Re: VA closes TROPHY striped bass season
 

Disagree that no one cares. Changes have been made to black fish regulations in an effort to protect their spawn (1 fish effective 5/1) but maybe that has to change as well. Problem with tog is they are very slow growing and recovery will take time.

Don't think anyone is up in arms about killing 6 bass, it's the fact we're harvesting too high a percentage of large breeders that has people rightfully concerned. If the females haven't dropped their eggs yet which this year's early arrival suggests, are you really just harvesting 6 large females over 30 lbs or killing ~12,000,000 eggs and the future of the fishery in the process?

There might be acres of fish off shore today, keep messing with recruitment and they'll disappear as well. These fish get absolutely pounded year round even during the spawn, they need time to rebuild. Again I applaud Va. for their decision and as someone else mentioned something needs to be done about Cooke Inc. / Omega Protein raping the ocean of bunker. That's all politics and needs to be addressed. Why should one company have the right to negatively impact a public resource at the expense of everyone else. Money and greed. Needs to change.

Re: VA closes TROPHY striped bass season
 

Something to think about. Why is there never this type of conversation on the fresh water forum. Two reasons. First for all practical purposes there is no commercial fishery with fresh water stocks. Might be some limited but no where to the extent of salt water.

Second, fish fall into three basic categories in fresh water. They don't naturally reproduce in the wild and are stocked every year, they do naturally reproduce but need protection (large mouths, small mouths, walleye etc. which are C&R for two months during their spawn) or they're prolific breeders and can sustain themselves (yellow perch, crappie, bluegills etc.) Recruitment is one of the key variables factored into every fresh water species being managed and it works extremely well. Balance between catch and recruitment.

Salt depends exclusively on natural reproduction for the fish we typically discuss, why is it so hard for fisheries management to structure regulations to insure recruitment levels are maintained annually which exceed overall catch levels. That is precisely why I have concerns about models being used for summer flounder management which don't incorporate size and sex attributes which drive egg production and recruitment. Same reason I have issues with commercial harvest of summer flounder during the spawn without knowledge of the potential consequences that harvest has on killing eggs. NMFS stated recruitment is down for six years while their own data supports it's been down for a much longer period of time. Yet they increase commercial harvest by 40% for '19, how can a management body in good faith arrive at that decision if recruitment in fact is what ultimately drives every fishery. It's unfathomable.