As I've said many times the fishing in Rhode Island for striped bass is not what it was 5 years ago. This is a very legitimate concern for everyone that fishes for them. I'd like to spend some time writing about causes of the decline and possible solutions. For whatever reason, the welfare of striped bass has become a political issue. I can not understand why. It would seem to me that the success of a fish species would have nothing to do with politics but it does.
The problem with writing about a delicate subject and giving my opinion is, it is very hard not to push statistics in a way to strengthen your argument. It is true that statistics can be twisted. You would think numbers are cold hard facts. The truth is polls can be manipulated and surveys can become biased based on who fills them out. With this in mind I give you the facts I have researched.
According to Stripers Forever ( a group trying to make stripers a gamefish and stop it from being sold commercially) the recreational catch of striped bass is down 71% since 2006. This means fishermen are catching only about 29% of what they used too. For every three stripers you caught in 2010 you caught ten in 2006. As for me, and looking at these numbers I would agree with these numbers. That said and to be fair, I fished far less for stripers in 09 and 2010 than I used too. The reason for fishing less is because there are far less stripers. Once I've gotten skunked a couple times in a row, I would stop fishing for them. I am also far more selective in my dates I fish. I always try to fish the new moon of June and October. I have a couple of great high tide spots for May.
In the old days ( 5 years ago ) I did not have to be so selective. There were so many more fish around. I did not have to wait for the optimal moon or tide. As long as there wasn't a nor'easter blowing in off the ocean, I knew I had a great chance of catching fish. Now, wasting the $ 20 dollars on the drive down to Narragansett, is hardly worth the effort. The first year I learned to striper fish and everything was new to me, I had a streak of 14 consecutive nights catching a keeper. That's right, FOURTEEN. This was a guy who knew virtually nothing about striper fishing. I was ignorant of so many things at the beginning. Basically I knew how to sling eels and stand on slippery rocks. I was using a $30 dollar saltwater combo and catching fish.Now that I know what I'm doing, and would compare my skills with ( almost) anyone, catching a keeper 2 nights in a row, means fishing is fantastic.
I am not the only one. I know of a guy that takes his vacation last week of October ( fall migration) who went fishless for the whole week, fishing mornings and nights. My friend Dave reports terrible fishing also.
There are people reading this on the Cape that will tell you they catch a ton of keepers. They will tell you they hardly catch a schoolie. Those people can be believed. The dominate year classes right now are from 1996 and 2002. So the fish people are catching are about 10 years old or older. Those same people who catch these large fish are not catching many small ones. This sounds wonderful if your after trophies. Unfortunately as we all no, small fish grow into big fish. This is especially true with striped bass. We need a lot of schoolies to have a healthy population in the future. There are no hatcheries dumping full grown striped bass in the Atlantic Ocean.
Now for the controversial aspect of this blog.
Commercial fishermen:
Stripers are not gamefish. They can be caught and sold to fish markets by fishermen with a commercial permit. The commercial quota is " supposedly" tightly monitored. Once a state reaches there quota the season stops. Each state has different regulations. I won't get into everyone. Just a couple of examples. In Rhode Island the keeper size for recreational fishermen is 28" for commercial guys it is 34". Theory being the smaller fish get to spawn before the commercial guys catch them. Again it sounds great in theory, but the bigger the bass the more eggs she will lay. Where as a just legal striper might lay 800,00 eggs a fifty pounder will lay over 4 MILLION! Not only will the giant lay more eggs, but they will have the genetics to produce more trophy size fish. Taking large numbers of big female stripers, has two negative consequences. You are removing large fish that are trophies or will be within a couple years and of course removing the large breeding females hurts the number of fish in the next generation.
Another and much more disgusting fishery is the winter commercial fishery in North Carolina. The rules state the fishermen can keep the biggest 50 stripers they catch in a day. Notice I said biggest. This means, as a fishing boat you've caught 50 keepers but its still early. You keep fishing. You catch some fish bigger than you've already caught. What do you do? You throw the smaller DEAD stripers overboard. They died for nothing and they will go to waste. This rule definitely encourages culling. It is a disgusting and wasteful rule.
