[Mr. Sandman]

The issue is mainly about money and who benifits, not fish. Thats the problem.

1) The argument that "it is a tradition to comm fish for SB" really pushes my button. Give me a break! Sorry, commerical fisherman do not have some God given right to take whatever they want. You want tradition, there was a time when striped bass and even lobster were considered a trash-fish and no one wanted them. Times change, get over it. The picture below was tradition too. It is long overdue to end it.

2) Serious Cost-benifit analysis have shown, the public benifits far more from rec fisherman vs commerical. The amount of money that rec fisherman spend on boats, motors, gear and charter fees dwarfs the entire commerical industry. The funny thing is the commerical guys love to say..rec 's take 3x more the commerical....when you figure out how many fish per rec is actually taken....it is something like < 1 fish per man per year (I can't recall the exact # but it is very small). There are just millions of fisherman. (most don't catch ANY bass in a year) In order to catch that 1 fish, the fisherman spends in some cases thousands each year that support working men and their familys in the boating and fishing industries. The simple difference is rec fishing supports 100's of thouasnds of people in diverse businesses while commercial sb fishing is all about cataching as many fish as fast as you can for $$ that supports the greedy few.

3) Commerical Lic fees are a complete joke it may as well be a free-for-all. They need to add a few more zeros on the end of those fees.

4) The $/lb is a joke too. Why do you even bother? if you say the price was 2 bucks/lb then only $1.6 mill were taken for the 802K lbs. And if you say there are that many lic's the $/fisherman is really a minimum. The bottom line is that the bulk of the 1.6million is headed to the pockets of a few big guns. This is doing little for socity and doing harm to the fish.

5)commerical fishing is all about $, that is why they call it "commerical". Greed also plays a big part in the activity. The "its mine" attitude has got to stop. During the days of no sb fishing...the gerneral fishing industry survived. You simply don't NEED the striped bass as a commerical fish. The reason there are so many fish today ...is BECAUSE THERE WERE RESTRICTIONS IN YEARS PAST. I just don't buy the fact the rec fishing does nearly the damage.. how exactly do you estimate the rec catch? How much $ and time does the average rec fisherman spend fishing to catch a single fish?


I do agree with the commerical guys that the state by state regs differ and it is unfair to those who do conserve. But the goal is not to catch the fish here so the "other guys" in other states can't. The Fed's are not going to get involved, it is a state matter and we are going to have to live with it.

The goal is to preserve the fishery while getting as much public benifit as possible from the fish that ARE taken. Commerical sb fishing does neither.

Last year I think I took home maybe 5 bass all year. The amount I caught was maybe 8-10X that many. And I fished a lot by rec standards. I bet I spent 5-7K on fishing realted activitys last year. (boat expenses, fuel, hotels, food/resturants/ tackle, a couple charter trips ect) . Now lets assume the you stop all sb fishing. Who feel pain more, the thousands of people supporting the rec industry, or the commerical guy who can fish for alternate fish? BTW, what is the commerical guy doing now? Is he starving? Come on, this is a no-brainer. These commerical guys are like dealing with a truckers union. They think they own the road.




Oh what the hell.......
If you can't beat-em join-em: Since the lic fee is a complete non-issue, next season I plan to get a commerical sb lic and I urge all out you "sport" guys who want to take all you can to do the same . IMO, this is nothting more then a cheap workaround to current catch limits. You can read about my experience next season at this time.

I have said enough on this topic. (EOM)