Striped bass: gamefish status?

[baldwin]

Anyone still interested in gamefish status for striped bass (no commercial harvest), or is everyone waiting for another fishery collapse. The current commercial increase, along with a few bad recruitment years, is probably not going to do much good for our fishery. I'd hate to have to take up golf for my retirement years.

[kwakr]

Take a look at http://www.stripermoon.com/talkshop29/index.html

A new group is just starting up called Stripers Forever. Take a look. They are taking a run at torpedoing the ratification of Amendment 6, but what the real purpose of the group is and will be is to gain gamefish status for stripers everywhere on the Atlantic Coast. That's it.......no other goals. What do you guys think?

[Onshore]

Where were all those Striper Forever folks when Amendment Six was going throught the approval process for nearly three years? I was on the Striped Bass Advisory Panel these past four 1/2 years and I did not see any of them in Warwick RI. I also read the testimony from all the New England public hearings and read the letters that some folks sent to ASMFC on the amendment. The now loud voices of Stripers Forever were pretty silent all of that time.

They may take a run at the amendment but that will go nowhere. The amendment will be passed so fast next week in Virginia that they wont' be able to take a deep breath. Too little and too late.

And, for the record, I resigned from the Striped Bass AP at the end of the Warwick meeting in December because it was all too apparent the most saltwater fishermen didn't care what happened or they would have been there to see things went their way. The commercials were there, were polite, and got what they wanted. It's a very political animal and they know how to play the game. We don't, and that's a sad fact.

Bill Hubbard

[baldwin]

The struggle to save the striper fishery aint over until I'm dead and stinky. GRB