The truth about commercial fishing for stripers in MA and Rhode Island is there is really no reason for it. MUCH more money is spent on stripers by rec fishermen than by commercial guys. Some tackle shops could get by just with the revenue made from stripers alone.
Quite a few guys with permits are retires that are fishing everyday anyway. They figure they may as well make some money while they are out there.
Many of the commercial fishermen are fishing guides and charters. ( This is a touchy subject). They make there living taking out clients. The fish they sell at the market is extra money. Maybe there are some people that depend on the sale of stripers to put food on the table for their family. The season is short so I honestly doubt many people rely on stripers for their annual income in New England.
More perplexing to me, is why would a guide or charter boat captain want to hurt the population of big stripers by selling them off at the market. In the long term, they are only hurting themselves. The guiding season runs spring through the fall. The more fish in the water, the more happy clients, the more repeat customers. The extra couple hundred dollars made by selling fish does not seem worth it to me at all. If the stocks crash they loose their livelyhood!
I could go on and on about the negative aspects of commercial fishermen. It really boils down to this, the less fish in the water now, the less there will be in the future.
Another overlooked problem with the fishery is poaching. As much as I complain about commercial anglers, recreational anglers are not by any means entirely faultless in the population decline. I have seen people keeping undersized stripers a few times. I've seen fish kept as small as 14 inches. When I see this I do call the Environmental Police. I don't know if anyone I have ever called on has gotten caught. Unfortunately, people do catch undersized fish all the time. Its heartbreaking but it happens.
The other thing recreational anglers can be guilty of is keeping fish they do not need. One guy who seemed to keep all the legal fish he was allowed was asked by another fisherman " Do you ever throw any of them back? " His reply was " They call 'em keepers for a reason"
This attitude has to stop. There is no place for " meat hunters " anymore. Its okay to keep the occasional fish. It is not my place to say what is to many, but to keep every keeper everytime out seems excessive to me.
Ok: How to Fix the Problem
Now that I have made everyone see how critical the problem is, it is time for solutions. Here are mine.
1. Protect the baitfish. Make it illegal for commercial taking of menhaden. These large baitfish are like striper candy. If there are a lot of menhaden around there will be a lot of HEALTHY stripers.
Keep the ban on the taking of herring. Guys used to line up at dawn at the Canal for the herring warden to give them the daily allotment. Before that, guys would catch herring by the barrel full. Times have changed, the stripers need the herring more than the striper fisherman.
2. Obvious, but make stripers a GAMEFISH. If stripers were a gamefish 5 years ago, we would litterally have MILLIONS more breeders in the population right now. Sorry commercial guys but if you keep killing the breeders, we all loose. I am sensative to jobs in this economy. I do not believe many people rely on striped bass as a large chunk of there income. Also, many ( possibly thousands) people rely on recreational fishermen as income directly ( tackle shops, guide services, charter boats, marinas, rental houses) and indirectly ( everytime I go to Narragansett I stop at a 24 hour gas station for a pint of milk and a candy bar on my ride home). So much more money is generated by recreational fishermen than commercial, its not even a debate. If the population crashes many people will loose income or jobs.
3. Eels are one of the best striper baits. There is very little data on how much they are eaten naturally. Unfortunately, eels are very close to being put on the endangered species list. They should also be banned from being used as bait for the next 10 years. Populations will need to be studied.
4. Enforcement- In my years fishing, I have seen one game warden. We need to crack down on undersized fish being kept. Now that we have to pay for a saltwater license there is NO reason not to hire game wardens and find poachers. We need to stop the taking of to small and to many.
5. Up the minimum size limit. In the 1980's the legal size was 36 inches. In the very old days the legal size was 16 inches. Right now there is a 2 fish limit and the size in most states is 28 inches.
Each state regulates as they see fit.
A 36 inch striper is a big fish. If its healthy it probably weighs around 18 pounds. I think that is a bit extreme in a healthy population. I would up the size limit to 34 inches, that 2 inch difference is about 4 pounds. My reason for choosing 34 inches is, at that size a female striper is probably 9 years old, giving it multiple opportunities to spawn. It seems like a good compromise size from a trophy and multiple times breeding. I would have that up and down the coast in all states except Maine. Maine gets many fewer large fish than the rest of the Atlantic states. I would allow a 24 inch limit for them. If you don't, Maine residents may go years without tasting a striper, and they pay for licenses too.
