Herring have arrived

[FishermanTim]

Maybe your kids...or your kids' kids might, but I don't hold any hope for us.
Now that there is a perpetual moratorium in place, all they have to do is claim that the stocks aren't rebounded yet and they'll "revisit" the topic in another 3 years

and so on, and so on and so on.....

Plus since the initial moratorium (which did absolutely NOTHING) they gotten us to spend more money on other baits and lures, so why would they have any incentive to change that???
Hey, we're "helping" the economy, right?

My comment is this:
They've gotten to the point where they can moratorium-ize us all they want, but if every other state along the eastern seashores doesn't follow the same law, then they are talking out of their arse!
Oh, and NO and I mean NO draggers/netters should be allowed to harvest any herring (because we all know that "legal bycatch" means they can catch all they want of whatever they want with absolutely no restrictions).

Until they can do something...ANYTHING to prevent the harvest of a majority of the herring that used to migrate up the coast each year, we will ALWAYS be the ones that will "do without" in the hopes of providing the southern states all the herring they can catch!

What will it take? A complete collapse of the striper industry due to falling fish stocks or failing YOY classes? Maybe a drastically stressed ecosystem caused by the removal of a prime spring migrationary food source of post spawning stripers will wake them up?

Nah, because if they can't tax it, license it, control it and destroy it they don't care!!

The soap box is now free!!!

[hq2]

The previous post may be a little extreme, but it does seem that in recent years the fisheries folks have gotten the issues backwards.
Herring have come back strong, and stripers appear to be in trouble
again. We need to fix both; namely, something like allowing maybe
5-10 herring a day to be dipped for bait (as opposed to the pre moratorium 25), while reducing the striper limit to one a day per person. That might get it about right.

[buckman]

Originally Posted by hq2

The previous post may be a little extreme, but it does seem that in recent years the fisheries folks have gotten the issues backwards.
Herring have come back strong, and stripers appear to be in trouble
again. We need to fix both; namely, something like allowing maybe
5-10 herring a day to be dipped for bait (as opposed to the pre moratorium 25), while reducing the striper limit to one a day per person. That might get it about right.

What do you need all that bait for if you can't keep the stripers ?
IMO bait fishing mortality is high
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

[chefchris401]

the ones ive been seeing in RI, are some of the biggest herring ive seen in the last few years. runs were packed today.

[FishermanTim]

Originally Posted by hq2

The previous post may be a little extreme, but it does seem that in recent years the fisheries folks have gotten the issues backwards.
Herring have come back strong, and stripers appear to be in trouble
again. We need to fix both; namely, something like allowing maybe
5-10 herring a day to be dipped for bait (as opposed to the pre moratorium 25), while reducing the striper limit to one a day per person. That might get it about right.

I meant it to be a little "over-the-top". (A bit of rye humor)
Thanks for picking up on that.

[goosefish]

Do the river herring some good and please consider --

Osprey cull anyone? Bow only. I'll write to the Rhode Island and Massachusetts Audubon and Nature Conservancy chapters. I'm sure they'll go for it once they see the size of my donation. Stand back ladies. This thing can block a stream.

Actually truth be told, I like ospreys. But with each year there seem to be more and more of them.