Disturbing..

[Solid]

This is an email that I received from Stripers Forever:
We recently received the latest figures for the National Marine Fishery Service, Marine Recreational Fishing Survey - MRFS. From their website we were able to get the data for the recreational catch of striped bass from 1995 through 2008. The number of fish caught by recreational anglers peaked in 2006. This includes both harvested and live release. Since that time it has dropped by approximately 50%. The catch in 2008 was the lowest since 1996. This trend is in line with the results of our annual fishing survey in the past few years.
These statistics may well be harbingers of real danger for striped bass First and most important, fishing may simply continue to go downhill and the stock will collapse. It could happen, and this would have disastrous consequences for the 3,000,000 plus recreational anglers who avidly pursue striped bass. In addition, the livelihoods of thousands of guides and various other recreational fishing industry workers will be at stake. The commercially-oriented fishery managers can maneuver the commercial fishermen into a much bigger share of the fishery than they’ve had historically, as they have with the fluke fishery; essentially this will choke off recreational fishing opportunities and impact participation in the sport of recreational fishing.


There is only one answer. Striped bass must be made a game fish and managed for the more socially and economically valuable recreational fishery.


To see the table and graph that we have created with the MRFS data, follow this LINK (http://www.stripersforever.org/Info/Stripers_BBoard/I0119D26B) to the SF website.

[logan]

Is this finding really all that unexpected given the ever shrinking size requirements for keepers?

[SIslandBrowns]

My brother-in-law is a Maine guide and last year was a HORRIBLE striper season in Maine. He guides almost exclusively fly-fishermen.

I've been out with him in the past and had some crazy days... big fish and days when we went home early because we were literally exhausted from catching fish.

Last year they were resorting to night fishing with eels to get their clients one fish in a week.

He assumed that the fish just never came North from Mass, where I heard the fishing was decent.

Scary...

[Kype+]

Frankly, I don't believe a word of this. Last year the weather was much different than in past seasons. I recall high water and lots of rain all season long! I have a friend in Connecticut that had one of the best striper fishing seasons ever!
If there is a problem with the fishery perhaps a good look at the number of live releases needs to be considered. Evidently there are studies that say striped bass do not do as well as we might think which is unfortunate. I have been out with a guide a number of seasons ago and we caught fish until my arms ached. According to the guide and my fishing buddy who fished with him before it wasn't his best day by far. We didn't take a fish home but I wonder how many didn't make it now that I have read the study. So SFE is on a crusade to end commercial fishing to enhance sport fishing but I don't hear from SFE a word about the impact of 100 fish C&R days on striped bass. Why is that?
I practice C&R myself and when I read studies that say it isn't so innocent I wonder what the heck are we doing?
NGO's!!!!!!!!!!! There isn't one worth a dime.
Guys, the boys in Connecticut caught plenty of fish in 2008; I simply don't buy this report from SFE.

[s2ary]

No No...Kype is right they all just vacationed in Nova Scotia the last two seasons.

No no that's not it, the Tuna guys are hammering them off shore.

Er well... they just stayed south this year because they actually enjoy competing with southern species and that whole migrating north to avoid competition and gaining access to greater resources thing is over rated anyways.

If you think for one minute that the striper fishery is healthy than you have never fished for stripers. To think that an entire fishery that spans 3/4 of the Atlantic Seaboard can hide for a season let alone two of three seasons is ludicrous.

Ask me how I really feel. :lol:

[natefish]

It does seem hard to believe one season in one area can determine the decline of a fishery. I have a hard time believing that the amazing season of 2007 was the end. However I do believe that fishing regulations need to be looked at. Funny thing about the size restrictions is that most breeding fish are over 30". So restricting keeper size fish to one 20-26" fish a day may not be a bad idea. As far as commercial fishing I wonder how much they could take in one year? Is there any where to find their catch of last year compared to other years? Seems that would be relevant.

[OTTER]

I have long felt and said ( to NHF&G) that allowing anglers to keep stripers over 40 inches is scientifically wrong. These big fish are almost all females and lay huge numbers of eggs as they get this size and larger.

