Stock Assessments

[Sea Dangles]

My next door neighbor has a house in Sandwich and loves to walk the canal.He starts at the boat basin and gets in his 4 or 5 miles on a regular basis. He tells me yesterday about the fishermen with six cows lined up behind them on the cell phone."Wake up Jr. please dear,and you come down too.I need three people here so I don't get arrested...."He says he gets asked all the time if he wants a fish by complete strangers just so they can kill more.A real thrill it must be!


Soon this talk of "Let's take back the Cup!" will be replaced by "I can't find the fish." The cameraderie that used to be known as Fishing Legs on this site apparently isn't enough without a Cup to hold in the air and pose for pics next to.The great causes which benefit sick children or fight cruel disease isn't enough either.

So the Bossman has the ball in his court and will disregard all the recent "favorable" stock assessments and wait for next year again to make a decision to pull the plug.Don't want to miss out on all the cameraderie. Age and wisdom seem to dictate common sense on this board.Some folks have never participated in the Cup,some have dropped out due to the writing on the wall.I have a sense they won't regret that decision.I will make the prediction that some day Bossman will regret his decision to lead his charges in search of a victory that will contribute to the defeat of the fish his site is named for.Tough choice.

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by Sea Dangles

My next door neighbor has a house in Sandwich and loves to walk the canal.He starts at the boat basin and gets in his 4 or 5 miles on a regular basis. He tells me yesterday about the fishermen with six cows lined up behind them on the cell phone."Wake up Jr. please dear,and you come down too.I need three people here so I don't get arrested...."He says he gets asked all the time if he wants a fish by complete strangers just so they can kill more.A real thrill it must be!


Soon this talk of "Let's take back the Cup!" will be replaced by "I can't find the fish." The cameraderie that used to be known as Fishing Legs on this site apparently isn't enough without a Cup to hold in the air and pose for pics next to.The great causes which benefit sick children or fight cruel disease isn't enough either.

So the Bossman has the ball in his court and will disregard all the recent "favorable" stock assessments and wait for next year again to make a decision to pull the plug.Don't want to miss out on all the cameraderie. Age and wisdom seem to dictate common sense on this board.Some folks have never participated in the Cup,some have dropped out due to the writing on the wall.I have a sense they won't regret that decision.I will make the prediction that some day Bossman will regret his decision to lead his charges in search of a victory that will contribute to the defeat of the fish his site is named for.Tough choice.

OK, I'll bite.

Funny. I don't recall seeing you at any fisheries meeting over the years. I don't recall seeing you calling for conservation until really late. And I don't recall you making any positive calls for reduction unless it has been to stir the pot.

Short version. Cup or no cup will have no real impact on the problem with the fisheries. As anglers we can continue to argue to make it a game fish or not, and stay divided. We can continue to blame it on the "Bossman" or the this group or that group. We can continue to point fingers at The Other Guy.

OR we can work together to reduce the pressure on the fish through the one single place that regulations are determined - good or bad - the fisheries management councils. I would have liked to see that process happen 2 years ago. It didn't. That process should happen this year in time to impact 2012 regulations. When those meetings happen, I hope to see you at a meeting Chris. (Really, I hope to see you there).

Ahhh, and while I would like to have more fun in the weeds, work beckons.

[JohnR]

Numbskull - I agree - WE are the problem.

WE, as in:

Commercial
Recreational
Charter
Ultralite fisher
47 trebble plugged lure dude
Clam tosser
Ell fisher
Fly Guy

Where this gets addressed is fisheries management. Good or bad.

Weather may have an impact as discussed in that article - THAT is what we don't know.

[numbskull]

Originally Posted by JohnR

Where this gets addressed is fisheries management. Good or bad.

EXACTLY.

And that has obviously been bad.

If you set sail for Bermuda in a 16 foot boat in November and a storm comes and you drown, is the weather to blame?

You can blame the weather for the lack of fish, but good management would have planned for bad weather, and they didn't.

So here we are.
Put the blame where it belongs.

[piemma]

Originally Posted by JohnR

Numbskull - I agree - WE are the problem.

WE, as in:

Commercial
Recreational
Charter
Ultralite fisher
47 trebble plugged lure dude
Clam tosser
Ell fisher
Fly Guy

Where this gets addressed is fisheries management. Good or bad.

Weather may have an impact as discussed in that article - THAT is what we don't know.

Well said.
I really hope I am wrong about the way things are going. I posted a few days ago that this year will tell the tale. If, at the end of the year, the majority of the guys have a worse year than last year then we will know that the slippery slope that we started on is now a full blown slide to oblivion for the species.

Time will tell.

[Pauleye]

After reading and watching what went on in North Carolina and Maryland with massive amounts of stripers being killed from legal and illegal fishing, the downward trend is simply commercial operations have become very efficient at killing fish. What we saw was a small sample of the total. Those were all spawning aged fish. We keep knocking that number out of the spawning mass year after year and you get less baby stripers.

I'm not buying that North Atlantic crap. Massive slaughter leads to massive slaughter.

Also, it is not pollution. The Clean Water Act was enacted in the early 70's. Additional federal and local clean water regulations have been enacted since. The Chesapeake was a dirtier place in the 80's and 90's when spawning was more successful than it is now.

