Striped Bass Size Limits

[Capt Sal]

Originally Posted by Aaron_Jasper

Capt Sal

I have to ask the questio, how do you know there are so many fish out there? Are you fishing for them? Or do you go with the, “we are fishing for bluefish” excuse?

I was at striped day and I can tell you that there was no one there saying that the fishery is NOT in trouble. I was surprised by it. These fish are valuable, not only for Sportfishing, but also for the charter boat fleet as well.

When the charter boats keep on taking boat limits of fish multiple times a day, all they are doing is putting themselves out of business. It is not a sustainable business model as the fish do not fall out of trees at 30 plus pounds.

If you would like the PDF of the latest stock assessment send an e mail to aaron@westbranchholdings.com I will be more than happy to send it to you or anyone on the forum who would like to read it.

Maybe we should ban charter boats?Bluefish excuse?NO! That hurts the PB boats because if they have one striper in the box they can not cross the three mile line and chase bluefish.

[Capt Sal]

[QUOTE=hammer4reel;523940]Normally I would agree with you ,as our thinking is the same on most aspects of striper fishing .

But the proof of lack of fish staging into their breeding areas is showing a drastic decline.
I agree many fish pass us outside the 3 mile line.
But the bass are getting crushed east of us for 5 months and south of us for 4 months.
The slaughter of egg filled breeders in VA is unreal again due to a warmer winter .
And I like they want to decrease the amount of large breeders .
Having a constant breeding stock will allow more smaller slot fish to be taken without hurting future stocks .

Now if we could just push the bunker boats off the beach a few miles we could have the fishery back we had just 5 years ago.

.[Striper fishing changes year to year.The great June run you guys use to have every year is undependable.This spring may bass went straight up the Hudson and did not stage in Raritan as good as some years.Bunker has alot to do with it.I also believe in conservation.The fact is the limit has been reduced!It was two bass 28'' or better plus a trophy tag.Three bass per person is way to much.

[Aaron_Jasper]

Captain Sal

The limit is still up to three per person.

Regarding the three mile line, if you are targeting striped bass it is what it is.

I mean look at the bluefish populations, when I was a kid they were a nuisance, now you hope to see them in good numbers. Do you think a 10-15 fish per day, per man has anything to do with their scarcity?

The fact is there are are far less bass now than there were 8-10 years ago.

Everyone needs to make sacrifices now or its going to be really rough in the not too distant future. A keeper size striped bass just does not come out of the air. Party and Charter boats need to stop trying to shift blame to commercial fishing and take some responsibility along with the average angler as to the decline we are seeing over the last nearly ten years.

[Capt Sal]

Originally Posted by Aaron_Jasper

Captain Sal

The limit is still up to three per person.

Regarding the three mile line, if you are targeting striped bass it is what it is.

I mean look at the bluefish populations, when I was a kid they were a nuisance, now you hope to see them in good numbers. Do you think a 10-15 fish per day, per man has anything to do with their scarcity?

The fact is there are are far less bass now than there were 8-10 years ago.

Everyone needs to make sacrifices now or its going to be really rough in the not too distant future. A keeper size striped bass just does not come out of the air. Party and Charter boats need to stop trying to shift blame to commercial fishing and take some responsibility along with the average angler as to the decline we are seeing over the last nearly ten years.

No bonus tags in the spring.How many ''overs'' 43' stripers did you get in Raritan Bay?? At times not often it would be possible to take three stripers but rare.As i have said before i am all or conservation but please get the facts. Blaming charter and party boats for the decline in the striper population is wrong.

[AndyS]

The slaughter of egg filled breeders in VA is unreal again due to a warmer winter

Hasn't stopped snowing "down there". Manasquan river has ice on it ???

[Billfish715]

Hi Andy, The words "egg-filled breeders" got me thinking about the issue from a different angle. True, the striped bass are fished for and caught over hundreds of miles of coastline on their migration north and south. They are sold at market in many states and their tasty flesh keeps them in high demand. Adding to the commercial harvesters we then include the recreational anglers who all add to the total tonnage of dead fish. Even though I know it's not true, maybe the stripers have figured out that it's better to migrate farther off the beach where they can be safer.

The "egg-filled" breeders do not pass our way north on their way from Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland. Yes, they do migrate from the south in the spring but they have already spawned in the rivers where they spend the winter. Many, if not most, of the bass we catch in the spring are Hudson River bass and those that winter over in the N.Y. Bight. Raritan Bay and the Shrewsbury Rocks areas are staging grounds for them prior to their spawning.

We can't control what happens to the fish in Virginia and North Carolina and Maryland (Where size limits are much more liberal than ours are). Those states have to realize the effect their laws and regulations have not only on their own fisheries but on ours as well. N.J. anglers only put a slight dent in the "egg filled" breeders that pass by. We have to be most concerned with the fish that call our area "home". The harvest of large females in the Hudson River and Raritan Bay should be at the top of our discussion about regulating striped bass.

We need the help from all of the states along the seaboard especially those in the traditional spawning areas. The numbers of bass that are procreated in our area is only a portion of the entire population of all striped bass but that is still a large number. They have to be protected, even if it means changing some of the existing regulations for our spring run. Many of the anglers who catch a big spring striper even know that it is probably a female with eggs until it's on the cleaning table. Very few Saturday Morning Fishermen will ever release a ripe "hen" and herein lies the problem. Unless there are some regulations in place, WE may be causing our own demise.

There are ways to reduce the mortality numbers that might include the use of landing nets only, circle hooks, limited spring seasons, extending the coastal limits for bunker reduction boats, eliminating the sale of wild striped bass in neighboring states, an established quota for availability of trophy tags, the sale of a limited amount of tags for "trophy bass" (over 42"), increased efforts to inventory the number of harvested trophy bass.

