Will you be there Ted?  I'm just dying to meet you....

http://capecodfisherman.net/ccfblog/?p=594
 
I'll let you comment this time Ted....

Dean...
 Can't wait to see you at the state house! We will be there in force also! It amazes me how you're group can be so selfish! You were the kid who took his ball and bat and went home from the playground early. This resource is for everyone! This is how i make a living! I'm not an Orvis clad weekend warrior! I am a hard working, honest, fisherman. Why do you want to take away my livelyhood. Do you really think our measly quota affects the Striper population!? I think you should look at the slaughter of Menhaden in Virginia ( No Bait,No Fish)as well as all those enviromental variations in the Chesapeake and the Hudson river.. Has anyone ever tried to assess the Striper Population outside the three mile limit? Let me fish in Federal waters... and I will!  Ask the Draggers what comes up in their nets!  I think you would be suprised how vibrant the Striper population is. And one more thing... If you're catch is off some 70 percent... How do we fill our quota in 5 or 6 weeks fishing three and a third days a week. Something is fishy with you're numbers! See you at the Hearings!!!
David C. Eldridge Jr
Centerville, Ma.

Nagative John.  On assignment in Powder River basin.

David,
One aspect of your tirade is worthy of comment.
You correctly claim, "This resource is for everyone." in rererence to wild striped bass, a public resource.
As a limited  public resource everyone deserves equal access to and benefit from it. No one special interest group (commercial fishermen) should be granted special harvesting privilidges that allow them to under-value, harvest and sell this, a public resource, for their personal gain. This is especially true because it is far more valuable both socially and economically to every citizen of the Commonwealth when valued and managed as a game species.
David, you are correct, the striped bass do belong to everyone yet I would add, equally. I suggest therefore they should be managed for everyone's equal pleasure and reward.
Under game satatus everyone's benefit from the resource will be  the same without exception. Not like it is now which helps to explain your ire.... You obviously don't want everyone to be treated equally, or to lose your special harvesting privilidges and to have to equally share in the resource that even you claim should be for everyone.
You have conveniently  and quite obviously overlooked the fair and equal component. However, Game fish status takes the fair and equal part and addresses it and does so both fairly and equally.
Dean Clark
PS how is the laminating business?

This legislation is supposedly intended to conserve striped bass, yet it is fallacious insomuch as it offers no means to control the habitat concerns of the breeding stock, nor the concerns of a lack of forage(bait species), both of which are of far greater concern to the well being of striped bass breed stocks.  Instead, it simply calls for an end to commercial fishing for striped bass in the commonwealth, which in itself will not accomplish the goal the bill/s supposedly intend.  In the end, this legislation is little more than a re-allocation scheme, which will leave the non-fishing public with no access to striped bass.  The striped bass stocks are currently healthy. According to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, they are not over-fished, and over-fishing is not occurring.  The spawning stock Biomass is above the threshold considered acceptable.  The Ma. commercial fishery is well managed, it is controlled by a strict quota, with accountability measures in place if this quota is exceeded.  The recreational fishery on the other hand, is for the most part totally unconstrained, except for a two fish per person per day limit, year 'round.  In recent years, the recreational fisheries discards, that is undersized fish thrown back dead in pursuit of retainable sized fish, exceeds the entire commercial fisheries landings and discards combined.

So, if striped bass do need protection, who do they really need protection from?

John Rice, Marstons Mills Massachusetts

John:

So you against any bill that doesn’t do everything?  Since habitat and bait issues are difficult to impossible to deal with and the grotesque charade called “commercial striper fishing” (more aptly call “recremercial striper fishing”) is relatively easy to deal with via a ban (as has been done in about half the striped bass states), the bill is by no means “fallacious.”  Sure, stripers have other problems, but this is one we can fix.  Arguing that we shouldn’t fix it because there are other, worse threats makes as much sense as arguing we shouldn’t look for a cure for AIDS because cancer kills more people.

.

