Quote:
Originally Posted by big jay
Yes - and that's the big difference. I believe the stock assessement when they talk about total #'s because we are seeing sh*tloads of bass offshore - often times in places we never really saw them before.
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Hi Jay,
Same thing happend in the early 1980s - if you fished near Block you would have never thought there was a problem. Only thing was that Block at the time was the ONLY place that had bass. If the current stock assessment was based only on surf fishing this fishery would have been probably been shut down a few years back. We're seeing "range constriction" - in another words the extreme ends of the migration route see a decrease in fish first, hence Maine, NH, and now the Cape, Vineyard. Now I'm talking surf bass here... not boats which can find any school of fish with increasingly sophisticated electronics. Surfcasters are the "canary in the coal mine" and we're starting to cough (do canaries cough?
well you know what I mean. Could it be other factors like seals, baitfish presence? Sure it could - but they're more like a related factor - not a cause. And seals may just be filling the predator "void" left by lack of bass. And we all know bass will eat anything present - schools of baitfish just concentrate them. The numbers are what they are - I'm glad the YOY #s are up because I feel we're going to need them.
DZ