Striped Bass

You might or might not agree with the idea of a striped bass as a gamefish but you should watch the video

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32209893[/vimeo]

22 comments on “Striped Bass

  1. Greg Tucceri

    I made s donation to them at this years R.I. saltwater show, It just makes sense, we could be heading down that rode again. the weekend warrior permit has to go. And go to a 1 fish a day.

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  2. Dave W.

    No doubt something has to be done. Stripers are in trouble.
    Zeno, this site and many of it’s anglers do their part to promote catch and release. All this will be for naught if the current mentallity is not changed on both the commercial and rec side.

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  3. chuckg

    I agree, the commercials will fish the last fish out of the ocean, I fished on a 90 foot stern trawler during the 70s in Maine and the cap’n had a boat mortgage payment due in April so we went into a prohibited spawning area and took an enormous poundage of giant codfish. A sad fact of economics overruling everything else. I guess the question is, what would you do??? Go to 1 fish, for starters…

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  4. CTMatt

    So is the main focus putting pressure on RI/MA to wake up to gamefish status.or is there a deeper mismanagement isssue starting at the fishery?

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  5. Calfarmli

    For year after year,NOOOOO matter what proof is offered to save the striped bass it ALWAYS falls on deaf ears!!!!!!!.When there is ONE bass left in the ocean then and only then they MIGHT do something to save the fish.We still have to try other wise the commericals will take the last fish.

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  6. sioca

    Z, your question might have simply been empirical (personal or via media) but it was immensely relevant to our sport.

    Thank you for posting the Video.

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  7. Matt H

    Great video, thanks for sharing. It’s a scary to think about the future striper fishery. I agree with Greg T, go to 1 fish per day limit. You can still put a meal on the table, and everyone will benefit down the road.

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  8. Jeremy

    Hi everybody, just wanted to say that there is a phenomenal amount of valuable information, philosophy, and economic data in this film for everyone who is interested. My favorite (best I’ve ever heard) explanation for the Striped Bass as a gamefish concept is the quote from 6:20 to 6:51. Sometimes I feel like there will always be more questions than answers, but we can make it simple and I do believe that we can make all the difference! So thank you SF and long live the Striped Bass so that each generation may enjoy this great fish forever. It terrifies me to imagine the striped bass in a zoo,(aquarium sorry)and not much if any place else. Just like many of the great creatures on this earth.
    Luckily I believe it is NOT too late to turn things around and make the Striped Bass a success story for the ages and this film gives us hope how we could do just that.
    Sorry for rambling on but I was excited and hopeful.
    Thanks and respect to all of you.

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  9. John

    There is a facebook page called “Make Striped Bass a Game Fish” with only a few members. Seems like a lot of people talk about the game fish status but very few do anything about it

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  10. MOOSE

    Zeno, thanks for posting great video! Something absolutely needs to be done. I wish they could regulate more efficiently and there were more game wardens around.

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  11. Rob B

    Who the hell really makes a living commercial fishing for striped bass anyway?

    Secondly, just because there are only a couple members on a facebook page doesn’t mean crap. There are a lot of people advocating for strippers!

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  12. striperguy

    Here’s an idea, striped bass gives us all joy. The fish drives our love for surf fishing. You guys know that feeling right? Then stop killing the bass!!! Release them all when you catch em’ stop it already! It’s your fault, if you eat stripers, your part of the reason why the stock is in trouble. Go eat another kind of fish.
    commercial fishing and the charter boats are the culprits of why the bass is disappearing. Hammering them everyday all season long.

    And then you guys got the idiots who kill breeder bass for a photo. Because those morons need to feel like hero’s. Look what I did aren’t I great?

    I release 100% of the fish I catch every year, I care about the bass. I don’t take pictures with bass nor do I kill them, ever.

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  13. striperguy

    Zeno, your one of the Surfcasting elite, I’m sure your well aware of the trouble that the stripers are in. We all have to do something to stop this decline before It’s too late. I can’t believe fisheries management say otherwise. It’s obvious those people are getting paid off by the people wiping out the bass to make a profit. This is indeed what’s going on, what is it gonna take to open the eyes of people to realize what’s really going on? Extinction?