Allowing anglers to keep one fish in the 20 to 26 inch range as the State of Maine does makes sense to me. That is one good meal which is all folks should be eating in a week according to the various warnings.

[Kype+]

S2ary

Who other than you said a word about Nova Scotia???????
Most of my post had to do with a study I read some time ago which said striped bass do not C&R well.
Your response is way out there man! Like Pluto!

[BugChucka]

Kype, he was just pointing out some theories based around observations. Nova Scotia saw an abnormaly high number of stripers from what I've gathered. From shore, I saw a ton of early season schoolies like normal, large early season fish in good numbers, a spotty summer in nh as usual, lots of fish around BI, very few fish in Maine. I have all my outings in my Journal. I don't think it was a great year but it was far from as horrible as people claim IMO. There were fish in the Piscat. all damn season. From a scientific standpoint things are obviously not in the best of shape but all too often you here people basing a season around a few outings (not to say anyone here is doing that). People shouldn't even begin to speculate unless their out there at least like 50 times... think casino logic, you might bet on black and hit red 14 times in a row. Then when you're sitting at home cursing you're luck some other guy just hit black 14 times in a row, or Bug's out there landing a monster striper lol....

[Trout Hunter]

Just read an artcile in American Angler about striper poaching - These guys took 600,000 pounds and sold it on the black market - estimated 3-7 million - then they got caught - If there is one group caught there are 10 more that get away with it

Not sure if that impacts the fishery in a huge way but it can't help..............

[Kype+]

Thanks for the response Bug!
S2ary, I didn't know that the bass were in Nova Scotia this past season in large numbers. Now does that mean they were from down south or were there good numbers of the striped bass from Canadian strains of striped bass?

It just seems like SFE is just about sport fishing and not necessarily representing the best interest of the fish. Do the bass care if they are dead from the impact of sport fishing over commercial fishing? Does SFE look inward and ask if the effects of fabulous C&R catches have anything to do with the health of the fishery? As always there are plenty of situations to point a finger at all exploiting the fish. I don't know about anyone else but I am so tired of seeing fish abused and misused, fought over and profited by them from every angle man can imagine to further exploiting the fish and in some cases people as well.
So Maine didn't get a good striper season in 2008 big deal; it was a good Atlantics salmon season wasn't it? Could there be some relationship between bass and salmon numbers? Hmmmm! :) To say that would be alarmist but not as alarmist as the original letter from SFE.

Bobby

[s2ary]

What is a banner year in Canada? It is subjective at best.

Striper densities vary from location to location each year. In the past southern Maine had lots of fish while Nh was low, vice versa and the same goes with Hampton and the Merrimack south to Boston.

But to the best of my experiences it has never occurred on a coast wide version from Casco Bay south past the Cape. That is like 85% of the typical striper coast during the summer distribution.

Great Bay held fish all summer long, but the numbers were way way down from what they should be.

It is also my recollection that the last two seasons numbers have been low from Casco Bay south to NH.

Where do you draw the line? No fish or the numbers are down. Back in the 90's it was easy to have 50-60 fish days with the average size fish in the 24-30" class. We could constantly catch fish up to 35". Then the size dropped from 36" down to 28" and what do you know, so did the average size fish.

It is the same old same old, why do we even spend time talking about it. In any pressured fishery you catch a lot of fish just under the legal size with very few over.

[BugChucka]

s2ary, I know you fish hard so I value your information, especially since it dates back some time. But I would have to consider it objective when many people verify the "freekish" numbers that were up there. Historicaly, they just don't usually see as many. I guess it is optimistic thinking, but all the info seems to suggest that they were holding further out and North. They seemed to have swept in close to No. Mass/NH during mid May/June/early July and then swept out. I had clouds of tinker and large macks and fish at my feet all through June. In any event, the time for stock assesments is drawing near! Good luck to everybody.

[s2ary]

I heard about that from a few people as well, and I also heard it was a cyclical migration that lasts for 3-4 years. I'd be more inclined to believe it if it accounted for Maine's population, or NH's population, but not the majority of the fish from the Cape northward.

And I also heard of a lot of fish staying south. Which in combination with a Novi migration could account for a large percentage of fish. But that model would be too simplistic to hold water in the real world.

