Why is The Striped Bass Conservation Bill so hush hush?

[Mr. Sandman]

You make some good points and I don't dispute (many of)them.


I too would rather eat a smaller fish for a number of reasons but 36 is a good balance. A 36 in fish has a lot of eggs. Not as much as a 60 but again still a lot. And if we had LOTS of 36" fish as a breeding base that could not be touched...I would feel a lot more comfortable about the stability of the breeding stock. (also, that does not mean that all fish over 36" would be gobbled up by the rec take either, as I said, the sport is clearly moving in the conservationist direction with more C&R going on today than ever before. With sensible recs and good sportsmanship (along with a ton of available bait!) I think the species would have a bright future.

There has never been a time when there were a lot of 60#ers. There just hasn't. They die for many reasons some fisherman related, some natural. On the other hand there have been times when there have been many very healthy mid size fish. I just like my chances better with masses of mid size fish. Basically I like playing to the bell curve, you want you breeding base at the sweet spot not the tail ends. And I have my doubts you can artificially increase the number of heavyweights significantly enough to matter by tweaking the rec take. If that was the ONLY form of mortality, then maybe, perhaps, but it isn't.

As for pride, perhaps that is the wrong word. (I blast out verbage and post without thinking about it too often But my point was that most fisherman want to catch large fish, not small ones. I really fish for memories...and the ones I recall the best seem to be the ones that involved larger fish, not smaller ones.


Bottom line... I am so not sure that a slot will produce "more" jumbos and even if they did I am not sure that it would necessarily produce more young fish. Until it is proven my view would be to keep is simple and lock in a %$%$%$%$load of 36" fish which for most people is a big fish.