I try and do my due diligence in getting all the facts mostly correct when I write these blogs. This post takes me down to North Carolina and beyond where I have to admit I'm not 100% familiar with. So here we go. North Carolina has their own strain of striped bass. Some say that after the Chesapeake, Hudson, and Delaware, the Roanoke-Albermarle Sound stock is the fourth strain that contributes to the striped bass
NC Biologist Kevin Dockendorf with a Roanoke River sample
biomass, well kind of. What's interesting is is that the North Carolina strain is mostly non-migratory, although samples taken from fish in Maine have been identified as originating in the Tar Heel State. So most of those are born, live, spawn, and die in their natal waters. And how about this, during the 1980's our own Navesink River was stocked with Roanoke-Albermarle fish as they tried to increase the striped bass populations in and around the moratorium.
The population of those Roanoke-Albermarle stocks, which was deemed recovered by 1997, has been decimated to where the state has put a moratorium on harvesting striped bass in the Albermarle Sound and surrounding waters. But there's still a short, in time and fish length, season in some parts of the Roanoke River. NC has tried in the past to stock striped bass but the efforts to stock fish that go onto become successful spawners fell short. So yes, the fish survived, but the overall numbers didn't increase.
During November 2024, just a month ago, the NC Division of Marine Fisheries and the US Fish and Wildlife Service joined together to stock 220,000 striped bass in the Cape Fear River. 170,000 of them were 1-2 inches and 50,000 were 5-8 inches long. These fish came from broodstock taken from the Cooper
River in South Carolina. That whole area includes the Santee River and Lakes Marion and Moultrie, some of which is dammed up. Dams always mean a blocked passage, unless they have a fish ladder, or some other means for migratory fish to pass, like the salmon cannon I wrote about the other day. To note there are a ton of states that have a landlocked freshwater striped bass stock, which is different from what we see here in New Jersey which would be hybrid striped bass, which are a cross between a white and striped bass.
The idea of stocking striped bass isn't a new thing. In 1879, a scientist with the U.S. Fish Commission, Dr. Livingston Stone (above), transported 132 striped bass fingerlings from the Navesink River in New Jersey to the San Fransisco Bay in California.
Three years later he made the return trip with three hundred more fish and released them into the Suisun Bay near San Fransisco in California. Those fish are most prevalent in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the San Fransisco Bay, and some larger tributaries. It would be interesting to compare a fish sampled today from Cali and the Navesink to see if the DNA profiles are similar.
Fish transport via railcar came around as Stone made that first trip. Those Navesink fish took the ride out west in a converted Central Pacific Railroad car that had a 2,000 gallon tank which was aerated by hand during the weeks long journey.
After that, starting around 1881, ten fish transport cars were built for the US Fish and Wildlife Service that were in service until the 1940's. Some other individual states had their own built for intrastate fish stocking. For a quick read, and where I got the above information, click on the link HERE.
Just so you know, striped bass stocking has been a big thing on the East Coast. While I'm just hitting on a few things here in this post a review of the 1985-1992 Striped Bass Stocking Summary, published in 1993 by the ASMFC, gives the details of the states who were part of stocking programs in and around the
1985 moratorium; Maine, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (Conowingo Pool), North Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. The Chesapeake, the powerhouse for striped bass spawning, received tons of fingerling striped bass in the Upper Bay and the spawning tributaries such as the, Pawtuxent, Nanticoke, Matapeake, and Choptank Rivers. Virginia's Mattaponi River, a trib off the York River, also got fish.
But let's go north for a bit. We've talked about stocking and hatchery striped bass from the Navesink River down to the Cooper River in South Carolina, remember, the Cooper River just gave up some fish to stock the Cape Fear River last month. Now what about the Hudson River? Well the Hudson River stock has been, well put through the wringer themselves, but have self-stocked themselves and used to stock other waters.
While our friends in the northern most state in the USA may think they have a spawning stock of striped bass, specifically in the Kennebec River, some others may doubt it. Well how do you explain the above? Who cares. And who cares about Maine. They have like a two-month season. I'M KIDDING. But seriously. The Kennebec used to be a river that had a stronger spawning stock. Over the decades that population sunk and from 1982-1991 Hudson River fish from fingerlings to eggs to fingerlings were stocked and raised and then stocked into the Kennebec. Since 2007 Maine has been doing catch and follow surveys on "their" fish and found them to migrate south like other striped bass do during the winter.
If you've ever fished a power plant on a river then you know it can be a good thing, especially during the winter. Warm water discharges attract bait and predator fish alike, with some big fish choosing to stay put in the warm water rather than heading south. There have been plants on the Hudson, Hackensack, and Delaware Rivers near me. I remember in July 2011 when something went haywire at the Oyster Creek Generating Plant which
killed thousands of striped bass. There had been previous incidents before that. Up along the Hudson River in New York there were several industries that led to the contamination and demise of the striped bass.
Back in the day companies like General Electric and Consolidated Edison either loaded up the striped bass with PCB's or diced and sliced them up in the filters and blades that kept the engines, turbines, and nuclear reactors (Indian Point), running and cool. And the fish paid the price. The fish were so loaded up with PCB's the DEC terminated any commercial fishery for the striped bass in the Hudson in 1976. Additionally there were warnings against consumption of Hudson River striped bass due to those high PCB levels. Those warnings continue today due to the contaminated riverbed and shorelines along the Hudson.
In 1974 Con Ed started drawing up plans for a striped bass hatchery that would be located on the Hudson River in order to replenish fish that were killed as they supplied energy to New York City and Westchester County. At first there were possible sites but
the site at Verplanck was chosen and operated in a limited capacity from 1973 -1980 . The goal was to produce 1,500,000 fingerlings to be returned to the Hudson. In looking through the proposal I also caught a glimpse of the salaries for those manning the hatchery, it's crazy that those were good salaries back in the mid-1970's.
Following a court decision in 1981 five utility companies were ordered to fund an eight-year striped bass stocking program on the Hudson River. Part of that operation also sent fish up to the Kennebec River in Maine, but it was designed and primarily worked to stock the Hudson River with Hudson River fish.
The process of raising and stocking wild striped bass is labor intensive and costly. There are a large percentage of fish that won't survive and not even become spawning stock. However, we have seen the West Coast fishery explode since they were first introduced in 1879. While most of the programs were done around the 1980's and 1990's when the stocks were at an all time low, we saw how fisheries were rebuilt with a combination of a moratorium, Gamefish status designation, size and bag limit reductions, and in certain waters seasonal closures. Guys, we had seasonal closures forever, this is not a new idea. everyones up in arms because it now affects them, or you.
While listening to Jim Hutchinson's weekly report on The Fisherman Magazine this past week he posted an interesting graph. It was the ASMFC's SSB chart, but added to it were some important dates. On January 5 1996 the ASMFC declared the stock rebuilt at 202 million pounds, which is slightly higher than where we are now, which in 2024 is at 191 million pounds. The rebuild target for 2029 is 247 million pounds. So are we really that much worse off? It's not the SSB that's in dire straights, it's the JAI indices which have shown poor recruitment year after year after year.
What that tells me is it's going to take a village to get this train back on the rails. There HAS to be movement on all fronts, from better environmental protections, which includes forage fish, a steady and robust hatchery and stocking program, gear modifications (please), better catch and release practices, a size and bag limit that protects the fish for real, and yes, some No Target and or No Harvest seasonal closures, at least ones that are fair and equitable and make sense. We're just a day away from a very, very, very important ASMFC Management Board Meeting.