I took the ride over to the Silver Lake Nature Center in Bristol PA for Pennsylvania's public hearing on the Addendum III draft to Amendment 7 of the Interstate Management Plan for Striped Bass. The addendum was filed down during the August meetings and following this public hearing and comment period it will go to the committee for a vote. It will then be implemented in 2026, unless there is some need for an emergency action, like they did with the slot in 2023.
Interestingly Pennsylvania falls in line with the other East Coast states as far as having the same regulations, even though the salt line in the Delaware River falls between the states of New Jersey and Delaware, around RM 70, +/- a few miles. In 1906 there was a record drought and that salt line creeped up to the City of Brotherly Love.
While Pennsylvania isn't really, in my opinion, a big contributor to the mortality (F) numbers in the legal harvesting of striped bass, which leads to a real blow in the SSB numbers, there's plenty of (F) with poaching and poor catch and release practices. Now New Jersey shares the Delaware River with Delaware and PA, but the nethanderals who fish New Jersey are known for what they do along the beaches and from the boats in the bays and inside the three-mile line.
The Delaware River is a border water for the three states. I'm just going to talk about the mid-section, where NJ and PA share water because when back in his heyday Tiger Woods could hit a drive from one state to another. To note, there are different regulations depending on
which side of the line that runs down the center of the river you're on. It's confusing to the anglers, and I'm sure for the fish as well. New York's Hudson River, the number two spawning river, is completely within the state of New York so those regulations protect the fish from both sides. Where I am those different regulations cause confusion, and allow various interpretations, in when, where, and how you can fish. An example would be during the months of April and May, the Jersey side is closed but the PA side is open and anglers can harvest one fish per day 22- less than 26 inches. Enforcement on both sides is limited, and practically ineffective. Writing tickets for fishing without a license doesn't protect the resource, it only generates revenue for the individual states.
Now that discussion wasn't part of the public hearing but it is an important thing to consider if the states and the ASMFC truly want to sustainably manage a spawning river fishery.
Emily Franke, the fisheries management coordinator for the ASMFC and Tyler Grabowksi, a fisheries biologist from PA, guided the meeting which had about 60 in-person attendees with more virtually. Franke does a great job and I have heard her during public hearings and during commission and committee meetings. Last night she outlined what is up for public comment and which will be decided "...no later than October 2025 with implementation in 2026".
There are things in the addendum that are on the table which have a limited effect on some anglers but more more to others. How to measure a striped bass for harvest? Pinch the tail or not. I'm not harvesting nor looking for records so it doesn't matter. The point at when a commercial operation should tag a striped bass that going to be sold? Either at the hooking, the landing, or the selling point. I say when it's on the deck. Maryland and the Chesapeake, that could always be its own meeting. But, what is interesting, was the sniff that they may be considering opening up more of the bay and rivers for no-harvest, if it is decided that alternate plans of seasonal closures will help meet the required 12% reduction.
And then the good stuff rolled in. Slot limit's. It's out there that recreational anglers may have two different regulations. For shore based and boat anglers the 28 - 31 inch slot would continue, but for those recreational anglers fishing on a fire-hire (FH) boats, that slot would be 28 - 33 inches? WTF?
Needless to say I am out on mode splits. Why should anglers that have access to get to the fish, by boat, using all kids of technology, and various methods of fishing, snagging, rehooking (circle hooks), and dropping, trolling, live bait, lures, and flies, be able to harvest a bigger fish then a guy perched at the end of Phillips Avenue waiting a bass to swim by? I'll get to more of that later.
Now remember, all of this has to do with rebuilding the SSB, or spawning striped bass biomass, by 2029. And that in itself leaves room for intrepretation, discussion, or argument as
some say that the SSB target and threshold isn't as bad as it is being reported, compared to rebuilding years in the 1990's, or to too pie in the sky, meaning it doesn't have to be that high. As it stands now, like status quo, if nothing is done then the chance of "rebuilding" sits somewhere around 30% by 2029. A 12% reduction pushes that to 50%, 18% reduction moves the chances, to 60%. There's going to be an updated stock assessment in 2026, so we'll see if the numbers have improved since the slot was mandated and circle hooks only was instituted.
So then it moved to the hot topic, well, really it's lukewarm. No Target. Meaning it's closed. Everywhere. Done. Okay. Try enforcing that. "Hey, we're fishing for bluefish", "...fishing for walleye". Pick your species. Are the law enforcement folks going to pull out a lie detector test? So then it moves over to No-Harvest, or catch and release. Now this has some traction, but it's also slippery for others. Basically it calls for there to be a shut down of harvesting for a certain number of days during the Waves, two month increments January to December, numbered 1 through 6. I've explained it before here and I can't do it again.
Alright, just a bit. If they were going to do an All Ocean closure during Waves 3 (May & June) and 6 (November and December) there would be 22 days, in each Wave, where you couldn't target, and 31 days where you couldn't harvest. Doing it all ocean wide creates some controversy because these are migratory fish. July to New Jersey is different than July in Masachusetts. So they may have different Waves for different blocks of the states. New Jersey falls between Rhode Island and North Carolina. In order to reach a 12% reduction, during the months of November and December (Wave 6) there would have to be 26 days,
during that two month period, where there's no targeting, or 36 days where's there's no-harvest. You could add a wave, and that would reduce the number of days a touch, but either way, there will be seasonal closure, coming to a fishery near you.
