Here is one for ya, The Surfmeister and his Locale, StriperSurf.Com

[JohnR]

This was in yesterday's Providence Journal... where he talks about " the probably the most knowledgeable surf fisherman in the Northeast. " Don't let #^&#^&#^&#^&#^&#^& hear that :P , actually he told me about the article...

Outdoor Notes by Tom Meade
Surf anglers fishing for answers on elusive trophy stripers
Surf fishermen want to know where the big stripers are. Some of them also want to know how to skin an eel and cook a bass.

They're asking all kinds of questions to the surfmeister himself, Frank Daignault , the Massachusetts author of several books including Striper Surf and his most recent, The Trophy Striper .

Daignault answers the questions in a forum on the Internet site www.stripersurf.com. It's like talking to him on the telephone when he's in his wise-cracking glory. He's always entertaining and probably the most knowledgeable surf fisherman in the Northeast. Sometimes, however, he leaves questions, such as the eel-skinning one, to other members of the forum.

One of the most enjoyable "threads" on the forum is all about goofy fishing experiences.

The question attracting the most response is about an apparent lack of trophy stripers, 50-pounders.

In The Trophy Striper , Daignault said that stripers born during the early 1980s -- when the fish were recovering from a precipitous decline -- simply haven't had time to grow to trophy size. It takes about 20 years for a striper to grow to 50 pounds, so fish born in Chesapeake Bay during the record-breaking year 1982 are just getting to trophy-size. "Keep your eyes open after 2000," he wrote in the 1999 book. "Today's trophy will be tomorrow's routine encounter, probably until fair numbers of 50-pounders are available."

Following last season's dearth of big stripers along the coast, however, Daignault says he is reconsidering his theory while still standing by it. "The moratorium breaking year-class, '82, is our first shot at 50-pounders, of which I expected a few coastwide in 2000. Instead, it appears that those fish, what remain, are from 38 to 43 pounds. Fisheries Service growth charts, where I got my information, are fuzzy at that high end, so it could have been an interpretation-interpolation problem. Maybe they need more time.

"It could also be that they click over all at once, say 2001 or 2002. Never forget that there are only four inches of length between a 42- and 52-pounder, so it wouldn't take long for my prediction to bear some results. Little was born from '83 to '89 so, quite predictably, 18- to 40-pounders should be hard sizes to find."

On the Internet site, Daignault also addresses the issue of size-limits that force anglers to release small fish while allowing them to kill large fish that may be genetically superior. "We are all noble releasers of undersized fish, dutifully waiting for a legal keeper," he says."Then a fish, which has exhibited superb growth qualities, a survivor of a genetic anomaly which took a million years to evolve, is caught and killed."

Could it be that Ole Frank is backpedaling a little? Unfortunately, that may be true...

The entire article can be found here:

http://www.projo.com/cgi-bin/story.pl/sports/04951311.htm