Striped Bass Slot

[Gerry Zagorski]

Originally Posted by hammer4reel

Just curious
How many bass you hearing being caught from cape may to shark river ?

Oceanside bass fishing sucks except a few days a season now
Very hit or miss both spring and fall .
Used to have three solid months in the spring and two more in the fall .

Another month as the Hudson fish move east Thry normally merge with the Chesapeake fish . The next five months without Chesapeake fish adding to the mix all the pressure from Long Island to Maine would be in the Hudson fish .

It’s not just about great fishing now . It’s to keep it
Without the Chesapeake fish rebuilding it won’t take long to hurt our fishery here .
If anything the states east of us saw the issue as it was those states asking for the size limit change .

Seems to me not much has changed in the Ocean Fishery, you get shots here and there in the early spring and it turns on in the late spring if the migrating fish stay inshore.

I hear your point about the overall fishery now and what could happen if the Chesapeake stocks continue to decline. It is however at it's root a Chesapeake issue so how about dealing with those issues like Omega and farm run off?

As far as the states to our east, they want their share and I would have voted the same in their shoes. This is why I think states, within reason, should have some sort of latitude in their local waters to do what makes sense for them. I also think we have and continue to tightened our belts in NJ over the years. We have a lot more conservation minded people that have taken the lead in measures needed to manage the resource.

What do we get in return? A booming local fishery with more restrictive access and no say at all on what happens in our local waters. That really rubs me the wrong way.

[Broad Bill]

Young of the year index, a measure of striped bass recruitment, in the Chesapeake is at the lowest levels seen in 70 years. Environmental factors, agricultural and urban pollutants, is the leading culprit. Add to that Omega Protein, a foreign owned company, harvests over 50,000 metric tons of menhaden from the Chesapeake Bay every year. It's not just the impact that harvest level has on reduced forage for predator species, menhaden are the filter feeders of the bay which clean the water.

The new regs will without doubt increase discard mortality numbers and rates just like the ridiculous 17"-17.99" slot did in NJ with fluke.

So how exactly will the continued excessive harvest of nature's natural filter feeders and the bays primary forage source by Omega Protein, which will exacerbate the environmental problems the Chesapeake is and has been experiencing, coupled with new regulations which will cause more stripers to be killed through discard mortality help the fishery?

[dales529]

Originally Posted by Skolmann

In response to your first question, IMO I think with the increasing use of plugs with treble hooks on both the belly and rear cause just as much or greater harm to a bass. Since bass will eat a baitfish (therefore also a plug) from the head first, removing the rear treble and just keeping the belly treble would help OR swap out the rear treble for an inline single hook OR replace both the rear & belly trebles with single in lines.

I couldn't agree more on the treble hooks but my question was more towards how does this change / reduce mortality? I am all for science and SB conservation / keeping the biomass strong but don't believe this achieves anything except another stranglehold on NJ for hire, PB's and recreational fishermen who have done everything asked and then some . MRIP and Mortality are NOT science based just a guess at best science available.

If SB mortality is so high and as many have posted there are all these boats out on a weekend and some less on weekdays but then there should be dead bass all over Raritan Bay!
Not seeing that! Even if they swim away after release and die later at an 80% of landings they cant all sink to the bottom or be forage for birds, crabs etc. You would see Bass floating dead in numbers after the fleet left daily or at least weekly no?

[hammer4reel]

Originally Posted by Broad Bill

Young of the year index, a measure of striped bass recruitment, in the Chesapeake is at the lowest levels seen in 70 years. Environmental factors, agricultural and urban pollutants, is the leading culprit. Add to that Omega Protein, a foreign owned company, harvests over 50,000 metric tons of menhaden from the Chesapeake Bay every year. It's not just the impact that harvest level has on reduced forage for predator species, menhaden are the filter feeders of the bay which clean the water.

The new regs will without doubt increase discard mortality numbers and rates just like the ridiculous 17"-17.99" slot did in NJ with fluke.

So how exactly will the continued excessive harvest of nature's natural filter feeders and the bays primary forage source by Omega Protein, which will exacerbate the environmental problems the Chesapeake is and has been experiencing, coupled with new regulations which will cause more stripers to be killed through discard mortality help the fishery?