Dean,

It appalls me that you use the late Ted Williams’ name to garner credibility and help you spread your false claims, I only hope people are smart enough to do their own homework before taking your misbegotten opinion as fact. You opened your second paragraph “As you all know the stripers are in trouble.”   I want to know where you and the “everyone” you speak of were when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council (ASMFC) held their meeting this past fall in Boston. I was there and heard the science telling us how strong the recent young of year counts were,they were well above expectations. The science also shows the striped bass are above all management targets.
I saw the full presentation by the advisory committee including the many charts and yes I admit the overall population is trending downward. I have two things to say about that, first the history of striped bass going as far back as records are available, show that the species has a long history of large population swings. We are coming off of a period in which we saw record numbers of striped bass thanks to some very strong year classes. When these year classes were young and in our bays and estuaries everyone caught stripers and things were great. These year classes have matured and remain healthy though they have changed their feeding habits and are feeding farther from shore and in deeper water, making them harder to catch for shore bound anglers and fly rodders.
The second point I would like to make is; here in Massachusetts, like the rest of the Atlantic states that still allow commercial fishing, the quota has remained constant as recreational harvest has multiplied by an ever increasing multiple. If you truly are concerned for the striped bass and the recent decline in the population maybe you should try and reduce the sport fishing harvest and pressure, as that sector is increasing at an unsustainable rate. Currently recreational discards also known as catch and release accounts for the killing of more striped bass than the entire commercial quota.

Leo Maher
Chatham, MA

“It appalls me that you use the late Ted Williams’ name to garner credibility and help you spread your false claims.”

Leo, with that remark you have exposed yourself as, at best, intellectually disadvantaged and unread.  I found but one accurate remark in your entire screed: “the population is trending downward.”  The mission of SF is to get it to trend upward.  For once it would be nice to manage a stock before it collapsed--in this case for the second time.  Has it ever occurred to you that there might be more than one “Ted Williams” in this nation of 300 million?  If you Google that name, you will get hundreds of hits about people who never played baseball.  I am not yet “late.”  And I have known Dean since 1970.  He did not contact me.  I contacted him and asked him to answer a comment on this thread.  Moreover, he has not made even one “false claim.”

I've been hearing the same Stripers Forever rhetoric since I was a young fishermen, riding my bike down to Sagamore Beach after school to catch a few schoolies.
According to SF, the stripers needed saving back then when I was just a kid. 
Over a decade later SF continues to preach that the striped bass need saving-something is not adding up.
If gamefish status was so direly needed to save the striped bass when I was a kid, then why are there still plenty of stripers kicking around today? 
If all of SF claims over the years were accurate, there would be no stripers swimming today. 
I am also looking forward to the hearing.
All the best,
Ryan
www.myfishingcapecod.com

Ryan: So you were a bike-riding school kid in 2003?  That was the year Stripers Forever was formed.  That wasn’t even a decade ago.  What’s “not adding up” is your total ignorance of Stripers Forever and the striper situation.  What are “plenty of stripers”? Stripers Forever never said there aren’t stripers around now, just that they are in steep decline.  That’s confirmed by virtually everyone who fishes for them and manages them.  For once let's manage something BEFORE it crashes.

I was 16 in 2003, didn't have a vehicle at my disposal until I was 18-so yes I would have been riding my bike or walking.
 
I do remember hearing the rhetoric back then.  I'm sure I can Google up some threads from fishing forums if you'd like.  I actually at first bought into what SF was saying.  To my father's dismay we began releasing just about any keeper size bass we caught.  Whether it was the intention of SF or not, the articles and information from SF that I found in fishing forums effectively scared me into believing that we were on the verge of another striped bass collapse.
 
Fortunately it has been 9+ years and the striped bass collapse is yet to occur. 
 
The fishing in my neck of the woods actually improved quite drastically since the formation of Stripers Forever.  The best striped bass fishing I have ever taken part in occurred during the summer of 2010 in Cape Cod Bay.
 
Like many fishermen I am very weary of fisheries science.  Keeping tabs on an underwater ecosystem is inherently difficult-if not impossible.  However we have to go with the ASMFC numbers because it's all we have to work with.  According to their numbers, we currently have "plenty" of stripers.
 
