FISHERMEN/COMMENT TO ASMF/STRIPED BASS

[Broad Bill]

Originally Posted by dales529

Those that fight everyday got tired of being called out / yourself included to a certain extent.

Remove "certain extent" and I agree completely. I put in thousands of hours over five years trying to fight everyone's battles, improve access and help rebuild stocks for all our benefits including commercial interests and like I said when I looked behind me to see who had my back I was by myself. You were always by my side mentoring me about the process but it wasn't nearly enough to cause change. That includes members on this site, politicians, ASMFC, MAMFC and NMFS members, state agencies and even recreational fishing organizations. Everyone had their own agenda or didn't care enough to get involved which is why the sector will never be unified. And to make matters worse and my biggest disappointment, certain fishing organizations actually went out of their way to undermine my work because it conflicted with their personal or club's personal agendas. No one can help people who aren't willing or are too lazy to help themselves or are in this for personal reasons. We either improve fisheries management and a broken process as a whole which is at the root of all fisheries problems or the can just continues being kicked down the road which in my opinion is exactly what will happen.

This is a fight, make no mistake about it and I'll go out on the limb again and predict a striper closure is already guaranteed in spite of the December 16th meeting and all the public's comments which as always will fall on deaf ears. NMFS, ASMFC and MAFMC don't want anyone playing in their sandbox and when push comes to shove, the commercials hold their ground and fight while the recreational sector blinks and does nothing more than complain.

Fishing effort versus catch values is all anyone needs to know, two polar opposite ideologies NMFS uses to manage fisheries and sectors. The fed and states want the recreational sector to fish and spend as much money as possible (fishing effort) while restricting harvest and simultaneously make policy decisions for the commercial sector which focus on one thing and one thing only, catch values. Those are polar opposite ways of managing sectors and the fishery as a whole and a short sided formula for disaster which we've been witnessing the effects of first hand in one fishery after another for too many years. Blackfish, weakfish, whiting, ling, cod, pollock, winter flounder, cod, stripers, fluke etc.. Until that management ideology changes at the three primary agencies tasked with fishery management, we're going to experience the same results with stock declines we've experienced the last four decades. The incessant focus on economics and political and state greed versus the prudent management of stocks continues to put another nail in the coffin of many of the remaining fisheries. Nothing is sustainable if the regulations don't support that outcome and protect stocks from exploitation, commercial and corporate greed and any issues like natural predation (dogfish) and the declining water quality conditions of the Chesapeake Bay which threaten a stock's survival.