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It was my impression that due to the demise of other fish stocks, namely cod, Massachusetts wanted to give the commercial fisherman something else to fish for as a supplement. This was sometime in the 1990's when they established the commercial season starting in July and they had a 40 fish limit. Crazy thing was very few of those guys were even striped bass fisherman, but they became such when the stocks rebounded. Then the quota got lowered to 30, then 20, now 15, as the market gets flooded. But yes, I believe it is totally biased toward the boats, was done intentionally, and probably always will be for the foreseeable future.
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