Steep decline is not confirmed by virtually everyone who manages striped bass and fishes for striped bass.  The majority of ASMFC members don't seem to agree that striped bass are in steep decline-at least  it didn't seem like they did at their last meeting in Boston, which I attended. 
 
None of my fishing buddies believe striped bass are in steep decline either.  I have quite a few fishing buddies too.  Many of which have been fishing for striped bass since well before I was born.
 
Fear is a strong motivator for a lot of people.  What SF has done, whether intentionally or not, is instill a feeling of fear in many striped bass fishermen up and down the East Coast.  Guys and gals not that familiar with the striped bass fishery buy into what SF preaches, just like how I bought into it back when I was 16.
 
Strong emotions can cause people to do some crazy things.  Like telling someone that they have never met before that they are being "totally ignorant" of Stripers Forever and the striped bass situation.  I'm sure you are a very nice, well mannered person-a person that would probaby not use such an emotionally charged tone had this conversation taken place over the phone or in person.  It seems that more often than not the SF "tone" is one of anger, devoid of tolerance for any opinion but one that matches up exactly with SF's agenda.
 
I'm not the only person that has noticed this angry tone either.  I often write articles for various directories and blogs on the web.  The webmasters of these blogs have brought SF's "angry tone" to my attention.  People take notice.  Many members of the fishing community and online fishing forums also feel this way.
 
I agree with you that we need to manage the striped bass fishery before it collapses.  Fortunately this is already a reality.  Due to the hard work and persistence of many passionate and talented people, the striped bass fishery is being managed correctly and effectively.
 
Could we do a better job with management?  Of course, there is always room for improvement, and I hope we continue to improve over the coming years and decades.  However this proposed bill is in my eyes not a means of improvement at all. 
 
Fortunately the state representatives that have responded to my emails seem to agree with me on this one.
 
Just my 2 cents.
 
All the best,
 
Ryan
myfishingcapecod.com

Ryan: You’re too young to know what a “striped bass collapse" is.  I’m not.  I saw it in the late 1970s when there were essentially NO striped bass.  We went for years without catching one.  The bluefish moved into the striper’s inshore niche, and guys caught them in southern Canada.  The same dead-on-the-dock, MSY management establishment that is now telling you that “the striped bass fishery is being managed correctly and effectively” was telling us the same thing in 1970.  One manager looked me in the eye and declared: “There are plenty of stripers for both sport and commercial fishermen.”  Yes, I and my fellow Stripers Forever members are “angry.”  Anyone who isn’t angry isn’t paying attention--or is too young to remember what we had, what we lost, what we fought to get back and what, if we don’t fight again, we will lose again.

You are absolutely right.  I was not around during the 1970's and have no idea what striped bass fishing was like back then.  I'm sure that if I was fishing back then, I too would have been devestated by the lack of striped bass action.
 
All those bluefish pretty much sum up my worst fishing nightmare.
 
In hindsight, what that manager told you was indeed 100% wrong.  He truly dropped the ball on that one, along with the rest of the fisheries managers, commercial fishermen and whatever recreational fishermen were around back then.
 
I can't blame you for feeling anger towards our fisheries managers, based on what you experienced in the past.  It's obvious to me that you want to have a meaningful impact on the striped bass fishery, and preserve striped bass for decades to come.
 
Yet all this energy over the past 9 plus years, directed at eliminating the commercial fishery, has really had next to no impact whatsoever on preserving striped bass for years to come.  SF's goal all along has been to achieve gamefish status, correct?  Gamefish status is a nice euphemism for eliminating commercial striped bass fishing.
 
Can you imagine the incredible impact that SF could have had if the methods to achieving your end goals of preserving striped bass forever were different?  What if the last 9 years were devoted to preserving herring and menhaden stocks?  Lessening pollution in the Chesapeake and Hudson, and addressing mid-water trawling bycatch issues?
 
