stripedbass.com at a glance

This site is for people who love striped bass -- fishing for them, researching them, eating them, whatever ...

stripedbass.com is in extremely early development. Check back and watch it grow

Your ad here?

Yes I will be adding advertising to this site before long. For one thing I'll experiment with "real-time ads" a la those at MinnPost.com, allowing advertisers to update their own ads whenever they want. For instance, if you run a charter fishing business and have a cancellation you'd like to try to fill, you'll be able to update your own ad to note that fact.

Initially these updates will be based on Twitter feeds. Stay tuned for more details.

archives

categories

tag cloud
« Fishing report roundup  
  51 lb striper landed from boat off Plum Island »

Commercial striped bass season in MA

This thorough article in the Nantucket Independent reports on legislation that would shut the commercial striped bass fishery in Massachusetts. The bill is modeled on Maine’s commercial striper fishing ban but the article concludes it’s unlikely to get out of legislative committee without substantial changes, if at all.

My personal take: I consider striped bass a game fish but don’t have a problem with a sustainable striper harvest — both by recreational anglers and a commercial fishery, especially hook-and-line with little waste, and carefully regulated as it is now in Massachusetts.

Regulatory efforts have worked to bring the striper stocks back from their nadir in past decades and in fact not long ago there were indications of overpopulation. There will always be cyclical fluctuations in the stocks but I don’t think we’re seeing indications of the kind of collapse that happened two or three decades ago. Stocks need to be carefully monitored but as things now stand I’m fine with harvesting a fair number of stripers for the table. And my sense is that the current commercial harvest isn’t big enough to harm the recreational striper fishing industry, which is an important economic engine of its own.

I will say there are a couple parts of the proposed legislation that I strong support, as it applies to recreational fishing. I believe the catch limit per day should be lowered from two to one. And more importantly I believe Massachusetts and other states on the striper coast should standardize on Maine’s regulations, with anglers allowed to keep one fish a day that is either between 20 and 26 inches or longer than 40 inches. The “slot” of 26 to 40 inches protects stripers in their most productive breeding years.

What do you think?

August 7th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized
  • vicvanexel
    i agree with all that you have said. my only concern , as a commercial striped bass fisherman, is that the recreational fisherman feel so strongly that the stock is depleted. i completely understand why they feel this way. i was only a recreational striper fisherman for most of my life, and though i found it very enjoyable i also found it frustrating that i rarely caught a "BIG ONE". I truly felt the population was down too. however, as i was able to get more free time, and a had a little extra money to invest, i decided to try my hand at commercial bass fishing. The first thing i learned was that the big fish were abundant and flourishing, however, i also learned they were not an easy prey. sure, sometimes with the right bait falling on the right school anyone could land one, but normally it was the same guys who were always landing the keepers while the rest of us kept getting shorts and bluefish. as difficult as this was to swallow i came to the realization that i was just not a good fisherman. so i decided to do what i had to do to get better, which involved putting a lot of time , money, and patience into increasing my chances. and sure enough 4 years later i am catching lots of keepers and sometimes even my limit. but it should be noted that i still get frustrated, i have a remarkable fish finder, which is a must for striper fishing, and there are times when i am literally marking thousands of large bass right beneath my boat and i just cant get one to bite. point is, there are plenty of big stripers down there. some guys just cant catch them and instead of realizing that they dont know how to catch them they blame it on the commercial guys, saying they are catching too many and that there are no fish left. this is just plain wrong and unfair. these commercial bass fisherman are more dedicated to the species than anyone, it is there lively hood and something they want there children to be able to do. they invest half the year into preparing for a season which lasts at best 5 weeks. please dont try to take this away from us just because you have yet catch a 30 pounder. trust me they are there, and they are smart, just because you spent $500 on your fancy gear does not mean they will bite on your line though.
  • jb
    The slot of 26-40 inches only protects small, less fecund stripers. Unfortunately, many are under the misconception that fish between 6 and 20 lbs (26-40 inches) are the most productive prime breeders. rules that would prohibit more than one fish per day and rules that would allow fish to become prime breeders before being open to harvest peril would solve the inshore fishery problem. Limits consisting of 36 inches and one fish per angler will absolutely be the answer. It has already been proven.
  • Thanks for the comment. I've done some more reading since I initially posted this and now am of the opinion that the biggest problem is not in details of the current harvest of the striped bass (though it still seems silly to have inconsistent regulations up and down the coast for a migratory fish) but in overfishing of their most important food source, menhaden.
blog comments powered by Disqus