Stock Assessments

[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!

[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.

[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...

[MakoMike]

FWIW, the guys on the south shore of Long Island are asking "what's the problem here, we had the best season we ever had last year." Guys fishing Stellwagon can't get away from the stripers. There were plenty of fish last year off the south side of Block Island. Maybe its a local problem?

[Sea Dangles]

Bossman,before you get your underpants in a bunch try to look at it as a compliment. As the chief bottle yada of the "fishing club" here it's more than just about you.Your participation,or lack thereof makes more of an impact on the tournament than you account for.The absence of SB.com would make more than a ripple On The Water.It's a voice of the fishing community that OTW is in tune with.This abstinance could result in future rules changes that you have mentioned as possibly being needed for the tournament in the name of coservation.While I commend your personal sacrifices made on behest of the fishies I just think you could do more.By doing less.

[JohnR]

And next year, depending on the Assessments, there is a pretty good chance we won't be doing it unless there is significant change in the Tourney. I see what you are stating here and one could counter if more teams that are participating chose to do what we do and significantly limit their entered fish, our participation could possibly have beneficial effect on other teams.

One of my points is that the Striper Cup has far lower impact than a lot of other things we could be rallying around and working on. Even then, our participation in the cup is determined yearly.

[MAKAI]

Too bad that as people we tend to be " reactive ", rather than " proactive ".


A proactive approach to a lot of things in life could only be a good thing.

[Rockfish9]

Originally Posted by MakoMike

FWIW, the guys on the south shore of Long Island are asking "what's the problem here, we had the best season we ever had last year." Guys fishing Stellwagon can't get away from the stripers. There were plenty of fish last year off the south side of Block Island. Maybe its a local problem?

From north side of the cape to Maine?... not likely... lots of large not enough small....the probelm becomes more eveident the farther north you go...the less fish in the biomass, the less you have to migrate...

I agree with Mike P's take.. .. pointing fingers is no way to go about management... those of us that have been around the block a few times have seen this all before.. including the playing of the blame game...the problem lies in management... I also believe in fixing the bait problem... we havent had a school of pogies (other than for a single tide) in the Merrimack in almost two decades.. .. and in the mid 80's there were so many of them, you could snag enough for a mornings fishing in a half an hour...EVERY morning..

[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.