You guys are excellent at reaching people with a message.  Just look at how many members your group has been able to recruit.  You guys are all over the web, newspapers and now video as well.  Imagine what that sort of influence could have had on managers when they talk about bait issues, and managing ecosystems as a whole?
 
Instead all this effort has been concentrated on eliminating commercial fishing-the one "solution" that would arguably have little effect on the striped bass population as a whole.
 
The good news is that it is never too late to shift gears.  I am sure that your talents, and your organization's reach could have a meaningful impact in matters that would truly effect striped bass-such as bait, trawling bycatch and a long list of other "issues" impacting the fishery.
 
The great thing is that any effort put forth in this "new" direction would not only positively help striped bass, but it would help the marine ecosystem as a whole.  Viewed in this light your group could in fact help to preserve not just striped bass, but tautog, fluke, flounder, bluefish, tuna and many other species for decades to come-if not forever.
 
Just some food for thought,
 
Ryan
myfishingcapecod.com

“Yet all this energy over the past 9 plus years, directed at eliminating the commercial fishery, has really had next to no impact whatsoever on preserving striped bass for years to come.”

Why would you say that, Ryan?  Almost half of all states in Atlantic striped bass range have made stripers a gamefish by eliminating commercial fishing.  Hardly a radical idea.  And it has definitely had an “impact in preserving striped bass for years to come,” though more is needed.  I have a friend whose grandfather used to be a commercial waterfowl hunter.  When market hunting was outlawed he cried and moaned about how selfish elitists were monopolizing the resource.  But the resource recovered.  Another friend knew a commercial ruffed grouse and shorebird hunter who claimed that the public had a right to eat wild ruffed grouse and shorebirds and that selfish elitists were monopolizing the resource.  But grouse and shorebirds recovered.

One week of mid water guys interacting with stripers will kill more Bass then the entire MA com. fleet. SF needs to get their priorities straight. Too bad these D Wads can't do some good with all the money they raise from an uninformed public. In the ground fish fishery the Gov. wants to squeeze out the little guy. The big dogs who do the most damage are protected. Seems like a similar situation here. SF is fixated on eliminating a low impact, rod and reel fishery while the true threats to the fish are ignored. So go dig up some more mis leading photos, Ted. If you ever succeed in banning com. bass in MA. it will be a real shame.

Dear aptly named Bass Seller: It is remarkable how uniformed about this issue you recremercials are.  “All the money they raise”????  Do you know how much that is?  Zero!  Who says SF is ignoring bigger threats?  And spare us the alleged data about “mid-water guys” that you pull from your hat.  That’s not to say the mid-water fleet doesn’t hurt stripers.  The point is that we can do something about the grotesque recremercial slaughter of breeding age females.  Legislating gamefish status for stripers is hardly a radical idea since almost half the states in the striper’s native range have done so.

1. "The Conservation Bill which prohibits the commercial sale of wild stripers, has a slot limit component, reduces the recreational harvest by 50% and sets the commercial quota aside for conservation."

Not sure what kind of logic went into saying that the bill would reduce the recreational take by 50 percent.   Based on what happened in Maine when they went to the schoolie slaughtering slot limit, we can expect the same 1900% increase in catch that they saw.   Thier 1900% increase was seen the first year of the slaughter rule.This is the reason that all the big and small charter boat associations in Mass are vehemently against the bills.    Most of the bait and tackle shops are as well.   Everybody saw what happened in Maine and feel it would be catastrophic to the coastwide fishery if Mass were to adopt it.   I can post the numbers if you disagree with disasterous harvest increases I am referencing.
I personally  know members of SF that have declined to be involved anymore because they felt they had no say in the leadership and positions of the organization.  Too bad because they could have done a ton of good for striped bass.   People have realized that the fruit at the top of the SF tree is rotten.

