Bob wasn't trying to impress you or anyone else, just pointing out I've heard of more weak fish caught in the last 2 or 3 years than I have in the last 30 combined. I take that as a positive as I do the reappearance of blowfish in Barnegat Bay. Some of those spikes I agree succumb to predation from stripers and blue fish during their southerly migration. No different than they did back in the '60s and '70s when the stock was healthy and they're were just as many if not more blue fish and stripers around. In my humble opinion, natural predation isn't the reason the fishery collapsed. Commercial and recreational overfishing was and if the regulations are changed to address protecting the spawn and over fishing, the fishery has a chance of recovering after more than 40 years of being as you put it MIA.

Fwiw, I'm not sure I've ever seen a baby weak fish in the stomach of a striper or bluefish. Bunker, mullet, sea bass, small sea robins, mantis shrimp, sand eels, snapper blues, herring, flounder and fluke yes. Never cleaned a bass or blue with a weakfish or saw them spitting them up on deck. I'm sure they have, just don't believe that's where many of them end up. Have seen spikes the size mentioned at Shop Rite, Wegmans and Kings but that's a whole different conversation.