6. One fish limit /day. No debate
7. Tournaments- There are a lot of tournaments out there for striped bass. Most ( not all ) are kill tournaments. Take the Striper Cup which is one of the biggest tournaments in the northeast. There are weekly and monthly prizes for the biggest fish weighed. A prize to the angler that weighs the THREE biggest fish of the year. There is a prize to the club that weighs in the 10 heaviest fish. It is hard to argue with commercial guys when rec guys are killing fish to win tournaments.
We need more catch and release tournaments. We need to get rid of club vs. club tournaments. Guys are going to weigh in big fish just to help there club. We don't need that, If there are month long or season long tournaments, no fish should qualify UNLESS it is bigger than the leader. None of this, three largest or ten largest bullshit. Lets keep the kills to a minimum.
7. There is a way to measure if there was a good or bad spawning year for striped bass. It is called the young of the year index. Basically to keep it simple, its based on how many baby bass are caught in a sampling. There has not been a good year class since 2002. We need good year classes every few years. Luckily stripers are long lived. We do not need every year to be great. Natural influences like to much rain, not enough rain, cold water all factor in. We need to control the things we can control. Clean water in the Chesapeake Bay being the number one thing. Pollutants will kill eggs and larvae.
8. Self control- There is no need to keep a fish for food if you already have fish in your freezer. It sounds preachy. It is not my place to say how much a person should keep if they are harvesting fish legally. If laws are not broken, than it becomes a moral issue. Everyone has to answer the question "How much is enough? " individually. Its tough to complain about the lack of fish if your a contributor to the problem. I do keep a couple fish a year. I do give some to my aunt.
This year, I will only keep one fish for the table. My rule that I live by is I only keep fish if I don't have any in the freezer OR it is bigger than my largest I've ever caught. ( 33 pounds as of now). This year, I will cut back and only keep one fish.
Also, I will not buy or use eels for bait. I will only enter catch and release tournaments.
Lets hope its not to late to save this great fish.
The problem with writing about a delicate subject and giving my opinion is, it is very hard not to push statistics in a way to strengthen your argument. It is true that statistics can be twisted. You would think numbers are cold hard facts. The truth is polls can be manipulated and surveys can become biased based on who fills them out. With this in mind I give you the facts I have researched.
According to Stripers Forever ( a group trying to make stripers a gamefish and stop it from being sold commercially) the recreational catch of striped bass is down 71% since 2006. This means fishermen are catching only about 29% of what they used too. For every three stripers you caught in 2010 you caught ten in 2006. As for me, and looking at these numbers I would agree with these numbers. That said and to be fair, I fished far less for stripers in 09 and 2010 than I used too. The reason for fishing less is because there are far less stripers. Once I've gotten skunked a couple times in a row, I would stop fishing for them. I am also far more selective in my dates I fish. I always try to fish the new moon of June and October. I have a couple of great high tide spots for May.
In the old days ( 5 years ago ) I did not have to be so selective. There were so many more fish around. I did not have to wait for the optimal moon or tide. As long as there wasn't a nor'easter blowing in off the ocean, I knew I had a great chance of catching fish. Now, wasting the $ 20 dollars on the drive down to Narragansett, is hardly worth the effort. The first year I learned to striper fish and everything was new to me, I had a streak of 14 consecutive nights catching a keeper. That's right, FOURTEEN. This was a guy who knew virtually nothing about striper fishing. I was ignorant of so many things at the beginning. Basically I knew how to sling eels and stand on slippery rocks. I was using a $30 dollar saltwater combo and catching fish.Now that I know what I'm doing, and would compare my skills with ( almost) anyone, catching a keeper 2 nights in a row, means fishing is fantastic.
I am not the only one. I know of a guy that takes his vacation last week of October ( fall migration) who went fishless for the whole week, fishing mornings and nights. My friend Dave reports terrible fishing also.