Iron: I can’t agree with your friends who believe they have “no say in the leadership and positions” of Stripers Forever or that that leadership is “rotten.”  Brad Burns is a hero who has done terrific things for conservation dating back to the days when he and my late friend John Cole got native stripers back in the Kennebec.  He’s great guy who really cares about stripers and all fish and wildlife.  Same with Dean Clark, an old friend.  But I have to say I share your concern about slot limits, at least low slot limits.  If the legislature sets a high minimum slot--something close to 28 inches--I believe the rec. harvest can indeed be cut by half.  If it sets a low slot, mortality may actually increase over what it is now because young stripers are stupid and therefore very vulnerable to angling.  I have friends on regional fisheries councils who have seen this happen and are death on low slots.

I've tried to stay away from this conversation, because there is something about striped bass that seems to bring out the worst in everyone who comes to the table, and produces a debate that is characterized for more by heat than by light.  However, having seen the points made by both sides, I believe that I'll chime in.
First, given the current state of the science, the fact that ASMFC finds that striped bass are abundant today is largely irrelevant to the debate, since the same stock assessment indicates that there will be a steady decline until at least 2017, and that decline will place the spawning stock biomass well below target, and perhaps below threshold, in that year.  The time to take remedial action is now, when SSB remains high and relatively benign measures can avoid real problems.  it's possible that the strong 2011 year class will cause SS to trend upward in 2018, IF that year class survives relatively intact until maturity, but that is an upward tick from an already low number, and we still don't know whether 2011 signalled the beginning of a typical series of dominant and weaker year classes that supports a healthy stock, or whether it was an outlyer in what has been a steady string of poor spawns.  Given that Chesapeake bass tend to produce dominant year classes when the spawning rivers are cold and high, the this year's warm winter may have set the stage for a spawning failure in 2012.  There is something about fisheries that makes people ignore the future and concentrate on today, so that anyone who thinks more than a year ahead appears to be a dreamer and a visionary.  The general mindset seems to be "The fish are here now, so kill them while you can.  You may die in your sleep and never see tomorrow, so why worry about the future."  That sort of thinking doomed the bass in the '70s, and could do so again if managers are not careful.
Along the same lines, when you're in an area where bass are abundant, you shouldn't extrapolate that to reflect the health of the stock all along the coast.  You might happen to be located near the species' seasonal center of abundance--the last place they'll disappear from even if things go really bad (one of the best examples of this was the blitz at Pochet's Hole, on the outer Cape, around 1980, give or take a couple of years; while everyone else on the coast was suffering though a dearth of fish, surfcasters enjoyed a blitz of truly large striped bass, with a number of fish breaking 50 and, if I recall correctly, some over 60).  If you really want to get a feel for how striped bass are doing, you need to look at the outer edges of their range, where fish will begin to disappear in the early stages of a decline.  Given what the folks from Maine and New Hampshire are saying at ASMFC, out at the fringes, bass are already pretty scarce.
Similarly, looking offshore at some theoretical offshore population of bass is not an answer.  The State of Massachusetts conducted a study (which may still be ongoing) tagging fish offshore, in the vicinity of Stellwagon Bank, with acoustic tags, and then setting up acoustic listening posts along the Massachusetts coast.  Without exception, those "offshore" bass came back inshore.  Thus, while bass may move offshore for a while, over the course of a season a dearth of fish inshore can be interpreted as a dearth of fish offshore, because it's all the same population that moves in and out as conditions dictate.  (A good summary of the study is available on the ASMFC website, included in the proceedings of one of the Striped Bass Technical Committee meetings, I think from early 2011).
Of course, Stripers Forever ignores some science, too.  When the organization's website notes that “fish for fun anglers are more often than not prohibited by strict size regulations from keeping any of the stripers they catch,” and "“In states with coastal commercial fisheries, the minimum legal size for anglers is 28 inches, which puts a bass for dinner our of reach for the great majority of rod and reel fishermen,” there is the strong suggestion that SF would use at least some of the savings attained through eliminating a commercial fishery to reduce the recreational size limit.  However, doing so would effectively eliminate any conservation gains from the commercial prohibition, as the current fishing mortality target and threshold are predicated on a 28" coastal size limit, and "conservation equivalency" in the case of a lowered size limit would require an adjustment to the mortality target and threshold to avoid overfishing.  An example can be found in New York's commercial fishery, where concern over PCB bioaccumulation in larger fish has resulted in a 24"-36" commercial slot.  As a result of such slot, New York's commercial quota has been adjusted downward by a little over 20%--about the percentage of overall striped bass harvest represented by the commercial component.  So it would appear that a similar recreational slot, which would let more people take home "a bass for dinner," coupled with a commercial ban would have no conservation benefit at all.  (Maine's slot, which lets an angler keep either an immature 20-26 inch bass or a mature female of 40 inches or more, also shows the impact of a size limit reduction, since even with the prohibition on retaining 26-40 inch fish, the bag limit had to be cut to a single fish in order to maintain "conservation equivilency".)  Thus, if conservation is a real goal, any reduction in the size limit should be strictly avoided.
