Striped catfish rule change?

[bulletbob]

QUOTE=O'Connor;380874]Striped bass have been weighed up to 125 lbs in the late 1800's. In recent times there has been a 90 plus caught in a net in chessie bay. World record is now 80 plus. With that being said not every bass is capable of reaching this size, but it is possible. A 50 lb. has always been the holy grail of bass fishing, but they get a heck of a lot bigger. Fish are much different then humans and most land animals..you can not think of them in the same terms. a 60 lb bass, 1,000 lb tuna etc, will still fight and f like a bastage. They continue to grow and breed until they die.[/QUOTE]


Big old cows don't go into "menopause".. They are prolific breeders, and they would live a LONG time if they weren't put under broilers or on top of a charcoal grill. They can live to be 30 years old.
The best way to have lots of stripers is to let the big breeders live.

A slot limit is the way to go. Do we REALLY need to eat 35- to 50 pound fish??..
If we REALLY must have *MEAT*!!, ling would be a much better alternative anyway, don't you think?... A little self control goes a long way..

Take a good size slot fish for the table, and then put on a hook with the barb crushed down a bit, and fight big stripers all day long,, Whats the big deal about the meat anyway?.. Isn't it about the fishing experience?.. Big stripers have an "oily burlap bag" taste IMHO..., I dunno, seeing big piles of a bloody, noble , very worthy game fish does nothing for me... I think in these days of packed head boats sailing day and night we can easily find ourselves us back to where we were in the 80's... Without a viable striper fishery..
Problem is, back then we had many other species as "backup".. Winter flounder, Whiting, Ling, all you can eat ..Tog, Weaks, Seabass too.. However we caught and ate too many of those as well, just as we are in danger of doing with stripers..
Humans can decimate anything. Hell we even got rid of eels, and thats something I NEVER could have imagined as a young man!..



Male stripers mature at two or three years.
Females first time to spawn is at five or six years.
It takes several years for spawning females to reach full productivity.
An average six year old female produces half a million eggs while a fifteen year old can produce three million.

The big old girls NEED to live... bob