And the thing to watch....those snakes in the grass, like Adam Nowalksy and his buddies, is this. Don't think for a hot second that the lobbyists and the commercials aren't calculating right now if it's better to take the No-Target, with a reduced number of days over a No-Harvest, which is more days. They know it's not enforceable, especially when there's similar predator fish around. It's like taking the plea deal, you take the 5 years behind bars, rather than the risk of coming away for 10. Watch that meeting when these appointees get together, it's greasy, and dirty, and digesting. They're thick as thieves some of these states. And to boot, they are all trying to calculate how they already or will meet the 12% reduction. NY will claim the April 15th start, NJ will say they NEVER meet the commercial quota with the Bonus Tag Program (In leu of having a commercial fishery in NJ).
Anyway, then they opened it up to public comment. I saw some familiar faces like Bill Veldoff, Chuck Many, and Jim Hutchinson from The Fisherman Magazine. Veldof opened up talking about if any studies have been done regarding the damage beach replenishment has done to the Jersey Shore. Manny suggested that maybe the Raritan Bay needs to be regulated a little more tighter, as far as seasonal closures, because these pre-spawn Hudson River fish gather en masse there, and get hammered each spring. While New Jersey opens up March 1st, New York angler have to with until April 15th. That will work to New York advantage when they have to prove how they are contributing to the 12% reduction.
There were other points as well. There was a lot of mention about menhaden and the Virginia based boats and their affect by reducing the amount of forage fish for striped bass have access to. As it says on the Menhaden Defenders sticker, No Bait = No Bass. And bass love bunker, or porgies, depending on where you're from.
I even stood up and offered a couple of comments. I've been writing letters and it was time to stand up and be on the record. I guess kind of put your money where your mouth is. And I have to say, Emily took notes during everyone's comment while up at the mic. I started with choosing the No Harvest over No Target, mostly due to lack of enforcement. I endorsed for no mode splits. I again brought up to Emily that it is my belief that for-hire operations should fall under the commercial sector. They are commercial! Licenses, insurances, it's a business. Money is changing hands. Shockingly, she said they may be considering making them their own sector. That is huge. Imagine taking all of the mortality, (F), from the party boats and the six-packs and putting them in with the commercial operations. Then what would recreational (F) numbers look like? In addition to the straight harvesting numbers, no doubt higher with the for-hire fleet. I just think of the Captree Fleet conglomeration. And that somehow those numbers get glommed in with a guy casting flies off the beach.
I asked if they have considered using different data than the current volunteer fishing effort survey (FES) provided from NOAA in MRIP. And, have they ever surveyed the people who come to these meetings if any of them have filled out the form and sent it back in? It's not a good system, and therefore the numbers are not even close to being accurate. I discussed the Delaware River being a border water between two states, which have different regulations, and how they should be managed together as a fishery. Easier to compile data, easier for law enforcement, and easier to come to decisions on seasonal closures and size and bag limits. And lastly, even though I hated to say it, I suggested that the ASMFC consider rotating the slot. A 28 -31 inch slot may work, or have worked, for a year or two, but then the survivors grow out and the next year class of fish grow in. Maybe, one year it's 20-26 inch fish only, followed by bigger slots, and then even a trophy slot, if you have to, for maybe part of a season. We have to protect the good spawn year classes at any cost.
But one of the best questions of the night and one that piqued my interest was....What percentage of Delaware River fish contribute to the SSB? For years, like forever, it was a few percentage points, like maybe 3% at the max. Grabowksi, the PA fisheries biologist, stated it was now somewhere around 15%. Wow. That is big. Like huge. He kind of Danny-downered it when he suggested they may be Chesapeake fish in the end. You see there's something called the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, a 14 mile long, 450 foot wide, 35 foot deep cut that runs from the Delaware River to the Elk River, which is a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. Some think those fish come through and over and up. They might, to chew, but I don';t think to screw.
During the 1970's the Delaware River was a dead-zone. Nothing, well maybe a few, made it past Philadelphia, at least migratory fish, like striped bass, shad and herring. There was a 0% dissolved oxygen (DO). When the stripers "returned" studies were done to find out where they came back from. Like were these Hudson or Chesapeake fish that expatriated? In the early 1990's a study was done and samples were taken from 191 striped bass and it was determined that they were, in fact, the original Delaware strain of fish. So there. (Original of the Present Delaware River Striped Bass Population as Shown by Analysis alf Mitochondrial DNA, Waldman & Isaac, 1994).
But then, more recently another study and paper were published outlining the different strains of striped bass, and, it looks like there may be some interloping between the Chesapeake and Delaware striped bass going on, from the article,
What's interesting is about a year ago I wrote about the chances of having striped bass stocking programs. Some laughed me off. But if you look above there are genetically similar fish in the Hudson and Kennebec fish, because they stocked the Kennebec with Hudson fish over a period of nine years starting in 1982. So there. The above comes from, River-of -origin assignment of migratory striped bass, with implications for mixed-stock analysis, Wojtusik, et.al, 2022)
So it was a very good public hearing, in my opinion. What will the ASMFC do with it all? I don't know. They've disappointed before and I am sure will do again. It's the reps from each state that make me nauseous. Changes are a'coming so get ready, but so is the fall run. Please consider reming that second treble hook on your plugs and for spin and fly anglers pinch those barbs down. Always carry hemostats, not your Klein tools linemans pliers. They should be long and skinny to pop out those barbless hooks. And Keep Em' Wet as best as you can.
