Quote:
Originally Posted by zimmy
That is what needs to be done in the near term. Good reason to have a moratorium for awhile. After that, a slot of moderately small fish would cut the harvest of breeding females by transfer some of the pressure to males.
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Not in the biggest segment of the fishery, the Chesapeake bay stock. Males of the Chessie stock don't migrate out of the bay. Hudson and Delaware males are already being caught. A moratorium is not needed, the stock right now is about twice as large as the stock was when the last moratorium happened. As someone at the meeting last week summed it up, we just need to set the table and wait for mother nature to provide the conditions for a huge spawning year.