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First striper ever in 68, Narragansette Bay, boat. Dad took us boys out fishing from friday night to sunday night. All day all night!
Many nights spent sleeping/fishing eels on the boat between Prudence and Patients Islands.
How many here remember a Bluefish blitz, (according to the old salts of the time, "like nothing seen before") in 72-73, that filled the whole bay from end to end that lasted for hours. The sound of fish thumping against the hull woke us to witness an event that was a little too surreal and somewhat scary. You didn't have to even cast your line, just drop it over board and twitch. The thumping got so loud at times I thought the hull would break.
My point for bringing this up, has to do with a belief that a natural cycle has as much to blame for the Stripers demise at the time, as does the damming of spawning grounds and PCBs. Imagine all these causes coming together within 10-20 years, as it seems, they did.
Blues alone will eat anything that moves, including schoolies. Lets say the school of blues I witnessed, was twice the size of the bay and thrived for several years eating all the bait, up and down the east coast. This would produce one very large gap in not only the food chain, but any indigenous frie, especially the already depleted Striper hatchlings.
Bottom line, it was a tough decade for these fish that are loved enough by too many to sit around and speculate their demise so certain people like Bob Pond made it a priority to save our sport through raising, research and releasing frie.
In honor of their hard work and my love of fishing these impressive predators, I catch, photograph and release. "CPR"
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Threaded Mode