A Revelation

[ronmontecalvo]

Out with Castafly Charters and Capt Ray Stachelek who came upon a football field of stripers moving in Upper Narraganset Bay. My wish to you reader, is that you have a day like this.
After over 40 years of chasing stipers with a fly rod we came upon something remarkable-a fair size fish, about 28-29" with another fish in it's gullet. When the smaller fish was removed it was another striper! The revelation-they eat their own. Could this be a reason for the decline?

[rel]

ron- Everything in Nature is prey for something larger. That small striper was probably in with a school of herring and made itself an easy target. Just think what a school of blues could do with all the 8-10" stripers that are around. ron

[rockfish]

Just finished Frank Daignault's new book, The Trophy Striper. On page 12, he says that "stripers, as well as most other species, will eat their young. They always have. It may simply be happening more often now because more small fish are around." I believe it...since the 1996 record index year of 60, I have never seen so many small fish, going back to the early sixties when I started fishing for bass.

[juro]

Is the question whether the decline of brood size stripers is due to the predation of stripers by other stripers and not the huge impacts that commercial and recreational fisheries (particularly the MA state recreational mortality rate... which see) not to mention pollution in estarine areas where they spawn, and destruction of habitat casued by encroachment of man?

[dusty]

One of the first things you learn in biology, particularly when studying fishes is that big will always consume small. I don't think it's constructive to try to find complicated reasons for why stripers are 'now' eating their own. They always have and they always will.

[ronmontecalvo]

Lighten up guys. My posting has an element of tongue-in-cheek

[Captcastafly]

<blockquote>
=========
On 5/8/00 7:11:54 PM, ronmontecalvo wrote:
Lighten up guys. My posting has an element of tongue-in-cheek
</blockquote> We know that Ron. It's not like it's a question of life or death. Fly Fishing is more serious than that.

[rockfish]

Mentioned the striper cannabalism issue to a marine fisheries biologist I know. He said that when he was involved with raising stripers in the 70s, they found that the fish became cannabalistic at TWO inches! He said if they weren't careful in segregating the fish, as some grew faster than others, the bigger ones would eat the smaller ones hatched out of the same group of eggs.