So the above chart is from the 2021 Chesapeake juvenile striped bass survey conducted by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. When we talk "year class" fish, we can basically look at a striped bass, its length and weight, and determine just about what year it was born, ie, "year class". Basically its like saying, except for the kids that pushed a year ahead or behind, that all 7th graders are 12 years old, born in 2009, that year class.
Well this year we had another horrible surgery, the target number is 11.4, this year the tally was 3.2, up slightly from the horrendous 2.5. Currently the ASMFC continues to dick around with this fishery. They are not managers, they are pawns, and frauds. There might be a "good one", a guy or gal, on the committee, one of several, but they all basically suck. Studies on mortality, going to circle hooks...blah, blah, blah. Close the Raritan and Chesapeake Bays in the spring, or make it a gamefish, or just it the f down. We will find other interests while the fishery rebuilds itself. Just ask your old buddy who went thought the moratorium in the 1980's. You'll survive.
And there's the skunk report. Got down an hour after the flip on this lovely 85 degree day. Found some bait balled up off the end of the groin with some small bluefish harassing them. They stayed put as the tide ebbed and the boasts ran through them. I stayed an hour or so and split.
Then I made my way to stop one of two in the Raritan. No bait, no signs of predation. Made a few college-try casts without a nothing. Then I made my way into the Belford Co-Op and made casts
among the peanut bunker that were getting sucked out from the smaller to the bigger water. Saw a few blow-ups, one sounded girthy, but didn't connect. And then my last stop was in the river where I was almost nipple high trying to make my way out and cast into the outgoing water. Phone was in my front pocket of my Simms waders, which I thought were water tight, but you know, whats an outing without something going wrong. Seems like its an early morning fishery for now.
