Who has been Striper fishing steady for the last 30 years or more.

[Backbeach Jake]

I'm 55 now, started in the mid-60's. For the table and freezer mostly. In the mid 70's fishing was a necessity.

[Rockfish9]

I've fished plum island all my life, almost from infancy, I'm now 50, as I stated before ,I started in '72, schoolies mostly, I trapped eels and sold them to the local fisherman and bait shops, I dug worms and seined sand eels, I gill netted pogies,I made plenty of mad money on schoolies and bait, but wanted something bigger, I used my money to buy a 16' mirro craft to replace the 14' Amesbury skiff I was using... now I could jig cod in the mouth in the spring and fall ( some will remember that awsome fishing, that we will never see again) but more importantly I could now run the beach at night where the big ones roamed... I studied hard, slept little and won the favor of some of the sharpies that fished nightly, at the age of 17 I took my first "bull" it weighted 38lbs and was caught on a seaworm trolled via an electric motor along a grassy bank in Ipswich bay... I was on my way, a few years latter I got my first 40, it was on a goo-goo eye in the mouth of the river, my right arm and palm still bears the scar of the treble hook that "dead" fish sank into it...

I fished real hard after that, and back then EVERYTHING went to market.. in 84 a huge scool of big bass hung out in the mouth of the river, they never left, incoming, out going, no matter, if you had a boat capable of sitting in the rip and 300' of wire on an outfit capable of delivering a goo-goo or danny to the bottom , you were sure to get into some big fish, several '50's were caught, and I wanted one bad,that fall I bought the boat I have now, an 18' jon dory, it was the perfect battle wagon ( and still is) despite weeks and months of hard fishing my fifty eluded me, there were others caught, but not for me...in July of '86 on a full moon night, on a teacup calm sea in the last curl of the wave along the plum island shorline, my efforts paid off, a 61lb striper inhaled my eel and ended my quest for a 50.... there's been a few since then but none as memorable or satisfying as that one (or as large) the picture of that fish (as well as a few others ove the half century mark) hangs on the "big boy" board at Surfland B&T on plum Island..

fishing now is as good as it gets, I still spend 30-40 hours a week on the water in peak season, I no longer sell them, there are enough big fish being caught that I hope one last school of mobies makes around the tip of the cape and up to plum island before I loose my night vision....it's enough for me to keep going out lookining for one more behemoth bigger than my first...
My .02
Roc

[Mike P]

Originally Posted by bassmaster

Yes it has, C&R back then was more like catch and cooler.

C&R back then = "catch and retail".

[baldwin]

I've only been seriously fishing the salt for about 15 years, but have studied the fishery a bit. Decline of big bass can not be natural cycle. If you have large numbers of small fish, they grow to be big unless they die. When lack of reproductive success occurs, maybe part of the cycle, you get a shortage of smaller fish which takes about 10-20 years to gradually shift that shortage up through the size range to eventually cause a shortage of larger fish. The smaller fish disappear first. That's exactly what happened with the striper crash. Large fish were still being caught, fewer and fewer smaller fish, then none (large nor small).

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by Karl F

Early 80's?.. Dude... c'mon now... rethink that 80, 81, 82???????????????????
couple years after that tho.... that's when I hit the ponds and fell inlove all over again with..

Dude/Stud , pic waay to kewl.

[Casting Z's]

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"

[Pt.JudeJoe]

Originally Posted by gone fishin

Stripers are still there --- bait is disappearing, hence not many shore fish as we would like. Big fish are still being taken off boats. Omega oil is having a field day with the bait.

[Tagger]

started 6yrs. old fresh water at a local pond . It was easy walking distance so we fished every day just about ,.. Very primitive.. We all had bait casters except one kid had a spinning reel and outcast us all . The baitcasters we had weren't Big Dave reels.. Didn't start salt until after High School . 1972.. A friend taught me ,,his uncle taught him . 1st place I fished was the east end jetty, mainland side CC canal . 1st Saltwater fish I ever caught was a Sea Robbin .. Thats one screwed up looking fish if you never saw one before . Just kinda floundered around between the band, girls, fishing, having fun and puking on myself . Always came back to fishing .

