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Here is a letter I wrote to Gripers. They did not respond.
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Careful who you call a dope my friend.
Brad Burns responded on behalf of Stripers Forever to your letter (email) the day we received it (Jan 8th). Your ISP rejected our email, so we sent it again on the 9th. Rejected again. What do you expect us to do?
Here's the letter:
Captain - thank you very much for your input and interest. Let me assure you that the founders of our policies are very experienced striped bass anglers and veterans of many fishery management debates. To the man they are folks who love striped bass as you do and want a healthy population that allows a natural percentage of fish to reach ripe old ages. If it were just up to me, John, we could let every one go - I have for many years - but that approach will never fly. They mean different things to different people, and some very good folks like to eat one every now and then.
First, we are not advocating any particular set of size and or bag limit regulations. We are advocating the end of commercial fishing for striped bass for all the reasons outlined in the case and that is all. We feel that once this is accomplished and that recreational values are substituted for the current ones that are designed to accommodate the commercial fishery not the public, we will have the kind of conservation ethic and fishery that you and all on our board want. We know that the recreational community would demand a lower overall mortality level and a management plan that allowed more fish to live to really large sizes. Calling a 28 inch fish large is just common terminology today. As you probably know, this is the size at which, on average, female striped bass are thought to be sexually mature. Personally, in my 45 years as a serious striper fishery man, I have caught several hundred stripers over 45 inches and several dozen over 50 inches, so I know that 28 inches is no big deal in the grand scope of things.
As an aside, I personally do not share your fear of a slot limit - though I am willing to let the scientists wrestle with that. If we eliminated the Chesapeake Bay commercial fishery for small stripers I believe that we could easily have a single fish slot limit that would allow many more recreational anglers to keep an occasional small fish for a meal which was the historic fishery for most of the public. It is important to realize that around 20% of these fish die annually of natural causes even without fishing, and not every angler gets to fish places like Nauset Beach or Sow and Pigs Reef. The current plan is the true "lawnmower" of striped bass. First, the commercial fishery in Chesapeake Bay whacks the devil out of them between 18 and 25 inches, then, despite many still making it to 28 inches, the coastal fishery makes it very difficult for fish to make it through another season. It is now thought to be around 40% a year fishing mortality, plus natural mortality on fish over 8 years old. In two years 100 fish become about 25, and in four years 6! That is the time it takes to get from 28 to 38 inches. No wonder there are so comparatively few big ones.
John, Stripers Forever is not your philosophical enemy, it is your friend. The best thing that we could do for this fish is to remove the influence of commercial fishing on the management process and the fishery that you want would evolve. Other groups have tried to lobby the ASMFC for lower mortality, and gotten absolutely nowhere. The ASMFC pressure point states on striped bass, MD, VA, NC, NY, MA are all big commercial striper fishing advocates, and until commercial fishing for these fish is eliminated we will be whistling in the wind and waiting for the next collapse. You may not agree with everything that we are saying, but supporting gamefish is the only way we will get where we want to go. Brad Burns