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  14. JohnP

    The problem with the video is that it does not address the ugly truth – per all the official data – recreational fisherman catch the vast majority of the fish right now. We are experiencing a stock decline and all the official data points to the recreational guys doing most of the damage.

    A gamefish bill is a good idea, but if it is not coupled with a management plan to reduce the total kill, we will end up with a NJ solution, where there was nothing but a reallocation after the gamefish bill passed there.

    Sorry to stir the pot. I am not pro-commercial, but we cannot expect progress unless we can all clearly see and articulate both sides of this story.

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  15. Jeremy

    Dont worry about stirring the pot John, because you are right. Huge sacrifice has to be made on both sides. For the recreational angler Catch and Release is all I have to say now. It is a small sacrifice and it makes nearly everyone happy! (you can never make everyone happy of course) so lets look at the majority and the biggest impact this fish can have on the largest number of people and “change the value from one of just consumption to utilizing it as a recreational resource”. It works for black bass which is a huge multi billion dollar sportfishing industry and it can work for the striper. I strongly believe this because I have seen it work. The freshwater bassmen used to promote kill tournaments and bring home big stringers of bass too. But when catch and release really caught on and became the norm and even more incredibly the unwritten rule, all the years of advocacy paid off and the fishing has rarely been better.

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  16. Frank

    To add to the conversation, the current “keeper size” regulations remove that segment of the breeding bass population that has grown the largest from sharing their survival genes for “bigness” with future generations. It would be better for both the fish population and for those of us who keep a fish now and then to change this policy!

    If you ask me, keeping a large fish never made sense on a personal level. Why keep a fish that has reached the reproductive stage of its life cycle? And a “keeper bass” is more than enough for me and my family to eat and the larger a bass grows the more contaminants it has in its system that I am about to ingest.

    We should adopt a policy of throwing back the Big One and instead keep a Smaller One. I think that it was wrong to control the number of fish we keep by setting a size limit which makes it more difficult to obtain a keeper size. If that is the case, then maybe a different system could be developed that allows a limit on the number of fish we are able to keep each season without it being pined to a large size fish.

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  17. woodwker99

    Lots of words, nothing as action. I’m sure everyone practices what they preach. Get working to do something this winter. Write to congress, write to the politicians in your state. E mail them twice a day. It gets read and noted by someone on their staff if not by themselves.
    Pay for your license for more game wardens.
    if as many voices were heard for the Stripped bass as were heard against the saltwater license, maybe this would be a non issue.

    Thanks Z for posting this. It is a timely matter now as many of our beloved fish are now wintering down south where even the DEC is guilty of mass fish kills (see the story of how they left a gill net in the water for days while staking it out trying to catch the poacher(s) only to increase the number of caught fish by double).
    The Striped bass is in trouble. Now is the time to take time to act. (thanks I’ll get off my soap box now).

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  18. Mark

    The unfortunate issue in striped bass management is a microcosm of our entire society. Too many people determining what is fair and just for a wild resource. It is a political resource grab. Comms vs. Recs vs. Charter etc.

    The stock is managed based on maximum yield available. For example this year we had the potential to see management action by the ASMFC. We did not, why? Because we are still above the over fished thresh hold. Nothing will change until we dip below. Wrong or right that is the way it is. We can see declining numbers poor recruitment disease infested fish etc. until that number hits a trigger point no management federally.

    It is sad to see the writing on the wall again and witness another collapse. People can talk about managing the resource people can talk about groups that promote conservation but we are all the issue. We are our own worst enemies. Until recreational fishermen start to reduce their take of striped bass voluntarily. Commercial fishermen will not change their ways. Recreational fishermen need to be held to 1 fish at 28″ or even 36″ I guarantee this will increase the stock.

    Then lets go after commercial limits.

    Reply

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