Plundering Stripers

Striped bass have been declared game fish in Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and the District of Columbia. Unfortunately, that has not happened where they're most abundant--in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. And a federal bill that would give stripers gamefish status along the entire Atlantic coast--such as the one Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) introduces every Congressional session--has as much chance of flying as a Perdue chicken.

One reason for this failure is that recreational anglers slaughter about 23 million pounds of stripers annually--more than three times the 7 million pounds taken by commercial fishermen. Therefore, recreational anglers have little credibility in the eyes of regulators and lawmakers when they demand an end to commercial fishing. But recreational anglers squander their credibility in other ways, too.

Consider the charade they put on in Massachusetts. This past summer I had a front-row seat. On Wednesday, July 12, 2006 I stumbled into my backyard at 3:00 am, looked approvingly at the overcast sky, dumped the sail bag of ice, birch beer and sandwiches into the cooler under Assignment's front seat, fired up the ancient Trooper, and struck out for Harwich, Massachusetts. Before sunup on your average summer weekday you might see one other trailer at the boat ramp. That morning there were well over 100. I had to circle the lot twice to find a parking spot. "What the hell is going on here?" I asked the guy on the dock who caught my bow line.

"First day of commercial striper season," he replied.

That's what the state and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) call it. But these are recreational anglers. They have fancy boats and tackle. They work nine-to-five jobs. No way do they need to be trafficking in striped bass.

An hour and a half into the flood, the rips off Monomoy were starting to cook, and standing waves piled over Assignment's transom. Dozens of boats, alternately appearing out of the fog and vanishing into it, trolled the seams or rode the fast current. I saw three near collisions, then fled north to the cut. Here the fleet was pulling wire and umbrella rigs. From all compass points I heard grinding reminiscent of a dentist's drill. I couldn't figure out what it was until I saw an electric cable attached to a guy's reel. Enormous stripers, sometimes three to a pull, flew over gunwales. Most of the fish were down 40 feet, but every now and then one would roll within fly-rod range. I killed two three-footers. I never feel guilty about taking a legal limit, although I often choose not to--especially if I'm about to travel and would otherwise have to freeze the meat.

Had I bothered to send in $65 for a "commercial" license (the price I'd get for one good-size fish), I could have killed 28 more stripers that day, provided they were 34 inches or longer. These would be almost exclusively breeding-age females; and, no matter what state you live in, they are your fish. In summer the main body of the Atlantic striper population hangs off Massachusetts, in winter off North Carolina and Virginia. I could have killed 30 more fish each Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and five on each Sunday until commercial anglers had reported 1,140,807 pounds.

But about three quarters of the roughly 5,000 Massachusetts anglers with commercial licenses don't report any catch. It is unlikely that they paid for a license and didn't fish a single day or that they fished and caught nothing in a season that may run two months.

"The 'commercial fishery' for stripers in Massachusetts is a farce," writes Brad Burns of the conservation group Stripers Forever. "Why would 74 percent of all commercial license holders have no reported landings? These fishermen may simply have wanted a license just in case they decided to sell a fish or two. But we believe that many of the 3,435 fishermen with zero reported landings are fish hogs who either want to use their licenses fraudulently to circumvent the bag limits that apply to everyone else, or make transportation of these fish legal until they can sell them--unreported, of course--for cash under the table. Which is worse? One

is illegal; the other is simply reprehen-sible. . . . As many as 98.98 percent of Massachusetts commercial striped bass permit holders are simply paying for their fishing fun by selling their catch--legally or illegally--or filling their freezers under the guise of providing for the public."