Striper Conservation Article in the Washington Post

[mjkeith13]

Good but short write up on the state of striped bass particularly in Maryland.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...771_story.html

Circle hook violations should be more than just probation.

Apologies if this link doesn’t work. I forgot that you usually need a subscription for articles in the Washington Post.


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[nhunter344]

Circle hook violations should be more than just probation.

The fishery wont improve until MD decides to enforce the regulations with penalties that actually mean something. Punishing people with a stern talking to for a cooler full of undersize stripers isnt going to cut it.

[Mark]

Thank you for posting the article.

Anecdotal evidence, but this morning I was speaking to a fellow who visited Maine last week to catch coastal stripers on the fly. It was exclusively a C&R trip. He said fish counts were high.

I suggested to him that the fish he caught may have been spawned here. He said there's evidence that stripers are also spawning in the Kennebec River in Maine and the St. Lawrence River in Canada. He also mentioned, as did the Washington Post article, that some folks from elsewhere on the coast think Maryland is not doing enough to conserve its striper stock.

I agree that a charter captain who fails to use circle hooks should receive a stiffer penalty than probation. Also, I don't know why someone would pay $110 for two fish as cited in the article. Safeway is much cheaper. I realize it's the journey, not that outcome that's important for many charter customers.

Again, anecdotal evidence and my own biases here... I live close enough to the water to walk from my house to observe docks. There's a charter boat that operates nearby. I have seen it return numerous times with customers. I have watched the fish divvy ritual on the charter boat's stern often. I have seen some clients squeamishly take their dead frozen stripers and walk to their cars. By their behaviors and comments I overhear, I suspect some of these folks are not regular anglers but people, perhaps office parties, who got together for a group outing. I have to wonder how many of those fish never get cleaned, never get cooked but get tossed into a trash can. Again, I readily admit my bias may be clouding my judgment.

But I do wonder if a Chesapeake charter captain could make a living insisting that his or her clients do C&R and preferably with lures or flies. The C&R mortality studies leading to the circle hook mandate were done with baited hooks. To my knowledge, and I've asked the question of folks who should know, the study did not include fish caught with lures and flies. I'm not saying that I've never gut-hooked a striper with a lure or fly, but it has been a rare event for me -- and sadly a final event for the fish. I'd like to think my released stripers are not dying at the rate of 9 percent that the state estimates.

So, it will never happen in Maryland, given the long history and economic impact of commercial striper fishing and charter fishing with bait, but I have to think if the state was really serious about preserving stripers, eliminating the former or the latter or both kinds of striper fishing would go a long way to increasing Chesapeake Bay striper numbers. That's easy for me to say since I don't do either. And that's the problem. No one wants to change, including me.