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Larry - Bait is a huge factor, not just that they are offshore but their main breeding grounds in the estuaries are being compromised more and more by coastal development and run-off both along our coasts and down in the major estuary systems up and down the coasts ...
... in fact, I remember reading an article in the AFTMA newsletter (American Fishing Tackle Manufacturers Association - the predecessor to today's American Sportfishing Association) in which Norville Processor - spelling? - reported on a study conducted in Chesapeake Bay where the young of the year were netted in the estuaries feeding the bay ... only one river system had young, but they were so plentiful in that one location that the study reported that the bay as a whole had a healthy population ... Mr. Prosser was trying to refute that claiming it was bogus ...
... the run-off down there includes a lot of agricultural run-off that has pesticides, etc., but also every day run-off from society getting closer to the water and getting more pollutants including raw sewage into the water than ever before ... and I feel it is starting to have an impact ...
... and on top of the coastal estuary degredation, commercial fishing for bait fish from eel elvers to smelt to pogies, herring ... the list goes on, but what's happening is that bait is depleted and not coming back. We can't point all of the fingers at the commercial group, as we all play our part in it ...
... and of course the same estuaries that the bait breeds in are the estuaries that stripers breed in and those are not as favorable to striper reproduction ...
... then throw in the recreational limit ... there was mention above of the stripers being kept in New Jersey ... it's the same up here, no different, there's just more down there now and more visible ... during the blitz of 25 years, one shop had something like 66 fish weighed in during a four-hour span and all fish were above the 30-pound mark. But who are we to tell someone who fishes hard that they can't take their legal limit? It would be nice if everyone practiced catch-and-release to a degree, but if they are within their limit ... they are doing nothing wrong ... no add in New York and CT and RI, Mass., NH and ME, Del, MD, VA, NC ... that's a lot of recreational harvesting ... on top of a large commercial harvest as well.
There's no one reason and no one solution, but there are a lot of factors contributing to the demise of our fishing ... and if commercials are staying within their legal limits, let them have their day ... let's just hope that everyone is having equal success ... which none of us are whether we are commercials or recreational anglers.
Boy that was a mouthful.
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