THis thread seems to pop up in one form or another every few months. If you search the archives you can find details of striper growth rates and historical reproductve success that I have posted previously.
That said, I believe that the data on current striper demographics pretty much backs up what Larry B. has said. Most of the fish you are fishing over in New England are of Chesapeake origins, with some input from the Hudson river and some locally produced Maine fish thrown in for good measure. Basically, the summer fishery off of Cape Cod is a reflection of the demographics of Chesapeake fish. Right now, you've got a few big cows left over from the 83 year class, almost nothing from the next 6 years or so and a number of huge year classes from the mid 1990's. Right now the first good year classes from the 90's are in the upper 20's to mid 30's in size. Their numbers are dwarfed, however, by a couple of later year classes that comprise the huge schoolie populations we are all seeing. Just because schoolies outnumber keepers by something like 20:1 or 50:1 (a complete guess on my part...) does'nt mean that the keepers are'nt there. It does explain, however, why flyfishers (using r
elatively small lures) take few large bass relative to chunkers and eelers who use baits too big for a schoolie to swallow. Another factor is the prevelance of larger bait (pogies, bunker and squid) around offshore rips that are not accessable from shore or with fly tackle. Two weeks ago, Nantucket charters were consistently returning from Old Man Rip with bass in the upper 20 - mid 30 lb range, while from shore one had to work hard to find a few schoolies and mid size blues. The quality of the fishing had everything to do with whether your feet were on the deck or in the sand.
Prediction: Over the next few years numbers of fish in the 30 - 40 inch range will gradually increase, but really big cows will become increasingly rare. Due to the relatively recent popularization of SW FF for bass along with the *recovery* of the fishery there will be increasing specialization of tactics. I think it will become apparent over the next few years that there are inshore spots that will produce large numbers of schoolies, but few larger fish and there will be other places that are less dependable, but have much better odds of producing a large fish. I forsee anglers either chasing schoolies with light tackle and not complaining about the lack of big fish in spots they frequent and other folks flogging holes and ocean rips with big sticks, 8 inch squid patterns and teeny 450's looking for the occasional BIG fish. *off soapbox*
Last item: Is there enough bait to support the current fishery?
To the best of my knowledge there is not a lot of hard data on this right now, but some fishery folks have woken up and figured out that *Hey, it's probably a good idea to learn something about factors that regulate menhaden populations* I know of a couple of ongoing studies, but I'm sure that most of you would agree with my anectdotal/common sense feeling that vacuuming our coastal waters of menhaden and squid may affect other fisheries as well (including striped bass). Here in Maryland the menhaden population in the bay was extemely low this year and DNR folks pretty much admitted that fish in the bay were under fed. FWIW every wild caught fish I've seen for sale has been very lean. I personally think that *the powers that be* in management of Atlantic coast fisheries have been a bit blindsided by the recent downturn in forage abundance, but I understand that it will be addressed soon -- hopefullly this winter.
For those of you who don't know, there are currently Hearings going on over decreasing the commercial (and in some cases recreational) take of Atlantic and hickory Shad along the entire Atlantic coast. I find it ironic that there is no allowable recreational take of shad in Maryland while commercial netters target them at the mouth of Chesapeake bay and sell them for 5 cents /pound. To look at different porposals for coastal management of shad check out the Maryland DNR Fisheries page: http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries There is a link there to the various proposals.
Regards,
Eric Lund