[MakoMike]

Originally Posted by JohnR

OR we can work together to reduce the pressure on the fish through the one single place that regulations are determined - good or bad - the fisheries management councils.

One small correction, Its the ASMFC and the striped bass management board that make the decisions, not the regional fishery management councils.

[JohnR]

Yeh - I keep saying that
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

[Sea Dangles]

Originally Posted by JohnR

OK, I'll bite.

Funny. I don't recall seeing you at any fisheries meeting over the years. I don't recall seeing you calling for conservation until really late. And I don't recall you making any positive calls for reduction unless it has been to stir the pot.

Short version. Cup or no cup will have no real impact on the problem with the fisheries. As anglers we can continue to argue to make it a game fish or not, and stay divided. We can continue to blame it on the "Bossman" or the this group or that group. We can continue to point fingers at The Other Guy.

OR we can work together to reduce the pressure on the fish through the one single place that regulations are determined - good or bad - the fisheries management councils. I would have liked to see that process happen 2 years ago. It didn't. That process should happen this year in time to impact 2012 regulations. When those meetings happen, I hope to see you at a meeting Chris. (Really, I hope to see you there).

Ahhh, and while I would like to have more fun in the weeds, work beckons.

A lot of contradiction in the above post.
So you play by the rules, regardless of whether you think they are good for the fishery because you can? This is the cop out er excuse er solution I should have predicted.Every journey begins with the first step and that step is better late than never.Funny how you claim the reasons for participation are cameraderie but you say next years stock assessments may force you to reconsider your teams participation.But next year will most likely reveal the same downward trend we have been seeing.However if the fisheries management council doesn't forbid participation then the hell with stock assessment.Hypocrisy at its finest.Go Team!

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by Sea Dangles

A lot of contradiction in the above post.
So you play by the rules, regardless of whether you think they are good for the fishery because you can? This is the cop out er excuse er solution I should have predicted.Every journey begins with the first step and that step is better late than never.Funny how you claim the reasons for participation are cameraderie but you say next years stock assessments may force you to reconsider your teams participation.But next year will most likely reveal the same downward trend we have been seeing.However if the fisheries management council doesn't forbid participation then the hell with stock assessment.Hypocrisy at its finest.Go Team!

Ahh, pretty much what I expected for a reply. No, I play far tighter than the rules. I keep 1-4 fish per year. I fish circles with my eels, less trebbles when possible on plugs, no lighter than necessary tackle - regardless of how "sporting", crushed barbs a fair amount of time, and I try to quickly release and 99.99% of the time skip the photo. I think that is a pretty conservation minded way to fish. Do you disagree? Or have you had a Come to Jesus moment recently that recommends fishing within such a fine constraint that it would be near impossible to please you?

I've been advocating for tighter regs for years, I've gone to the meetings that I can attend.

As for the OTW tourney, we recommend far tighter than what the rules allow as well. Hypocritical? I think that is trying to fish the tourney pretty responsibly. By your current implication all other tourneys should be rid as well, which would be a 180 for you.

Seems to me, you just want a bone you can chew on for a bit, take some shots at others, stir the pot, or maybe its my month in the barrel. Again .

[bart]

The whole thing scares me. I still consider myself relatively young and it worries me that I wont be able to enjoy my one true passion in life when i'm older. I also listen to the seasoned vets when they speak and I think others should as well. Just from my own observations, I remember when the fishing was incredible in places like gansett 7-8 years ago when I had no idea what i was doing and would still slam fish. Ever since it's just got worse and worse to the point where I don't even see the point of fishing one of my favorite places anymore. And I don't think bait was the issue, because we found plenty of bait in the fall and there were NO fish on them. Scary if you ask me...

[Mike P]

Originally Posted by Sea Dangles

My next door neighbor has a house in Sandwich and loves to walk the canal.He starts at the boat basin and gets in his 4 or 5 miles on a regular basis. He tells me yesterday about the fishermen with six cows lined up behind them on the cell phone."Wake up Jr. please dear,and you come down too.I need three people here so I don't get arrested...."He says he gets asked all the time if he wants a fish by complete strangers just so they can kill more.A real thrill it must be!

I know a few guys who were taking two fish 40"+ on a morning tide, going home, changing their clothes just in case an EPO noticed them, and coming back for the afternoon tide to take 2 more. 80 lbs of fish a day, killed for ego alone.

Quite a few others took their two fish a day, every day of a run. Nothing illegal about it, but still--how much fish does any one person need? Some would spend most of the day on the phone trying to get their relatives, friends, and neighbors to take some of the fish off their hands.

How many times have all of us been in the position of releasing a decent sized fish, and have the guy next to us say something like, "hey, if you were going to put it back, why didn't you offer it to me first?".

Greed and ego cross the rec/comm border. The rec sector lives in a glass house if all they do is throw stones at the comms for the dwindling stocks. There's waste and greed all over.

All of the problems revert back to the management philosophy---"maximum sutainable yield". As George rightly points out, there's a 5 year lag between decreasing returns and effective steps to correct it. What "maximum sustainable yield" was in 2006 is different than what it is in 2011. But we're still using that F=.30 figure as the yardstick. If the stock assessments are correct, we have seen a 40% decrease in the stock biomass over the last 5 years. So we can't go on managing the stocks by allowing for killing 30% of them per year.