Virginia Cancels Trophy Season

[Slobber Bob]

We the recreational anglers are to blame. The commercial guys really don't take that much. It's easy to look at one boat full of fish and say, look at the travesty, but they are well controlled and documented. The Recs take about 4-5X what the comms take. A lot of people don't know this.

I wasn't saying that recreational anglers don't deserve the blame. They do. I don't need to look much further than myself in the past to know that.

My point is, what good is closing the recreational trophy season if you aren't stopping the commercial harvest at the same time? If they truly want to protect the fishery by closing a season than close it. That means no commercial and recreational harvest period.

It's really more political than anything.

Oh, you know the reason already

You bring up a good point about this putting the spotlight on MD now.

[Mark]

1) Be judicious on how many fish you take home with you.
2) Be as careful as possible when handling and unhooking fish.
3) You don’t need to photograph or measure every fish you catch. After having caught stripers for a while you should be able to make a reasonable estimate of the fish's length. Limit your photos to fish that are new species, larger than ones you have caught previously, or have some unusual feature about them (e.g., a wound or interesting stripe pattern).
4) Get fish back into the water as quickly as possible. Caught fish are already tired and may be short of breath. Leaving them flopping around for a minute or more is not good for the fish.

John offered four excellent suggestions above to reduce striper mortality:

To them I would add:

Replace treble hooks on plugs with single in-line hooks and debarb them.

And then there are regulations. We have rules to follow for sure, but we do not have to follow them to their extreme limits. For example:

Regulations do not mandate that you bring a legal sized striper home. That’s your choice. You’re no less of an angler if you do not.

There is presently no prohibition to fish for stripers in MD when Chesapeake Bay water temperatures reach their summer peak. Yet studies have shown C&R mortality increases in such conditions. So, is it wise to sit on a school of stripers at that time of year looking for that big one to take home or just hooking, releasing and possibly injuring undersized fish after fish because they’re fun to catch?

There are conservation acts we can take now regardless of what’s allowed legally. We can wait for the regulators to mandate changes or we can do in 2019 what we already know will help without being required by law.

[Worrptangl]

I’m all for canceling trophy season and imposing a slot limit


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