Stripers primarily breed in the south then migrate north to feed along the coastline on large populations of bait fish. They migrate early in the season and stay late. During this period their only real competitor is bluefish which come in the middle of the season.

Striper are typically not an offshore fish like cod or haddock although at times they will modify their primary feeding strategies to take advantage of abundant food resources off the banks. But this is not a primary feeding strategy, and rarely accounts for a large percentage of the population.

Fish staying south is a similar phenomena and may be indicative of a larger issue. When a species that evolved to migrate north into colder waters stays south it then becomes in direct competition with warmer southern species that migrate north into southern waters.

In other words, typically stripers, blues, and tuna spp. migrate north within each species designated range. When this doesn't occur these species suffer from greater competition amongst each other. So there really needs to be a significant reason the species remains south.

For two years in a row we have had vast quantities of bait that for the most part remained unmolested. We have had the abundant resources two years in a row, where are the fish?

Simple competition within the striper population is enough to spread the striper population northward along the coast before bluefish and tuna spp arrive in the summer. It makes sense that the guys down south had a banner year if the overall striper population is low. Southern waters typically maintain only a small percentage of the overall striper population throughout the summer, and because the overall striper population is low, the lack of competition allowed a larger percentage of a smaller population to stay south. This gives them the 'WOW we have tons of fish' phenomena while in reality the overall population could be low.

As for Novi, there is a population of fish in the St. Lawrence that is believed to be the majority of the fish in the Bay of Fundy in most years. Without having data on the St. Lawrence population it is impossible to know if the fish in Novi were from the St Lawrence population or from southern populations or a possible mix of the two.

[BugChucka]

People need to make a distinction between "good fishing", actual stock, and migration patterns. Each of these should be looked at individuallly before any assumptions are made, and then collectively.

That's some very valuable insight, s2ary, regarding changing migration patterns. Bottom line is that I, like most people, can only assume what is taking place. Access to tagging/tracking information is available to those of you who would like to look into migration patterns further.

As far as stock, specificaly Hudson River/Chesap. stock (our fish), I don't think the numbers exactly validify the doom and gloom folks' theories out there:

http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/26736.html

http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/50131.html

The YOY graph seems to suggest a very natural cyclical pattern. 2007 Saw a greater abundance of YOY fish than any other year on the graph.

[s2ary]

People need to make a distinction between "good fishing", actual stock, and migration patterns. Each of these should be looked at individuallly before any assumptions are made, and then collectively.


That right there is the $50,000 statement. I've since lost the links, but the Rutgers/NEU acoustic monitoring was eye opening. Many of the larger fish, summer resident and migratory, maintained reasonably predictable patterns. Fish showing up in the Saco the same weeks years in a row, predictable summer feeding patterns, etc. It showed me that the basically adult fish are not the willy nilly opportunistic scavenger that they had always been described as.

Many of these fish had diurnal movements coordinated with tidal stage and amplitudes during the summer, not general patterns we think of like fish the marsh this time of year then move out to the rocks. These fish had purpose driven feeding strategies like feeding the flats for crabs early in the cycle, a quick run up river to feed the heavy seams on the way out. These patterns changed with the tidal amplitude.

YOY data can be misleading. I'm not 100% sure of the process, but striper YOY populations are highly dependent on precipitation and tidal amplitude ratios during gestation. The eggs float in and out on the tide. If the precip is to high, the water density decreases and the eggs drop out of the water column and die. If the precip is to low than the high salinity water sucks the amniotic fluids out of the eggs by osmosis. So some years you have really high counts and others really low.

Other critical factors are the quality of the 2nd and 3rd year class nursery habitats prior to migration, and bycatch mortality.

[BugChucka]

I'd enjoy taking a look at that Rutgers/NEU info! Some more great insight s2ary!

We were thinking of hitting the Cape tommorow, don't think we're going to do it, probably next Sunday...give it another week to let some larger fish move in. Anybody else been making any southern runs...plenty of fish now in RI.

[s2ary]

Here is some of the data from NJ here.

http://www.stripertracker.org/index.html