Striper management Addendum VI

[dales529]

Quote from Addendum VI
"Roughly 90% of annual Atlantic striped bass recreational catch is released alive, of which 9% are estimated to die as a result of being caught (referred to as “release mortality” or “dead releases”). Catch and release fishing has been perceived to have a minimal impact on the population, however a large component of annual striped bass mortality is attributed to release mortality accounting for roughly 48% of total removals in 2017 (49% in 2018). The current recreational striped bass management program uses bag limits and size limits to limit the number of fish that are harvested. However, these measures are not designed to reduce fishing effort and subsequent release mortality. While the proposed measures herein result in lower overall removals, the majority of them also increase dead releases. In order to address dead
releases, effort controls that are better designed to reduce the number of fishing trips that encounter striped bass should be considered (e.g., closed seasons)."

Goal of addendum VI is a 18% reduction in harvest but the above reads like reduction of EFFORT via closed seasons etc.

OK now lets look at the current OCEAN Run of large fish: All fish seem to be 35" or greater which appears to be the reg change they favor but yet all those fish under this proposal would be harvested legally . Granted at a 1 fish limit you could assume a harvest reduction by eliminating the trophy and bonus fish. However those extra releases would die by 48% and put a hurting on the for hire fleets.
If this big fish run happened in the spring at 35" or greater it would do little to stop the harvest of some spawning females pictures and releases again would die by 48% so whats the real gain

Next if the slot limit lets say 24"to 28" or whatever was instituted then ALL the current fish being caught in the OCEAN run would have to be released and again 48% would die anyway.

Next if there were fish in the 24" to 28" mixed in how many outside of that range would need to be released and again at 48% release mortality rate. Not to mention if you caught 6 at 24 to 28 , kept one and released 5 then 2 of the 5 you released are dead anyway.

Bottom line is I dont think any one can manage this and any one plan works.
There almost needs to be an OCEAN set of regs and a BAY / Estuary set of regs. Slots in bays and larger in ocean and of course that will change like the wind and the big fish will be in the bays and the slots in the ocean. So thats no answer either

I wrote this based on the language in addendum VI as quoted in the top of this post and before I get hung out I dont believe 48% of what we release dies anyway but thats how its written. I also dont believe we have to put the recreational for hire Striper fleet out of business if we dont have to.
If we already release 90% of our catch isnt that enough?

In conclusion make sure you dont catch any stripers that are female and in the spawn LOL.

Just sayin none of this is easy and we dont do ourselves any favors by beating on the recreational community of anglers and for hire fleets.