Striped Bass Slot

[Broad Bill]

80% of landings I assume. It's a misleading statistic in fisheries with minimal possession limits like 1 fish for bass. You could fish all day, keep your one keeper, catch 19 more fish with one dying and fishing mortality will be 100% of landings while only 5% of catch. Any fishery with minimal possession limits are going to have high fish mortality rates to landings. It's a mathematical certainty compounded by more restrictive slot limits which is what's being adopted.

Curious how exactly marine fisheries know what percentage of recreational fish discarded actually die? For that matter, how do they arrive at a 25% natural mortality rate.

The southern stock in the Chesapeake has gotten crushed. If it's due to pollution and the negative impacts that's having on recruitment, which there's a good chance it is, introducing a paper thin slot between 28" - 31", no different than what they did with the fluke fishery last year, won't address the problem and will only compound it with higher discard mortality levels. How much of the southern stock problem is related to the harvest of bunker by Cooke Inc and their massive processing ships. Has that been thoroughly explored? Always thought management involved identifying problems before proposing solution. Why is the Hudson stock healthy and the Chesapeake not. Answer that question and then propose a solution which specifically addresses the problem as opposed to a coast wide marginal slot limit which is more speculative than fact based management.