Quote:
Originally Posted by sternline
Captain, take another look at pages 301-303 of STRIPER WARS. The ban on fishing for stripers in the EEZ began in 1990 and applies to everybody. The Coast Guard was not enforcing the ban until some RECREATIONAL anglers saw the slaughter by of soon-to-spawn females in the EEZ by commercial boats. Jim Price, a fifth-generation waterman (and one of the true heroes of the fight to save menhaden), saw about 50 recreational boats massacring these females 6 miles off the NC coast and raised hell with the Coast Guard--as he should have.
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100% true and completely agree with this statement and what Russell mentioned here. You made a typo in your original and I corrected it for you in bold. The CG and F&W officers did what they had to do off NC and Virginia, put the screws to those guys, and got the job done. But why do we now have to pay the price?
We have no cows out 10-15 miles, those are the fish that do migrate up our beach, so again, why are we suddenly enforcing this law coastwide based on a one-time or one-incident (one meaning a string of incidents) that happened 500 miles away? Makes no sense to punish the majority if the minority is making the infraction. Yes I know this is FEDERAL law, but some sort of middle ground has to be met on a state-by-state basis regarding how stripers populate the area and migrate to and from the area.
The over-enforcing the EEZ is another knee-jerk reaction by our government, which speaks to bigger problems we have in this country nowadays. Sorry, just my $.02