There are people reading this on the Cape that will tell you they catch a ton of keepers. They will tell you they hardly catch a schoolie. Those people can be believed. The dominate year classes right now are from 1996 and 2002. So the fish people are catching are about 10 years old or older. Those same people who catch these large fish are not catching many small ones. This sounds wonderful if your after trophies. Unfortunately as we all no, small fish grow into big fish. This is especially true with striped bass. We need a lot of schoolies to have a healthy population in the future. There are no hatcheries dumping full grown striped bass in the Atlantic Ocean.
Now for the controversial aspect of this blog.
Commercial fishermen:
Stripers are not gamefish. They can be caught and sold to fish markets by fishermen with a commercial permit. The commercial quota is " supposedly" tightly monitored. Once a state reaches there quota the season stops. Each state has different regulations. I won't get into everyone. Just a couple of examples. In Rhode Island the keeper size for recreational fishermen is 28" for commercial guys it is 34". Theory being the smaller fish get to spawn before the commercial guys catch them. Again it sounds great in theory, but the bigger the bass the more eggs she will lay. Where as a just legal striper might lay 800,00 eggs a fifty pounder will lay over 4 MILLION! Not only will the giant lay more eggs, but they will have the genetics to produce more trophy size fish. Taking large numbers of big female stripers, has two negative consequences. You are removing large fish that are trophies or will be within a couple years and of course removing the large breeding females hurts the number of fish in the next generation.
Another and much more disgusting fishery is the winter commercial fishery in North Carolina. The rules state the fishermen can keep the biggest 50 stripers they catch in a day. Notice I said biggest. This means, as a fishing boat you've caught 50 keepers but its still early. You keep fishing. You catch some fish bigger than you've already caught. What do you do? You throw the smaller DEAD stripers overboard. They died for nothing and they will go to waste. This rule definitely encourages culling. It is a disgusting and wasteful rule.
The truth about commercial fishing for stripers in MA and Rhode Island is there is really no reason for it. MUCH more money is spent on stripers by rec fishermen than by commercial guys. Some tackle shops could get by just with the revenue made from stripers alone.
Quite a few guys with permits are retires that are fishing everyday anyway. They figure they may as well make some money while they are out there.
Many of the commercial fishermen are fishing guides and charters. ( This is a touchy subject). They make there living taking out clients. The fish they sell at the market is extra money. Maybe there are some people that depend on the sale of stripers to put food on the table for their family. The season is short so I honestly doubt many people rely on stripers for their annual income in New England.
More perplexing to me, is why would a guide or charter boat captain want to hurt the population of big stripers by selling them off at the market. In the long term, they are only hurting themselves. The guiding season runs spring through the fall. The more fish in the water, the more happy clients, the more repeat customers. The extra couple hundred dollars made by selling fish does not seem worth it to me at all. If the stocks crash they loose their livelyhood!
I could go on and on about the negative aspects of commercial fishermen. It really boils down to this, the less fish in the water now, the less there will be in the future.
Another overlooked problem with the fishery is poaching. As much as I complain about commercial anglers, recreational anglers are not by any means entirely faultless in the population decline. I have seen people keeping undersized stripers a few times. I've seen fish kept as small as 14 inches. When I see this I do call the Environmental Police. I don't know if anyone I have ever called on has gotten caught. Unfortunately, people do catch undersized fish all the time. Its heartbreaking but it happens.
The other thing recreational anglers can be guilty of is keeping fish they do not need. One guy who seemed to keep all the legal fish he was allowed was asked by another fisherman " Do you ever throw any of them back? " His reply was " They call 'em keepers for a reason"
This attitude has to stop. There is no place for " meat hunters " anymore. Its okay to keep the occasional fish. It is not my place to say what is to many, but to keep every keeper everytime out seems excessive to me.
Ok: How to Fix the Problem
Now that I have made everyone see how critical the problem is, it is time for solutions. Here are mine.
1. Protect the baitfish. Make it illegal for commercial taking of menhaden. These large baitfish are like striper candy. If there are a lot of menhaden around there will be a lot of HEALTHY stripers.
