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Originally Posted by Slipknot
I for one would love to know where that figure is arrived from. And also if it includes all the bycatch dead stripers in that total. I am not that surprised by it since there are thousands more times recreational fishermen than commercial fishermen fishing for bass, so why not say that recs kill 5 times as many? What difference does it make which group catches the lions' share?
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those figures are easily obtained from the NOAA fisheries website. and for 2004, it's actually about 81%, 2003 was around 76%.
commercial harvest for all states for striped bass totalled about 6 million lbs. in 2004.
recreational harvest was about 26 million lbs. in 2004.
i dont think those figures include bycatch.
but that info is out there too if you do a little research. for example, for 2003 according to the atlantic states marine fisheries council, recs landed 76% of the fish and this is broken down as 48% harvest and 28% discard. commercial harvest was 24% total divided as 18% harvest and 5% discard.
no matter how it's worded i think his point was rec's kill more bass total, and most rec's probably think, "commercial fishing kills so many fish, it won't matter if i keep all the fish i can".
but the people get mad when they see commercial pics like this (2005 NC commercial fisherman, this was supposedly his whole season's catch):
even though recs ultimately kill a lot more bass...
btw, i really know nothing about this subject. the internet is an amazing thing though. i can pull up these numbers with real references and it took me about 5 minutes of research.
as for me, i prolly kill more bass than the average rec fisherman (always within legal limits)...and i dont feel bad about it at all. absolutely not a single ounce of my fish is wasted. i dont even filet fish cuz that wastes too much meat (ton of meat in the head and backbone). we eat every edible portion of the fish.