Status of Patrick's Bass Bill ???

[WoodyCT]

Consider:
Human induced environmental issues (agricultural run off, hypoxia, water turbidity, sea level rise, increased water temperature due to climate change) are reducing the bass' main nursery areas, Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson River, ability to provide stable and healthy supplies of juvenile bass to the coastal stocks.
The menhaden reduction fishery is decimating the main food source for both adult spawners and juvenile bass in the Chesapeake and mid-Atlantic region.
Malnourished bass and weakened bass, due to the loss of menhaden forage, are more prone to stress related illness such as mycobacteriosis, which is causing untold mortality.
The sea herring fishery off New England is drastically reducing an important forage source for the bass, resulting in weakened and stressed fish, as well as stress related disease.
This same herring fishery is killing untold numbers of bass bycatch that are unreported but left dead or dying in long slicks on the surface.
Weak state and Federal enforcement of recreational fishing in the mid-Atlantic encourages charter boats and rod and reel fishermen to pillage wintering striper stocks in the EEZ without fear of being detected when returning to port.
Mid-Atlantic trawl fisheries are wantonly killing and wasting spawning stock due to a loophole that encourages illegal high grading.
Winter tagging trawls done by the USF&WS have encountered drastically reduced numbers of wintering fish off the mid-Atlantic the past several winters.
Statistics for bass discarded by the commercial sector are believed to be highly inaccurate, with estimate placing the actual mortality at double what is reported.
ASMFC stock assessment models fail to consider anything other than documented mortality, thus their predictions are flawed.
NMFS catch statistics show a drastic downturn in striper catches coast-wide.
Young of the year surveys have yielded wildly fluctuating spawning success during the last decade and a half.
Now consider the MA commercial fishery as it exists:
It targets the most valuable brood stock- the large females capable of carrying up to 5,000,000 eggs each.
It opens the door to a thriving and difficult to control black market for striped bass, which results in greater mortality than fisheries managers can account for.
It is susceptible to high grading- bringing the largest amount of weight possible to the wholesaler by discarding smaller fish when larger ones are later caught. One again, unaccounted for mortality.
For the vast majority of license holders it is simply a means for recreational fishermen to supplement their income and defray the cost of an expensive hobby.
The economic impact of this fishery is minimal compared to what could be produced by a stable and healthy stock of well managed striped bass.

Given all the odds presently stacked against the bass, perhaps letting the MA commercial fishery fade into the sunset is a small price to pay for a better future for the bass and those who love this special fish?