Keep the ban on the taking of herring. Guys used to line up at dawn at the Canal for the herring warden to give them the daily allotment. Before that, guys would catch herring by the barrel full. Times have changed, the stripers need the herring more than the striper fisherman.
2. Obvious, but make stripers a GAMEFISH. If stripers were a gamefish 5 years ago, we would litterally have MILLIONS more breeders in the population right now. Sorry commercial guys but if you keep killing the breeders, we all loose. I am sensative to jobs in this economy. I do not believe many people rely on striped bass as a large chunk of there income. Also, many ( possibly thousands) people rely on recreational fishermen as income directly ( tackle shops, guide services, charter boats, marinas, rental houses) and indirectly ( everytime I go to Narragansett I stop at a 24 hour gas station for a pint of milk and a candy bar on my ride home). So much more money is generated by recreational fishermen than commercial, its not even a debate. If the population crashes many people will loose income or jobs.
3. Eels are one of the best striper baits. There is very little data on how much they are eaten naturally. Unfortunately, eels are very close to being put on the endangered species list. They should also be banned from being used as bait for the next 10 years. Populations will need to be studied.
4. Enforcement- In my years fishing, I have seen one game warden. We need to crack down on undersized fish being kept. Now that we have to pay for a saltwater license there is NO reason not to hire game wardens and find poachers. We need to stop the taking of to small and to many.
5. Up the minimum size limit. In the 1980's the legal size was 36 inches. In the very old days the legal size was 16 inches. Right now there is a 2 fish limit and the size in most states is 28 inches.
Each state regulates as they see fit.
A 36 inch striper is a big fish. If its healthy it probably weighs around 18 pounds. I think that is a bit extreme in a healthy population. I would up the size limit to 34 inches, that 2 inch difference is about 4 pounds. My reason for choosing 34 inches is, at that size a female striper is probably 9 years old, giving it multiple opportunities to spawn. It seems like a good compromise size from a trophy and multiple times breeding. I would have that up and down the coast in all states except Maine. Maine gets many fewer large fish than the rest of the Atlantic states. I would allow a 24 inch limit for them. If you don't, Maine residents may go years without tasting a striper, and they pay for licenses too.
6. One fish limit /day. No debate
7. Tournaments- There are a lot of tournaments out there for striped bass. Most ( not all ) are kill tournaments. Take the Striper Cup which is one of the biggest tournaments in the northeast. There are weekly and monthly prizes for the biggest fish weighed. A prize to the angler that weighs the THREE biggest fish of the year. There is a prize to the club that weighs in the 10 heaviest fish. It is hard to argue with commercial guys when rec guys are killing fish to win tournaments.
We need more catch and release tournaments. We need to get rid of club vs. club tournaments. Guys are going to weigh in big fish just to help there club. We don't need that, If there are month long or season long tournaments, no fish should qualify UNLESS it is bigger than the leader. None of this, three largest or ten largest bullshit. Lets keep the kills to a minimum.
7. There is a way to measure if there was a good or bad spawning year for striped bass. It is called the young of the year index. Basically to keep it simple, its based on how many baby bass are caught in a sampling. There has not been a good year class since 2002. We need good year classes every few years. Luckily stripers are long lived. We do not need every year to be great. Natural influences like to much rain, not enough rain, cold water all factor in. We need to control the things we can control. Clean water in the Chesapeake Bay being the number one thing. Pollutants will kill eggs and larvae.
8. Self control- There is no need to keep a fish for food if you already have fish in your freezer. It sounds preachy. It is not my place to say how much a person should keep if they are harvesting fish legally. If laws are not broken, than it becomes a moral issue. Everyone has to answer the question "How much is enough? " individually. Its tough to complain about the lack of fish if your a contributor to the problem. I do keep a couple fish a year. I do give some to my aunt.
This year, I will only keep one fish for the table. My rule that I live by is I only keep fish if I don't have any in the freezer OR it is bigger than my largest I've ever caught. ( 33 pounds as of now). This year, I will cut back and only keep one fish.
Also, I will not buy or use eels for bait. I will only enter catch and release tournaments.
Lets hope its not to late to save this great fish.
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