Menhaden Bill introduced

[RIROCKHOUND]

Originally Posted by goosefish

Holy mossbunker!

Resources should be managed not individually but ecologically. It is the future to a sustainable planet. The relationship of one thing to another. Whatever we can do to improve the productivity of our estuaries is, I think, a good thing. Oysters and pogies and eel grass. The Trinity. Pass the hot sauce, please.

Amen brother goosefish!
Ecosystem based management is the key.
It does start from the ground up.

Damn this thread exploded!!!
Everybody take a DEEP breath, relax and realzie that ultimatly we are all on the same side (the bass) ...

As the great philosofer Bob Dylan said
"We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Clammer's Tangled up in blues." (OK. added a bit )"


What I would like to see:
Numbers (#pounds Ark takes/yr) vs. the total catch coastwide
Would they still be scarfing them up outside the bay, before they get to RI? Probably unless more wide reaching legislation is passed. This would be a good step though.

Everyone is probably right to some extent:
The structure of fish would change in the surf and in the bay. They'd be around but maybe have different patterns, maybe not.
large schools of pogies in the bay would make bass an easier target for commercial and recreational fisherman no doubt..



When I was a kid it was the moratorium, but I remember Newport harbor LOADED with adult pogies and monster bluefish all summer. Was it a good thing? Of course. With the population of bass back up it should be a benefit, especially in the bay.

Lets be honest; in the context of Narragansett bay pogies would be a good thing, but what I'm curious is how much of a drop in the bucket is it coastwide. (Ark is potatoes next to Omega protein). we need healthy stocks of bait fish throughout the range of the bass. With out that any benefit will probably be localized in my opinion.

I've heard rumblings from biologists who would never want to be quoted, that the bay may not handle the large population of pogies from decades ago because improved water quality has decreased some of the nutrients (algae) in the bay.. go figure...

[Krispy]

RIrockhound,
In my unscientific opinion, the bunker reaching RI and MA now, are a direct result of NJ's reduction boat bill 4 years ago. Thats a pretty short period to realize such great results so far north. I think maintaining strong abundance of bunker in the bay will be a huge stepping stone for expanding populations of the bunkers northern territory. Its not just about us in RI, the bay or Striped Bass or surfcasters
What Narragansett and Buzzards Bay is seeing is just the tail end of the bunker biomass. What we are seeing now is not close to what we remember, at least when I was young.