That you took my note as a shot at your fishing abilities is your shortcoming, not mine.
If you re-read the post, you'll note that I spoke of area, not ability. In you post blaming comms,
you made none of the specifics known as you have here. That said, I tend to agree that
government "science" in many fisheries is absolute nonsense. In this case, however, and I base
this, as you do, on personal observation over many years of fishing for stripers,
they've gotten it right with a few exceptions. The main issue I have with DMF is their continuing
proclivity to bow to many recreational and charter lobbies by lowering the size limit.
It seems to me that we were doing just fine with the 34 and 36 inch limits adn things atarted to go
downhill with the invocation of the 28" limit. They tried to push that onto commercials,
lead by charter groups (why?), but we prevailed, keeping the limit high. The reasoning behind higher limits
is steeped in science that tells us that if you pretect the juveniles, higher spawning biomass will
result and the growth we saw here is inherent proof of that.
As to the size issue, I would suggest that the larger fish have moved offshore to escape fishing pressure from
people and, around Monomy and its environs, an increasing seal population. Most
of my charters take place in offshore hotspots and we did not have one charter
on which we failed to catch at least one 30 pounder. It was these areas to which
I was referring in my first post, John. The migratory nature of these fish, a point you aptly raise,
needs to be addressed. While recreational fishermen in Mass are restricted to 1 28" fish per
day, fishermen in the DelMarVa area are taking multiple fish as small as
18" all year. This is the supposed spawning area of these fish and the fishocrats
in those states se fit to allow such foolishness? We need to work together, lose the
destructive divisiveness between recs and comms and force some coast-wide
size restrictions so that, through uniform size restrictions, the FMP can work
for all user-groups...
CMP