face. Maybe he wanted to tell a story so we can learn from the past, but it's a little late for that, the writing is on the wall.

How about if someone with some brains figures out how to change the protocols so the fish don't have to be wiped out before anything is done?

I believe you
I didn't catch one bass then either

That is what I was going to say! You can normally bank on the bluefish bite in Sept through Nov to save you from a skunking where I like to fish. ONE 12lb blue for me, all season. And there was plenty of bait to draw them in..

Not saying that's a true indicator of things and definitely not in panic mode, but it seems like most made similar observations, experienced the same. I wonder if Sandy messed things up as far blues go. If next year is a repeat then I will be concerned, and will be looking to move back to the Keys...

I guess that's all for another thread, though. Or is there a correlation?

My thoughts exactly! I'm looking into forming a new conservation group called Bluefish Forever.

Some of the usual spots produced very few blue fish this season, and from what I hear the 2011 class striper will be hit hard as Maryland dramatically increased its commercial limit.

I have been getting a ton of emails regarding the increase in bag limit is Maryland. WTF are they thinking??? can't the see the writing on the wall? The bass are definitely in trouble again.

Will we dodge the bullet again? I doubt it. There is increased pressure on the stocks due to more guys fishing, netting continues in some of the Southern states. poaching and black market selling is rampart.

How many fish were killed during the commercial season in Mass? A drop in the bucket compared to what happens at the canal on a blitz day. It is not one group. Comms, recs, everyone who targets Stripers will shoulder some blame if the fishery goes into the dumper, which, I believe it eventually will if the laws are not changed.

I still believe that Stripers should get game fish status. Even with that there are guys who will continue to sell on the black market until ALL the states are forced to abide by the game fish statute. Florida did it with Snook and now they have a world class fishery that was almost obliterated due to over fishing.

Yeah, they can see it. They're harvesting as many as they can before new limitations go into place.

The flip side is the book helps get the visibility necessary for there to be some action.

A lot of companies I work with profit from war. Nothing is perfect...

-spence

The book points out what every comm angler already knew, a lot of these guys take 2 + limits/day and sell the short fillets to restaurants on the side and fish out of season. (Not to mention the inshore dragger bycatch that is sold, kept or discarded. That is why this so called "quota" fishery is a ph#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&g JOKE. Most of the catch is not included in any quota and there is not even an guess as to what it is. I have mentioned this to DMF scientists and the have told me..."there is no bycatch, they have observers to look over that" WTF? My response was then what was the USCG doing then chasing down the sqidders fishing 1/2 mile off of squibby all the way to pt jude and were nabbed with SB? This is for the most part an UNREGULATED UNENFORCED FISHERY. If you think it is regulated you are very naive. It's not just SB either. I saw in the newspaper last year and ad for a local restaurant for fresh local Tautog...it was November well out of comm season. No one gives a #^&#^&#^&#^&.
It's been going on forever and there is so much wiggle room that it is a game and the DMF sees this as some kind of historical fishery that is beneficial to the social fabric of America. They refuse to enforce anything. Next time you see an management guy, ask them how many arrests were made last year and see what he says. They don't see any problem(s). Nothing to see here...move on.

They only option is GAMEFISH w/ 1@ 36" for recs (or a tag system with that limits recs to X fish per season with a possession limit of 1) with a strong push for replenishment of baitfish coastwide and the halting of all inshore dragging inside 15 miles from shore. end of story.


Not one of my favorite reads but I see the book as a good gift to the uninformed. Please buy one for your fishery management friends. They will probably think its fiction and respond ...fishermen are liars.

Plenty of gators from the Bridge to Nomans all season long.

The minimum size limit inside Chesapeake Bay, in MD waters, is 18" overall length. So they will be hammering that 2011 YOY class sooner than we will.

Hard to say why blues are so scarce, because there isn't a big commercial market for them. It was that way in the 60s, too, when I first started fishing. A blue was something to have a drink over afterwards.

But, they had a pretty good year for both numbers and size during this year's Derby. I remember years in the late 90s/early 2000s when you could score a daily first with a 6-7 pounder.

unreported?

My Dictionary app has the definition of the word " estimate ", used as a verb, as guess, try to value.
Like Obamacare guessing how all this bs will pan out.
When I hear government sponsored numbers regarding anything, the milk snorts out my nose. It'd be Fn hilarious if we didn't all have a vested interest in it.
An old bastard I used to fish with told me " Never believe what you hear and only half of what you see."
Sage advice.
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i have a game i enjoy because they have all these
big Walrus (seal like)creatures on the shoreline that come after you
and you can kill them without mercy with big bad ass swords
or shoot-em with your Bow and diamond tipped arrows :uhuh:

Those are...guesstimates

If you look at the numbers.. the dead comm discards are close to the actual comm kill. Here is an idea...Why not sell the what was discarded and stop comm landings and save 800K fish and still keep your precious fish in the fish markets. The fact they know they are killing 6-800K of fish per year just as a by-catch discard makes me sick. Why are we discarding ANYTHING?

What about the unreported catch? You know what is sold in the black market? I would bet that number meets or exceeds the legitimate catch

Beacuse that the way the government works (or doesn't work) you have to have a permit to sell striped bass and you can't keep any bass you catch in the EEZ, so if you're a dragger working the great south channel and come up with a net full of stripers, you have to throw them back. I'll grant you it doesn't make sense, but so far no one seems to have come up with a better way.

Keep them.
A 5 year old can see the logic in that.
But again its government, logic doesn't apply.
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:wall:

I love this Country but sometimes..........:fury:

I'm not trying to bring back a flame war, but this book is great.

Zach, if you read this, Jess got it for me for Xmas. Another great piece of authormization. As always, great job!

OK, enough from me.
Rick

Things need to change!

funny thing is this past season I did not catch 1 dog fish , not that's a bad thing