[bulletbob]

I am certainly not an expert on salt water fisheries, and their cycles of abundance.. However, in the years when Stripers were scarce, Bluefish were incredibly abundant.. I mean everywhere, all day and all night from April until the last of them in late November or so... Massive schools of 8-12 pound Weaks as well, that were perfectly capable of eating Ling/Flounder/Porgies/Sea Bass/Whiting/ small Fluke/Whatever... When we cleaned those big predators that were ocean caught in those days, we didn't see target species for rec fishermen in their guts.. We found the same thing that are in Stripers for the most part, today.. Smaller speciemens might have a lot of Sand Eels.. Various Herring type fish, most what we call Bunkers... Bay and river caught fish were more likely to have things like Silversides, very small small Sea Robins, and various little things that looked similar to rainfish.. that sort of things.. I just never found too many "game fish" in the stomachs of predators.. In both salt water and fresh, they are more than likely to go for oily, soft rayed fish if available, and lets face facts, they usually are.. I doubt stripers are killing off desirable bottom fish.... I would blame cormorants and commercial draggers before I blamed stripers...