I'm sure there are more and I'm sure this will spark some resentment, but if we keep killing the breeders that live in our waters, we'll be destroying all of the good that helped restore the striped bass population. If Virginia and North Carolina and Maryland clean their own houses, we can all benefit, but for now, let's take care of our own house.

[Capt Sal]

[QU E

The "egg-filled" breeders do not pass our way north on their way from Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland. Yes, they do migrate from the south in the spring but they have already spawned in the rivers where they spend the winter. Many, if not most, of the bass we catch in the spring are Hudson River bass and those that winter over in the N.Y. Bight. Raritan Bay and the Shrewsbury Rocks areas are staging grounds for them prior to theiHudson River and Raritan Bay should be at the top of our discussion about regulating striped [/QUOTE]

The Hudson Striper may go up the river in the fall and winter over until they spawn but do not hold over the winter in the NY Bight.Many Hudson fish winter over off Virginia and NC.When they come up the beach in the spring and are full of eggs they are Hudson fish.The bass oeanside in June after spawning are Chessy bass.The bass hanging round the NY bight in June and July are usually Hudson fish.

.

[Aaron_Jasper]

Capt Sal

We can go back and forth all day and no where did I blame the charter and party boats. However, there are party and charter boats in certain areas of NY that beat up on the fish for an insane amount of time.

I think the recreation catch should be regulated the same as the commercial catch. There should be some way these boats report their catches and a formula used to compute some quota system to ensure the fish are not being overfished as we have found out they are in the latest stock assessment.

What it all comes down to at the end of the day is how much do we value the resource? I have twins that just turned one on the 16th of January and I want to do my part to make sure the fishery is in good shape for them. The sad part is that some interests do not align with long term goals, which should be the goal of everyone. it should not be a nearsighted game at this point. People know too much and too many fishermen and women including myself have seen this fishery make a comeback. What we had in the late 90's through 2012 was nothing short of amazing. Of course there were some bright spots and amazing fishing even this year, however, the data is not wrong. The science backs up the "scattered" pockets of good fishing that we have had. The fall run used to last from September through January, now its a month at best with scattered action on both ends.

[Short Cast]

The True reason for their decline is WE DON'T LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES.
the reason stripers get hammered in the spring & fall is there is noting else to fish for. We start with stripers in the spring and everybody fishes for them. Then we wait for fluke to open and everyone fished for them and when that closes we all go back too stripers. Does anyone see a pattern here? way back when, and I'm going to show my age, we use to fish for Flounder, Cod, Whiting, ling and mackerel, they are all but gone. I remember being able to pick up whiting off the beach after a storm. and they would fish for them at the Long Branch pier all winter. I caught large 12" Boston mackerel and not just one or two, on a commercial pier in Erie Basin in Brooklyn using a browed pole from a longshoreman who got tired of catching them during lunch hour. My dad us to tell me of catching boat loads of tuna at what turned out to be 17 fathoms.
What happened to all these fish WE (both commercial & recreational fisherman) killed them all. The great Atlantic giveaway to the foreign fishing fleets didn't help either.

The problem is pressure, back then it was spread out over several different fisheries and none of them got overfished. You can't have everyone fishing for the same fish at the same time and expect them to survive. We have to rebuild ALL the fisheries at the same time. Right now we have a whole group of different agencies trying to control all the fisheries and all of them setting different regulations all for their own benefit, and they could care less about the other guys sharing the ocean. Right now we are just like the government in Washington we can't do anything together, everybody is out for themselves.

It's not going to be easy, we have to learn to work together and not just think about ourselves. We are all going to have to take a hit bot do it for the greater good. The problem we all are going to have is getting it thru the heads of all these self appointed management experts that you can't learn everything about fishery management by kissing someone's ass so you can get appointed to a nice high paid government position where it is not what you know but who you know that counts. Look at New Jersey, we keep voting in the same bunch of clowns every election. Sometimes we get what we deserve.

I hope this can change, but we will see.

[Capt Sal]

Originally Posted by Aaron_Jasper

Capt Sal

We can go back and forth all day and no where did I blame the charter and party boats. However, there are party and charter boats in certain areas of NY that beat up on the fish for an insane amount of time.

I think the recreation catch should be regulated the same as the commercial catch. There should be some way these boats report their catches and a formula used to compute some quota system to ensure the fish are not being overfished as we have found out they are in the latest stock assessment.

What it all comes down to at the end of the day is how much do we value the resource? I have twins that just turned one on the 16th of January and I want to do my part to make sure the fishery is in good shape for them. The sad part is that some interests do not align with long term goals, which should be the goal of everyone. it should not be a nearsighted game at this point. People know too much and too many fishermen and women including myself have seen this fishery make a comeback. What we had in the late 90's through 2012 was nothing short of amazing. Of course there were some bright spots and amazing fishing even this year, however, the data is not wrong. The science backs up the "scattered" pockets of good fishing that we have had. The fall run used to last from September through January, now its a month at best with scattered action on both ends.

The fact of the matter is this-Charter boats are bragging they ''limited out''.That means one fish per person.In Raritan Bay there are not too many''overs''43''being caught.Compare that to the 2000 era!There are way more private boats that charter boats now as compared to twenty years ago.The Party Boats don't even make a dent in the striper population because they can not troll with that amount of people.Some so called ''charter'' boats can only take two or three anglers on there 23' or 25' pleasure boats.They are not out every day and do not take tons of fish.The stocks may be down but so are the limits.Just read the posts but read between the lines.I know i was guilty of it myself but dock shots SUCK! A pile of dead fish with there throats cuts is horrible.Take the time to snap a few action pictures and some released fish.