Mass Striper decline numbers from NOAA

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by Raider Ronnie

How about this. Forget game fish status and make it illegal to fish. Then a few preaching game fish status and also happen to profit by selling their plugs will be out of business also.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

You're leaving out the part about you charter guys that walk the line of being a commercial entity regulated as recreational fishermen being SOL as well.

Forget Gamefish Status... 5 tags per license, 36" limit and call it a day. Even for someone terrible at cleaning a fish, 5 fish at 36" should get them at least 25-30lbs of meat per year. Few families are eating 30lbs of striped bass per year. And if they are, they should stop because the fish isn't even all that good for you with all the toxins and heavy metals.

[MikeToole]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

You're leaving out the part about you charter guys that walk the line of being a commercial entity regulated as recreational fishermen being SOL as well.
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Think we need to look at charters a little different. Like I said earlier I looking at them as bus drivers taking recreational fisherman out to the fish. When I was a kid in the late 50s there were 3 party boats working out of the NJ Highlands where the captains had been fisherman and changed their businesses over to running party boats. Pre 200 mile limits made it hard even than to make a living fishing. A hundred years earlier thousands of people could make their living from the sea but just like many other occupations technology changed all of that. Charters may be the answer for still being able to continue working at sea for many of the small boat fisherman. May not be their ideal job but it is a job. But of course if the stock dumps down then commercials, recs and plug makers are all out of work.