[numbskull]

Been at it 45 years. Took about four years to catch my first Striped Bass, had no one to teach me. In retrospect I wouldn't have it any different. Nothing as important has ever seemed as hard since.

[Mr. Sandman]

I've been at it for a while as well. (Below is me (Orient Point) in 1964 I think). Like most kids, my dad got me into fishing. He would boat fish 3nights/week for bass in season and I would go whenever he let me. If the tide was real late and it was a school night I had to stay home..those were the most difficult for me esp when the bite was on. (this was all on eastern LI) I would surf fish any chance I got, sometimes sitting on a rock all day with rod in hand all by myself. My mom thought I was nuts but I was not getting into trouble so she allowed it. Its what I still like to do too. We never sold a fish. The bass limit was 16" with no creel limit. We released anything we didn't eat. We rarely took more then 2 bass home from a trip. We also fished for fluke, weakfish and bluefish too and released any fish we were not going to eat as well.
I didn't start selling anything until the late 70's and even then it was sporatic when I did sell. By 1981 I stopped selling and started C&R releasing any fish not headed for the table and still practice this for the most part today. Part time fishing for money is not going to change your lifestyle significantly (no matter how good you are) and therefore I reasoned it is better off just letting them go. Besides, you feel pretty good about it. If you want money, get a real job, part time comm fishing is not a real job in my view.

IMO the today's fisheries "count" of what recs actually take does not accurately measure the amount of catch and release going on today and therefore recs are "blamed" for killing lots of fish that they really don't.

Also, MA does more harm then good by allowing Recs to keep a foot in both rec and comm fishing but they are so caught up in the politics of it all they get see the real problem. They need to shut fishing down it if is a problem and they just cant do it...ie codfish...20+ years of "management" and it is worse off today then ever but they still let you have a shot at taking breader and small fish, they continue to let the comm guys take limits but recognize the species is in danger...huh? SHUT IT DOWN for a decade and build the stocks back up. Jesus, it is not that hard. Screw the commerical interests...who the heck told them to go fishing in the first place? When I went comm clamming and something happend to the water quality, they shut it down and put hundreds of full timers out of work. The same should be for the fishermen. If the stocks are hurt'n, shut it down. We should care more for the health of the fish stocks then what a comm fisherman puts on his 1098 form.

[justplugit]

Started the salt in mid 50's upto late 60's. Even spent 5 days of our honeymoon fishing BI in Oct 61. Started a family and went over to trout until 1993 when i went back to stripers and never looked back.

In answer to your questions, used to kill every fish i caught/ young bragging rights etc.Over the last 20 years it's all been release. They say you get soft in your old age about killing, but i think it's a new found reference for life.

Imho, cycles have a big affect, but the fishing pressure of surf, high tech boats,party boats, especially over the last 8-10 years, has taken a very heavy toal.

[l.i.fish.in.vt]

My earliest memories of fishing are around 1959 fishing for flounder and fluke in the GSB of LI.i was 4 years old at the time.my father gave up the surf the year i was born and brought a boat. i started surf fishing about 10 years ago.i can always remeber the old timers saying that when there were blowfish around the weakfish would disappear,so i guess they must have thought that fishing was cyclic.we never sold fish but keep everthing we caught. we ate fish 2 to three times a week year round. i am the youngest of seven and had plenty of relatives that we keep in fish.evertime i hear people complain of overfishing i think of all the species of fish that have disappeared that were not fished for commercially or recreationally.i think water quality had as much to do with it as overfishing.i think today that C@R is much bigger on the internet than in real life. sure the guys that post on these forums might practice it but most people i see on the beach or in boats keep there limits Sandman funny thing that every area on the south shore of LI that was closed because of pollution to clamming were opened at some pointeven though i doubt the water quality improved. maybe because it was cheaper to wipe these areas out then police them.maybe keeping fish should be banned for recs if they are doing it for fun and have a commercial fishery , rod and reel only for all species.i bet that would never happen