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Ol PJ,
So you put scallopers, draggers, gillnetters and pinhookers, trap fishermen etc. all inthe same basket? No commercial is a good commercial and all recs are saints?
Spence & John,
Yes, recreational fishing for stiped bass generates more economic activity than commercial fishing. OTOH the recreational catch of stripers is more than double the commercial catch. If we are going to analyze it in strictly economic terms we have to measure economic acitivty per pound of fish, or something similar. Now how small would the rec. catch have to be before people would stop fishing for them? On the other side of the coin, will increasing the recreational catch result in more economic activity or is it maxed out already? It would take a major economic study to answer those questions and no ones really knows the answers right now. No one knows what the marginal econonomic aciticty will be for an additonal pound of stripes caught by either sector. So any speculating that increasing the recreational catch would be economically more beneficial than leaving the current catch with the commercials is just pure B.S.
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