Quote:
Originally Posted by numbskull
If I'm a striper, I like my chances one helluva lot better getting caught by some dude with a fly rod than by any other method out there.
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So you'd rather inhale a small "J" hook, possibly deep depending on nothing more than luck, and then are played out until exhaustion on light tackle?
I think I'd rather be one of those bass that hits a squid bar with a 14/0 Jobu, planed out on a 130, and released in 45 seconds
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Back to the point, when you are talking commercial versus recreational the difference is small numbers of fish targeted and harvested over a short season versus large numbers of fish caught and injured over an entire season.
Commercial fishing is over and done with in 2-3 weeks; legal sized fish are targeted, harvested, the quota is filled, and it's over. It might appear wrong to see tote after tote of dead stripers heading to market, but that's just a knee-jerk reaction.
Even if you completely discount release mortality (which on the recreational side more fish actually die post-release than are harvested while on the commercial side it's only 10%), the harvest on the rec side is something like 7X the commercial fishery. If you count release mortality it's >15X the commercial fishery.
Why focus your attention on the something that accounts for < 10% of the total Striper mortality? I'm not saying it needs to be fixed, but the real issue in the northeast Striper fishery (if there was one) would be mortality generated by Catch and Release fishing. It accounts for more dead Stripers than the commercial and recreational harvest combined.
Jon
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