Cpt. Mark,
It has been said that you can make numbers prove anything. Well Your doing a good job at trying. Yeah, maybe rec fishermen harvest 3 or 4 times as many stripers as the comm guys, but the rec outnumber the comms by over a 100 to 1.
So 1/100th or less of the people who harvest stripers are harvesting 1/4 of them. Hardly seems equitable to me.
I agree that some comprehensive coastwide regs must be set in place. If guys had to use a rod and reel to harvest stripers in other states, it would be much less attractive to them.
I have no quarrel with the guy who legitimately suppliments his income by selling stripers. There are damn few fellows who do.
Most of the comms are guys who go out and kill a few stripers to pay for gas and their note on the boat.
Heres an idea: If a comm striper fisherman can demonstrate that 20% of his income is derived from the sale of striped bass, then he get his comm striper license for free. Otherwise it costs him $5,000.00. A law such as this would help weed out the expoite
rs!