bass in trouble?

[CANAL RAT]

Stripers Forever - Members of Stripers Forever attended the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission ("ASMFC") meeting in New Jersey on 10/31 to get the latest stock assessment of striped bass. For those of you who are sufficiently interested, there is a two page Word document report by us under Articles and Research on our website at www.stripersforever.org. The 240-page official stock status report is there too in its entirety. We divided it up into 4 pieces for easier downloading and e-mailing. For those who don't have the time or interest to go into it a lot deeper, here is a very brief overview.

The ASMFC fishery scientists changed a number of the statistics used to estimate the striped bass population for the 2004 fishing year. If you calculate things by last year's method striped bass are being drastically overfished and the population is rapidly trending downwards. Immediate and severe action is called for. If you subscribe to the new methods, things are much better. Larger striped bass - the ones we can keep out on the coast - are being fished very heavily. In fact they are on the brink of being officially overfished. The Marine Recreational Fishing Survey, a coastwide measure of fisherman's success, shows a steady decrease since 1999 in angler success in fishing for striped bass. The catch per trip is down about 40% since that time.

Several of the fishery managers and even members of the scientific board on the commission expressed concern about the accuracy of the statistics, and some asked for an independent review of the scientific calculations that is scheduled for 2007 to be moved up to 2006, but a close vote on the motion failed. The long and short of it is that we will have to wait for another year or two to get a clearer picture of where striped bass are headed under the current plan. There will be no significant changes by the ASMFC to striped bass management measures in 2006.