[Mike P]

Originally Posted by tunaless greg

Oh, right we had plenty of them around, till they aggregated tighter and tighter, till we fished them down to the point that even the boats that fish every day only catch a few fish over 20 pounds. This is what is occurring with the bass. Same scenario almost exactly in the 80's, with the exception of the haul seiners. IF you did not experience it, you would not believe it could have happened so quick. We had a full moon in Montauk in early 80's that we were shipping box cars of bass out of inlet marina. We had guys coming to us while checking fish traps that would take literally anything for live bait. The fish stayed packed, then we had massive hits by the haul seiners. I can remember being on the beach, helping throw 20-30 pound bass into the back of Danny kings truck. I think one crew had 14 trucks that day, and there were 4 crews. Poof, the bass fishing went to 0. You can overlay social media, with the commercial landings, with the recreational web reports and get a pretty good picture. Fishing was red hot in the canal, yet Montauk night fishery struggled t the same time. This is one biomass of fish, sets up in p town early, then may set up in chatham. in a good year it moves up to the north shore and pounds the bunker for 2-3 week. Problem is it is getting tighter and tighter, and the fishermen are getting better and better. Hopefully we move to a slot, as common sense would dictate. Hopefully fisheries management see the obvious picture, unless they are a young kid, and they did not see how it happened last time.

The managers have a mission statement: manage the striped bass fishery for "maximum sustainable yield". In other words, keep it on the edge of collapse, but don't push it over the edge. The problem is that it often takes too long for them to see exactly where the edge is---or in present circumstances, where it was.