Stock Assessments

[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.