Slot limits, which also seem to be favored by many in Stripers Forever, are also not a panacea.  While they arguably protect large breeding fish from exploitation and most fishing mortality (although, as mentioned above, the Maine slot specifically permits the harvest of the largest and most fecund breeders), although no one has yet provided a detailed calculation of the resultant release mortality of large bass that fall outside the upper limit of the slot, and there is reason to believe that such mortality might well be higher than the mortality currently calculated for releases of fish of mixed sizes (I am assuming that people will continue to fish for large bass, sometimes on fish-killing light tackle and fly gear, and often with bait that is ingested deeply and fatally).  In addition, a fixed slot limit can actually hurt a stock, by focusing effort on weak year classes (such as the current 2004-2010 year classes of striped bass), often before such fish have a chance to spawn even once.  For a slot to be effective, it must be adjusted annually to focus effort on the least vulnerable year classes in a population (or, perhaps, after years of weak year classes, to assure that the strong year classes recruit into the SSB, as was the case in Amendment 3 to ASMFC's Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass).  It is unlikely that managers will want to go through that effort, and it is unlikely that many of the current slot supporters will go along, as such measures will often eliminate the likeklihood of taking home "a bass for dinner."   And even if such a slot was adopted, there would be significant compliance problems as anglers failed to keep up with changing regulations and took bass outside the limits of the most recent slot.  A better solution is to reduce target fishing mortality to some level significantly lower than it is today (F=0.20?), in order to assure the survival of fish from all year classes and produce a more naturally stratified age and size structure.
But then, we should realize that conservation isn't the only argument in favor of gamefish.  As some organization used to point out a couple of decades ago, "Fish are wildlife, too," and what has been dubbed the "North American Model" of wildlife management has long emphasized broad public access to living natural resources (and by this I mean direct access--harvest for personal use--and not merely the ability to purchase a formerly public resource from someone who has previously privatized it, reducing it to such person's possession in hopes of earning a profit from its eventual sale) and limited commercial exploitation.  Right now, many forms of wildlife, ranging from whitetail deer, grey squirrels and Canada geese  to largemouth bass, chain pickerel and pike are widely available for public harvest, but are not available in your local supermarket because they cannot be commercially harvested (although some very abundant inland species, or those not widely sought for personal consumption, such as bigmouth buffalo, yellow perch, coyote, raccoon and mink can be commercialized).  There is no logical reason why striped bass can't be managed in the same way as whitetail deer (or white marlin) and reserved solely for non-commercial harvest.
We then get to the commercial argument that the non-fishing public has a "right" to purchase commercially harvested striped bass but, the fact is, they don't.  They have the same right to purchase stripers as they have to purchase ruffed grouse or pronghorn antelope:  None.  If someone disagrees with that conclusion, I ask them to show me the statute, court decision or constitutional provision which specifically creates such a right, because if there is no such law, there is no such right.  You cannot create a right out of thin air.  However, while you cannot create a right out of thin air, you can create a hypocritical statement.  I followed up on one of the websites mentioned above, http://capecodfisherman.net/ccfblog/?p=594, and noted that while the person who apparently cites such site with favor expresses concern about leaving "the non-fishing public with no access to striped bass," apparently echoint the notion that everyone should be able to EAT a public resource, the website noted seems to lament that currently, in Massachusetts, everyone now has the statutory right to COMMERCIALLY HARVEST such a resource.  That seems inconsistent for someone who would otherwise champion the public's rights, for the same logic that would give everyone access (even if paid access) to the public bass resource should give everyone access to harvesting such resource (including harvest for later sale).  By what logic should the general right to purchase striped bass from someone else, in order to consume it, but not to sell striped bass for someone else's consumption (unless, of course, one happened to sell striped bass, and wanted to protect one's economic interests--and those of one's 'deserving" colleagues--by cutting out other commercial fishermen, which in essence isn't all that different from a recreational fisherman wanting to cut out all commercial fishermen so that he could have all of the fish for himself and his chosen bretheren).

