Quote:
Originally Posted by tlapinski
I am and have always been 100% recreational angler, but as is always lost in these discussions, commercial does not take the big piece of the striped bass harvest pie. It is us (or most of use in here anyway) the private recreational anglers who do the lion's share of the damage. You literally need to quintuple (multiply by 5) the annual commercial harvest to eclipse the annual recreational harvest, and even then you only do so by 4%. I know this is going to ruffle some feathers, and I am not trying to start a pissing match with anyone, I just feel there is a need to point out some facts when all the finger pointing goes elsewhere. Would a moratorium help? Sure, but it is not the magic bullet to fix all problems.
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I agree that we, the Rec. angler do a multiple of the damage to the stocks (harvest and release mortality) but even if the multiple is 5 times, EACH Comm. does prob. 10 times more damage vs EACH Rec. angler. I just think it is silly to ignore that and compare the 2 sectors while ignore the # of fisherman in each segment.