Well said again, Flap...
Whoops, this is how it started the last time....
Relative to legislative actions to protect the fishery, I've almost finished reading
Striper Wars - and at this point I think I can say at least the Prologue was accurate for the most part in terms of the basic biology and reproduction cycles...and after that it begins to swirl around the drain at a increasingly faster rate in some of the following chapters.
There are some real leaps of logic in the book regarding conservation that are glaringly obvious to me if you actually know the stories beforehand as well as a number of other important points that Russell either passes over quickly or ignores altogether. You do have to pick and choose through material wisely I guess -
Anyway, from my perspective, Flap has hit it dead on the nuts - fix the forage base
first to reduce the stress if you want a more robust stock. And that's a very tall order.
Given the importance of the subject, let's try to keep the discussion gentlemanly and intelligent - while most of us are in the grips of the shack nasties, at the very least, we can agree to disagree.
We've got a good collection of pretty smart guys here at S-B from a lot of different disiplines and backgrounds and perhaps we can come up with an idea for an effective solution beyond what has already been proposed.