Moratorium Stories

[stripermaineiac]

There were a lot of us that just kept fishing. Tag n release became a big thing as the research data was important. Stripers Unlimited became a focal point for Bob Pond. The Tri State Tournament went all catch n release covering 3 states to help gather info by catches,size,numbers and location.Lots of us just ground down the barbs an kept going. Fish size ,numbers, locations an so on were talked about freely to help get these numbers into the hands of the researchers to help the decline. Sometimes the fishing was great but those times were few n far between. Those of us that kept going did ok. Blues were everywhere with large stripers swimming under them feeding on the bunker peices from the blues.As far as the number of fishermen,well most were hardcores or oldtimers.Us younger fishermen chased the oldtimers to learn. we learned and landed some big fish.Just to find a new spot that held 20 plus lb fish was a very good thing. I never stopped chasing the stripers.

[Finaddict]

In Western Long Island Sound, where I grew up fishing ... our experience was much the same as what Ron described ... we still caught stripers during the moratorium ... as most of the fishing was live lining pogies - which were abundant - and when the blues were pushing them into the harbors, the bass were always below.

We also did a lot of plugging that yielded both blues and bass. The one thing that still good in the 80s were the fact that we still managed several tide runner weakfish, not nearly as abundant as during the 70s, but we always got several around 12-14 pounds on live pogies every year ... actually, this one fishing buddy of mine always seemed to catch them while I got the yellow-eyed demons. But it was nice to see those fish once every while.

[Got Stripers]

I was freshwater tournament fishing on the weekends, I was lucky enough to have not gone back to the salt as of yet. When freshwater fishing became more of a job and I went back to striper fishing it was like Clammer said; bent rods all day if you wanted them. If we can't target bass, I think it will be time to sell the boat and pick up a small 16-17 foot V-hull aluminum and go back to some freshwater fishing, or just hit the links and F-fishing for a while.