The commercial fishery for striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay is alive and, well let's say alive. I'm not sure if it's good, especially for the striped bass, but it's happening. This post isn't meant to pick on the shareholders, as they say, but to share things going on while you battle Cabin Fever.
As you know we have no commercial fishery for striped bass here in New Jersey. That was eliminated back in the early 1990's when New Jersey went to a Gamefish Status for striped bass. People are always calling for "Make it a Gamefish", well we have that already here in New Jersey. Our commercial quotas were transferred over to the Striped Bass Bonus Program (SBBP).
What Gamefish means is there is no commercial fishing, but you can still target and harvest on the recreational side. Some would argue this is stupid because the rec side accounts, if you believe the science and data, for nearly 90% of striped bass mortality between harvest and catch and release mortality. According to that same "data", the commercial fishery on the ocean side and inside the Chesapeake Bay accounts for only 10%, with only 1% accounted for in dead discards.
While you are tying your flies or attending the various fly or plug shows that help cure Cabin Fever over the winter, hard core waterman down in the Chesapeake are hard at working harvesting striped bass for market. I've talked about how and where Chesapeake fish, in my limited knowledge, winter over and stage for whatever kind of spring spawning run exists in the CB tributaries. While it may be cold out, and we're bracing for some more snow and a Polar Vortex, those fish have already moved in and are weathering the winter weather in anticipation of rising water temps and the baits own migration.
Commercial fishing is guided by obtaining a permit and following the law in the way of quotas. According to the ASMFC in 2022 the quota for the CB was set at 3,001,648 million pounds of which 2,256,324 million pounds were harvested. That about 75% filled, with 25%, or 750,000 pounds left on the table, or swimming in the bay.
Following the regulations regarding recreational and commercial fishing in the CB can be difficult. There's a lot of water in the open bay and its tributaries, several states and commissions are involved, along with seasonal closures and varying size limits. Additionally, the commercial fishery has different gear and harvest method regulations. In Maryland, for example, commercials can use hook and line, drift gill nets, and or haul seine nets. The commercial slot size is 18 inches to 36 inches and there are days of the week where fishing is allowed, or not.
My buddy sent me some screen shots from a company down in Maryland that runs a commercial fishery and a fish market. It's called the Choptank River Crab & Oyster Co. and is located in Cambridge, Maryland. This week they are selling striped bass for $3.95 a pound. I have seen the cost of rockfish as they call them down there go for as high as $8 a pound depending on the season.
I have enjoyed eating striped bass over the years. It's been way over a decade since I "took one for the table", because I just can't, but I have enjoyed eating them from time to time in New York where there is a commercial fishery for them. Some say say striped bass aren't good eating. I have a different opinion. Yes, you can drop their meat in a fryer, or load it up with butter, but a well prepared bass, from harvest to table, to me, is hard to beat. But I could live without it.
While I would probably vomit if I saw a commercial net fishery rolling in to the dock with hundreds of dead bass it's all legal, most of the time, and serves the many shareholders in the fishery. But I always come back to "Dead striped bass = less striped bass". And aren't we trying to rebuild a fishery? I know there's the argument, "My family has been doing this for 100 years", maybe true, but what do you say to the once local hardware store owner when Home Depot and Lowe's came to town? Things change, things evolve, and if you don't change then you die, not literally.
I guess what concerns me is the big picture of striped bass. The ASMFC and the fisheries managers are a joke. A lot, not all, of the Captains who run charters and the head boats are hypocrites. Hypocrites in their arguments in saving the striped bass while complaining in a greedy way that any change would lead to their loss of their business and income. Maybe being a full-time charter (recreational or commercial) Captain is a thing of the past, especially when dealing with a migratory fish that is in a bad way (And don't give me that SSB stuff from the 1990's and rebuilding). And then there's the individual anglers who still are keyboard tough guys about No Target and No Harvest and doing the right thing but still use barbed and treble hooks.
So in the end we're taking, every year, 18-27, 28-31, and 31-36 inch fish out of the pool of what's remaining. Add to that poaching and catch and release mortality and the numbers of dead fish just increase. And I haven't even touched on natural predation and environmental mortality here. It doesn't appear to be sustainable. And it doesn't feel like, in all of our shareholder arguments, that we are considering the greatest shareholder in this game, which are the striped bass.