While All those things impacted the fishery . The recreational fisherman destroyed that fishery .
For a decade you could go on the Virginia fishing web site and see thousands of huge females in the dock shots .
The fishing down there from Thanksgiving till the April 1st closure was unreal .
Many guys went there to catch huge fish that were stacked up .

Sadly way too many killed everything they caught , only select guys were practicing catch and release (many from Nj.) .


.

[hammer4reel]

Originally Posted by Gerry Zagorski

Seems to me not much has changed in the Ocean Fishery, you get shots here and there in the early spring and it turns on in the late spring if the migrating fish stay inshore.

I hear your point about the overall fishery now and what could happen if the Chesapeake stocks continue to decline. It is however at it's root a Chesapeake issue so how about dealing with those issues like Omega and farm run off?

As far as the states to our east, they want their share and I would have voted the same in their shoes. This is why I think states, within reason, should have some sort of latitude in their local waters to do what makes sense for them. I also think we have and continue to tightened our belts in NJ over the years. We have a lot more conservation minded people that have taken the lead in measures needed to manage the resource.

What do we get in return? A booming local fishery with more restrictive access and no say at all on what happens in our local waters. That really rubs me the wrong way.

Apparently you were not fishing much Oceanside for bass .
We had a better quality fishery from the end of April through June than the bay experiences .

It’s been about 5 years since we had that type of fishing .
Was nothing to catch 40 fish on an afternoon trip

Now you see the Belmar and point boats running all the way to the bay to catch fish ,
They used to fish from the Ferris wheel to the rocks .

.

[dales529]

So why was there a HUGE Bass bite from Oct 2 to Nov 29 last year OCEAN side from Pt Pleasant a little north some days and a lot south other days. Reports are out there with screen shots of bait and bass blowing up. Blue Planet stuff
That's 2 months fall ocean side in 2022. Spring 2022 wasn't terrible either from Pt south. Not trying to start shyte but at some point it has to make sense and right now it does NOT

[Broad Bill]

Originally Posted by hammer4reel

While All those things impacted the fishery . The recreational fisherman destroyed that fishery .
For a decade you could go on the Virginia fishing web site and see thousands of huge females in the dock shots .
The fishing down there from Thanksgiving till the April 1st closure was unreal .
Many guys went there to catch huge fish that were stacked up .

Sadly way too many killed everything they caught , only select guys were practicing catch and release (many from Nj.)

.

If the regulations allowed it, the regulations are to blame not anglers. I release just about every fish I catch salt or fresh water and would never harvest larger ones. But that's my personal choice and anglers are allowed to keep what the regulations allow whether you agree with that philosophy or not. Until fisheries management learns you need to protect breeders in every fishery with today's technology, both commercial and recreational, no stock is sustainable. The powers to be let a robust fishery get to the point where emergency measures needed in their opinion to be adopted, that alone should tell you who's at fault.

[hammer4reel]

Originally Posted by dales529

So why was there a HUGE Bass bite from Oct 2 to Nov 29 last year OCEAN side from Pt Pleasant a little north some days and a lot south other days. Reports are out there with screen shots of bait and bass blowing up. Blue Planet stuff
That's 2 months fall ocean side in 2022. Spring 2022 wasn't terrible either from Pt south. Not trying to start shyte but at some point it has to make sense and right now it does NOT

Dave that wasn’t the daily bite we used to have , it was hit and miss .
Great one day , a desert the next day .
Spring was the same , days there was miles of bunker with nothing on it .

Used to catch fish on every pod ..
.

[tautog]

How would a slot help the Chesapeake when the issues there are pollution, bunker reduction and invasive blue catfish? Surf fisherman often sink 3 treble hooks into fish, take 5 minutes worth of pictures, and drag them through the sand, but those are the same guys who want catch and release only..*LOL*.

[mikdel]

Originally Posted by 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.

I would think tt\he fish mortality release rate for fluke would go down quite a bit with the 17" size introduction. States like Md. have different regs at certain times of year and differing sizes also. In the summer people still fish for striper at conowingo dam I think its illegal then. The stress from the warm water is too much for them after being caught with floaters seen all the time. I think nj has reasonable regs and with a drop in size in size the discard mortality rate can go up Alot of good reasons for the southern decline in stripers have been mentioned on here.