|
Heres my take on this whole situation. Making striped bass a gamefish is going to accomplish very little if anything without a lot of other pieces falling into place beforehand. You need to look at the more serious issues facing the species. The two that concern me are the lack of baitfish from overfishing (which is effecting every predatory fish in the ocean), and the bycatch/poaching by draggers. First lets start with the baitfish issue if there is no bait, it will not matter if any one on the whole coast keeps a single fish. The population will not be able to grow if there is not a food source to support that growth. Now, the issues of bycatch by draggers. If you can get commercial fisherman to be honest with you, they will tell you 10,000lb tows of fish all 30lbs and up aren't uncommon. Now that is one tow by one boat just think how many fish large fish are killed by them throughout the year. Now this happens in the same places year a after year at the same time every year. So why aren't we fighting to get these areas closed down during these time periods. Basically, what I'm getting at is I think we are fighting the wrong battle in trying to stop the rod and reel commercial harvest of bass, and that their are much more concerning issues facing the species.
|