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Mr Sandman,
Here are some facts
1st to commercial fish you need a general commercial licence whic costs from 35 for an individual (all on the boat of in your vehicle if fishing from shore must have the lic.) all the way up to hundreds of dollars to lic your boat as commercial......next you need to get a striped bass license for 30. You may only fish Rod & reel in Ma. We keep it that way because we do not want a more standard commercial fishery with very valuable limited licenses and a "real" business value on the fishery. Rod & Reel commercials are far more ethical (in general) and SB Commercial fishing with Rod & Reel is a traditional Ma culture.
Next, the average price this year was $2, and it never hit $3, even at the Gloucester Fish Auction that traditionaly brings the very best prices.
SB are sold to the dealers wholesale and the standard return for meat of a SB is 40 percent of the whole...meaning 100 pounds of whole SB return 40 pounds of meat.
Most of the Commercial SB fishers want the quota to end b4 the Fall migration begins so we leave those fish alone
One of the main reasons there is a Commercial market is because the General Public owns the resource not the recreational fishing Public. This is why there is room allocated for a commercial fishery...I am proud of the way Ma runs their SB Fishery...it is not perfect but it is better than any other state that I have read about
the current quota of 750,000 pounds (overage and shortfalls are tagged onto the next year) (not done in other states) has been working through out the rebuilding process...I used to be in favor of making SB a gamefish, but that means no one gets to harvest SB and sorry, they are too good on the table.
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