Last Call for Striped Bass Comments!

It’s last call for comment from anglers on Addendum II of the Striped Bass Management Plan, and every person who reads this, if you have not done so already — please — drop a simple email to comments@asmfc.org and insist that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission takes the steps necessary to accelerate the rebuilding of striped bass.

You can say only that if you don’t have the time or patience. Or just ask that they please keep the 28-to-31-inch slot limit, that commercial fishing quotas should be adjusted in line with recreational ones, and that ASMFC be allowed to act on coming stock assessments immediately. Boom, done. Short and to the point, no need for drama or sob stories — these are fisheries science research assistants you’ll be writing for.

This Friday, December 22, is the deadline for comments. Every comment counts. Seriously.

Here’s why:

Addendum II, as I see it, is not so much about saving the striped bass stock as it is preserving good striped bass fishing for the years to come.

Right now, we have a decent-sized cohort of big fish, over 30 pounds or so, and a decent-sized cohort of small-to-medium-sized fish, 26 to 34 inches or so. But there is very little in between and almost nothing younger than those 26-inch fish coming up after five years of abysmal spawning success.

We have already seen the distribution of fish throughout the season decline precipitously — fish are not in as many places at any given time, and when the migrations are on, they can be short even when they are sweet.

First things first: the slot limit. When the proverbial shit hit the fan with the mortality estimates from 2022 last spring, and ASMFC was left scrambling to address more than double the expected mortality by recreational fishermen, they came up with the 28-to-31-inch slot.

It was an effing disaster, plain and simple — but not for the reason that most people seemed to think.

When the slot was cut from a 7-inch range to just 3 inches, it seemed like everyone was pissed. A 3-inch slot range was unreasonable, they said. It would make catching a keeper impossible, they said.

And then they went out and caught just about all the keepers they could have wanted. And that was the problem.

The reason for slashing the slot limit was to protect the 2015 year class, which by 2022 had grown above the 28-inch minimum used in most states and suddenly were being killed at an out-of-control rate. The number of fish caught and kept by anglers spiked by almost 125 percent from 2021 to 2022. And with the 28-to-35-inch slot that most states used, that rate of slaughter was due to accelerate and continue for several more years.

The 2015 year class would be decimated by the time it was over, and with it the hope for the fishery, as the large population of big, older fish steadily fades out.

But the emergency cut to the slot did little, from what I saw, to reduce harvest. Even the scientists acknowledge that a 31-inch maximum size would only mean that half the 2015 fish likely would have grown out of “keeper” range. The 28-to-31-inch slot this year was still stuffed with millions of fish, and “keepers” were easy to come by throughout the fall.

But next year, with the 2015 fish still growing, fewer and fewer should be in that slot. So it makes some sense, at least among the options offered in Addendum II, to leave it in place.

If it were up to me, I’d set the slot at 38 to 41 inches for a couple of years, then cut it back to 28 to 31 when those fish have grown out of it. But that isn’t one of the options. So the 28 to 31 for next year is reasonable enough.

About the only ones who had a reasonable argument against the 3-inch slot in general were charter boat captains, who rightly said the smaller slot would mean they would have to catch and release more fish in order to catch their limits. And more caught-and-released fish means more “dead discards” — as fish that are released but die anyway from wounds or exhaustion are known in the fisheries world.

They were not wrong. In the end, I don’t think they ended up with as many discards as they’d thought they would, primarily because they are all exceptionally good fishermen and quickly figured out how to target fish in the size range that would yield keepers.

There is an option in Addendum II that would allow charter boats to fish a slot of 28 to 33 inches. The American Saltwater Guides Association has advocated against including this allowance. I do not personally think it is so unreasonable, and I do think it would reduce dead discards, marginally. It is known as Option C, if you think that is what you would like to tell the ASMFC you support.

The second component of the addendum is commercial fishing: to cut the commercial harvest by the same 15 percent that recreational harvest needs to be cut by. It sounds reasonable, but the numbers are more complicated than that.

First of all, commercial harvest in ocean fisheries is tiny, barely 10 percent of total, so cutting it by 15 percent is a drop in the bucket compared to the huge numbers of fish killed by recreational anglers. Second, the Chesapeake Bay commercial fishery will not be touched by the change, since they don’t fill their disgustingly enormous quota every year anyway, and the addendum only proposes cuts to quotas, not actual landings.

Obviously, the Chesapeake quota should be cut, regardless, but I would be fine with the ocean commercial quota being left as it is, as long as slot limits are put in place in all states. (New York commercial fishermen already work with a reasonable 26-to-38-inch slot, but some other states do not.)

The third peg is a no-brainer. Addendum II proposes allowing the ASMFC board to take immediate action if the biannual stock assessment shows that the striped bass stock is over-fished. Not allowing this is basically kicking the can down the road — or, more accurately, allowing greed-based interests to stall any action that might cost them a few dollars.

So that’s it. Let your voice be heard — by Friday. Greed and short-sightedness are the rules of the day in so many things, and they have ruled striped bass management for most of the last 20 years. It’s time for it to stop.

Catch ’em up. See you in the new year.