In my view, "gamefish" is a policy issue that must be weighed against a number of factors.  On an economic basis, the only studies ever conducted, most particularly a study conducted by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science about a decade ago, suggest that "gamefish" will produce the greatest economic benefit.  To the best of my knowledge, no similarly rigorous study has ever been conducted which suggests that the commercial fishery has a similar, far less a greater, value.  As a matter of wildlife mangement, "gamefish" for striped bass would be a logical extension of similar status given a wide variety of terrestrial wildlife, waterfowl and freshwater (and some saltwater) fish.  The parallels between fishery management and wildfowl management are particularly striking, apart from the fact that wildfowl managers are more than a century ahead of those who manage salt water fish stocks.
As a conservation measure, though, the jury is still out.  If "gamefish" is only a reallocation scheme, as some commercial representatives insist, and no reduction in fishing mortality ensues, the conservation benefit is nil.  If "gamefish" is merely a means to lower the recreational size limit, perhaps by means of a slot, then it will contribute nothing to the bass population and perhaps could even do harm.  But if the push for "gamefish" includes a push to lower F and even reduce the current F target adopted by ASMFC, then it is a worthwhile conservation effort and worthy of aggressive support.

Thank Anon.  In basketball terms your comment is a triple turn-around slam-dunk.

Hi Ted,
 
Since this is a conservation blog I figured this was important to post here.
 
We have a bunch of upcoming hearings regarding the pair-trawl herring boats that have been pounding our inshore waters.  It's debatable how much of an impact these boats have on striped bass, however it's easy to imagine that scooping millions of herring from areas reachable via a row boat can't be necessarily good for striped bass-and the entire inshore fishery for that matter.
 
I'm not sure where you are based, but it'd be great to get some support from you or some of your Stripers Forever friends.  We need as many concerned fishermen as possible to preserve our inshore stocks of forage fish.  Attending one or two of these hearings is an important first step.
 
I've listed the hearing dates and locations below.  If you'd like to familiarize yourself with what these boats are up to, check out this story - http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20120305%2FNEWS%2F203050317
 
Friday, March 2, 2012
Rockport, Maine
9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Samoset Hotel
220 Warrenton Street, Rockport, ME 04856
Phone: (207) 594-2511

Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Gloucester, MA
7:00 – 9:00 pm
MA DMF Annisquam River Station
30 Emerson Avenue, Gloucester, MA 01930
Phone: (978) 282-0308

Thursday, March 15, 2012
Portsmouth, NH
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Sheraton Harborside Hotel
250 Market Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801
Phone: (603) 431-2300

Monday, March 19, 2012
Fairhaven, MA
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Seaport Inn
110 Middle Street, Fairhaven, MA 02719
Phone: (508) 997-1281

Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Portland, Maine
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Holiday Inn By the Bay
88 Spring Street, Portland, ME 04101
Phone: (207) 775-2311

Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Plymouth, Massachusetts
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Radisson Hotel Plymouth Harbor
180 Water Street, Plymouth MA 02360
Phone: (508) 747-4900

Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Warwick, RI
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Hilton Garden Inn
One Thurber Street, Warwick, RI 02886
Phone: (401) 734-9600

Thursday, March 29, 2012
Cape May, New Jersey
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Congress Hall Hotel
251 Beach Avenue, Cape May, NJ 08204
Phone: (609) 884-8421
Thanks!