Are the BASS Declining

[Nebe]

your probably right piemma. But if you keep an fish tonight and i keep a fish tonight and everyone else keeps a fish tonight, we're all the problem.

[Crow]

Riprock, I have not seen any studies done on bass. The study I cited was done as an investigation into the smaller size of codfish being caught. The fish (Cod) were maturing at a significantly smaller size and were breeding younger. When the genones were compared to previous stocks it was found that there were significantgenetic differences. It seems through our fishing pressure we created an oppurtunity for this 'different' codfish to proliferate.
I have carried this over to bass, because in my opinion, we are seeing some fundamental differences and shifts in the behavior and abundunce of bass not to mention size. Remember the slaughter of fish in the 70's & 80's was predominatly on the inshore population. Even most boat fishing was going on over this population not the fish that always reside in the offshore grounds. Sometimes these fish do come in shore when chasing big bait like we saw last year in the school of monsters that was tracked (and caught) all the way fron NJ to Ma.
Now we also have increased predation on that same part of the population from seals and disease. I don't know if my theory is valid or not but in the last 5 years I have seen a decrease all along the coast where I fish.

[MikeTLive]

This same phenom was found in trout.
Because the larger fish were targeted, the fish that matured earlier and maintained a smaller size survived.
This caused the overall population to tend towards a smaller fish.

That is why I favor a slot limit.