This is sick

[Capt Bill]

Stripers Forever members - Recently we received a copy of a letter from an eyewitness referring to discarded bycatch of striped bass in an area east of outer Cape Cod. You can read the letter by clicking on this link. This bycatch, whether by mid-water herring trawlers or groundfish draggers, is well known to be an annual occurrence during the peak of the fall migration. This kind of waste, combined with the bloated take of the legal and black market commercial striped bass fisheries, certainly contribute to the numerous reports we've received this season about poor striper fishing from many areas along the Atlantic coast.
These dead fish should certainly be counted towards commercial striped bass quotas, but they are not. In fact, we think that they are uncounted not only for quotas but also when calculating the overall fishing mortalities that fishery managers use in setting harvest levels. The bottom line is that this is just another important reason that there should be no commercial striped bass fishery.
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[CrabbyPatty]

please post the link again

[DoubleG]

C. Bill
Check your link - It doesn't appear to be working.
George

[vannstandsmerke]

Please post the numbers of Rec take vs comm take! stripers forever is a joke! again this is nothing more than a load of crap from a second hand source!

[RyanF]

Please post the numbers of Rec take vs comm take! stripers forever is a joke! again this is nothing more than a load of crap from a second hand source!

there is video of breeder sized fish clinging to life on the surface, all com vs rec arguments aside that is wasteful and detrimental to the stock, plain and simple. In BWs thread I did mention that it was tough to quantify what really is going on from the letter and the video. In my opinion it is not something that should be going on on any level, but it is tough to get my panties up in a bunch with what little is out there right now on this.

From trying to decode the regulatory lingo in the original letter it sounds like the boat was fishing in closed waters too?

RyanF

[casapulla]

Stripers Forever members - Our last bulletin about the dead stripers off Cape Cod brought us an e-mail with this linc (http://www.sportfishermen.com/board/f186/disturbing-video-55702.html) to a video that corroborates the letter even down to the date, October 6. Be prepared to become sick. This should be next year’s MA commercial striper quota!

[vannstandsmerke]

Where's the dragger?

[Steve-o]

http://www.stripersforever.org/Info/Stripers_BBoard/I010C4115

[vannstandsmerke]

Again they are making accusations without solid evidence!

[fishhard]

Again they are making accusations without solid evidence!


You got a better idea of what may be going on? this crap should not be going on no matter who is doing it. and to say SF is a joke is crazy also, not many orginizations out there are working for our benefit.

[RyanF]

Again they are making accusations without solid evidence!

How you explain the concentration of fish either dead or clinging to life? A couple really good recreational fisherman playing catch and release with a breeder sized bass every 2 minutes?

Or maybe a school of breeder stripers swam through a concentration of pollution and all immediately went belly up?

Come on now, if it was two or three bass in the video I would have to agree that there was no solid evidence. You dont have to be a rocket scientist to put the two and two together: commercial guys working their nets in the area and a concentration of dead bass equates to only one reasonal explanation: discarded bycatch. If you can enlighten to me as to how I am mistaken here please do so.

RyanF

[mattlist]

How you explain the concentration of fish either dead or clinging to life? A couple really good recreational fisherman playing catch and release with a breeder sized bass every 2 minutes?

Or maybe a school of breeder stripers swam through a concentration of pollution and all immediately went belly up?

Come on now, if it was two or three bass in the video I would have to agree that there was no solid evidence. You dont have to be a rocket scientist to put the two and two together: commercial guys working their nets in the area and a concentration of dead bass equates to only one reasonal explanation: discarded bycatch. If you can enlighten to me as to how I am mistaken here please do so.

RyanF


Amen!

Sorry some of us want to take our children fishing when we are old like our grandafthers and fathers did for us.

[vannstandsmerke]

You got a better idea of what may be going on? this crap should not be going on no matter who is doing it. and to say SF is a joke is crazy also, not many orginizations out there are working for our benefit.

Yeah there are alot of other reasons for this to be happening! could have been a red tide,or the could have just come out of a river where they were exposed to pollution! sorry but it seems to me that once again stripers forever is throwing allegations without any real evidence other than f-ed up fish on the surface!

[boatliftman]

Its hard to say what happene to the fish, could be red tide algae bloom whatever,,, as far as fishery managment goes its really stupid that all those fish were killed if in fact it was from a net fisherman, seems to me they should be allowed to harvest some bass lets face it there is no shortage of fish, think of it this way, you have a fisherman who is gonna fish whether you like it or not, he needs to set say 20 shots in order to make a living the whole time culling thru the bass a keeping the fish he can legally harvest, now if he were in fact allowed to keep the bass he may be able to set maybe 6 shots to make a living alot less fish die and the fisherman still makes a living, i understand why some people don't want people to sell bass. therefore you end up with what we see here:)

[RyanF]

1) If it were pollution or an algae bloom, would there not be other species affected as well? Maybe all other fish sink except for big striped bass?

2)If it happened up the river, how would these bass still be clinging to life off the beach at the fishing grounds? Would they not have been noticed earlier even?

I am not trying to go anti-commercial here, but there is no chance that these fish are anything but bycatch. With the sophisticated electronics out there I also find it hard to believe that a captain who spends countless days on the water cannot tell that there is a school of stripers down there. In my opinion he gets angry that he cant keep the fish but still, in most circumstances, knowingly fishes the area anyway in full understanding that he will be throwing these fish overboard.

RyanF

[JoeyZac]

I can't see that video being anything other than bycatch, or someone intended to keep all the stripers they caught but then got cold feet about getting caught, so they threw them back just before heading back. Since

Since I don't often see 1 boat catch that many cows, my vote goes to bycatch.