2024 Striped Bass Moratorium

This is George Scocca and you're listening to the New York Fishing Podcast. For those of you that have listened to me in the past, I talk a lot about fisheries management. This is in reference to breaking news that happened this week that's kind of gone under the radar, and that is that the juvenile striped bass index in Maryland is showing a really bad trend. There is no getting around it that fishery in the Chesapeake is witnessing some of its toughest times. For those of you that listened to this podcast, you know I often say there's one thing that's missing in every piece and part of fisheries management and that's common sense. There's just no common sense in any of it and I'm going to show you just a little bit about that right here and now. I can't get to. I'm not going to get really too deep and get into any of these different acronyms because it's probably 50 or 100 of them. I'm going to try and lay it out in layman's terms For those of you striped bass fishermen who want to fish for striped bass next year, because what's being discussed behind closed doors right now and actually some of the doors are open and that's what's got me very concerned is a total moratorium, probably until sometime in June Total no catch and release, no targeted fishery whatsoever, being that they label us a 9% mortality rate, which I'm going to just touch in a few minutes. Because that number again, if you put a little bit of common sense behind it, you know the number is incorrect, yet it's still being used. So when I talk about common sense, first thing I want to talk about is the striped bass fishery, the entire management plan, and in fact this goes for just about every single fishery there is, or a very heavy commercially fished fishery, and that would be. We regulate these fish in pounds, not fish. So I want you to think about that for a minute. Do we, as recreational anglers, care, like about pounds A fish? Do we count our overall pounds of fish or do we care about the size of each individual fish we catch? And what is pounds got to do with fish? I mean, isn't it the number of fish we're trying to save? I never got it. I'm sure I got to be missing something, but no one has ever explained to me why all of these fisheries. When we look at young of the year indexes, we're looking at numbers, we're not looking at pounds. Yet Then we turn around, we take those numbers, we extrapolate numbers, we make it harder to predict what's going to happen, and then we spit out these crazy management regulations. So one of the things that's always bugged me, and it's always going to until it's addressed and it should be addressed and I'm really not sure why it's not and that is the bycatch mortality of 9%, which is, you know, they claim that the fish that we catch, right, every striped bass, just so you understand what this means you catch a striped bass, you let it go. Nine, one out of 10, or 9%, are going to die, so it's a little under one out of 10. I have been pushing that back. It was a study. Let me tell you now. Look, here's the common sense, think about it. So that study was done. I don't know. It was 1995 that that study was done on catch release. Think about what the fishery was in 1995. Many of you guys weren't even fishing it then, or, gals, you weren't even fishing for striped bass back then. I mean, I was and I could tell you it was. It was a lot different than it is today. You did everything you could do to catch a striped bass. I mean you would use lie blackfish. It was legal. Back in your it was probably before the 90. They might have made that illegal I don't know the exact dates, but back in the old day that's what we did. We use every tactic on the sun. Remember, we didn't have the electronics we have today. So you know we did what we had to do to catch fish was all legal within the law. But let's face it, there were a lot of good hook fish there were. You know, there was clam chumming, which, as we all know what that turns into. So over the years we were educated and we became very cognizant of the fact that striped bass needed to be taken care of when we release them. You just can't catch them and give them a, you know, a double back flip when you throw them back in the water. So people started realizing that. And then, you know, I owned a fishing magazine for 30 some odd years. So I know what anglers were doing and I've been here and lived through this change. No one could tell me it didn't happen. It happened. So back then we'll say, okay, it's 9%. I still don't even believe those, those tests. But that's okay For the sake of argument. All right, it showed, it showed 9%. Now again, I'm making this story short. I'm sorry if it sounds long, but it I'm making it short. So you know, the internet is a great thing and the introduction of AI is another great thing, and it manages to find things for you that are very hard to find. Yet I somehow found this study that was conducted. It was a 1300 fish study with 1300 fish caught in all different water taps and this was down to Maryland, and these were striped bass and they were targeted by Jay hooks and then they were targeted by circle hooks, something that we have today. We use circle hooks, obviously. It showed that deep hooking was reduced by 81% 81% over the J hook on a gut fish. On a gutted fish, it showed that there was a 76% reduction in mortality. Ok, so now that's like 2, 3. I don't know, I don't even know what it is, but every percentage point, one point, is a huge number. It's a huge number. I mean, if you look at this, they're always like every chart. You see, they make sure to put the recreational fishing release mortality number in there, and it's always huge. But it's not right. Sorry, I got to calm down. It's incorrect. Whether that's intentional, I don't know, but it is incorrect, literally. I'm looking at it right now and it said that bigger fish were more likely to be deep hooked. Odds of dying were 15 times higher if the striped bass was hooked with a J hook. So last week, if you listened to my podcast with John McMurray and if you haven't, you probably should he knows striped bass well. He and I we've been around the ups and downs of this fishery and we discussed various things about the fishery. Definitely you wouldn't want to hear that piece of it. So anyway, no one listens to this. What I'm telling you right now? I'm beating a dead horse. I have discuss this over and over and over and this is just top of the iceberg. There I found over 14 studies that showed the use of circle hooks with bait on striped bass have reduced mortality in those fish. You have reduced mortality in those fisheries by 85%. Now I'm bringing that up because we use them and you know what we got for that? Dots, we got balls. That's what we got. Ok, they gave us. They give us nothing and, as John McMurray pointed out last week, it's because they claim they don't have a data point. Maybe they don't, I don't know. Maybe this study was. I don't know. I mean, it's literally. I got it on the. It's called a recreational catch and release mortality research in Maryland. It's from the state of Maryland. I got a DNR Marylandgov. So this is their stuff. But OK, so forget about common sense with how today the mortality rates got me down over. The last, I don't know, was at 18 years you think we've been. We have a different ethic now. I can remember when Stripe Bass would gap and release. In fact they had to. You know, they had to put a regulation in on that. I'm not saying it was all great and I never did it, but people did. It wasn't illegal and I, you know they would lip gap them and all. But even still, you don't see any of that stuff anymore. So I don't buy that number and but that's a number we're stuck with for now. So here's another thing. So here you're trying to save this fishery and all of a sudden last year there is an emergency, dire emergency. We have to go to 28 to 31 inches. Essentially what they said, but no one heard, was you're going down and catch and release fishery Because you're allowed to catch it. A 28 to 31 inch fish are probably I don't know 10%, 15% maybe, and according to the area you're on, 0%, 0%. They're all going to be bigger. So we got all these big fish, but for some reason, they want to. They see this emergency and I'm going to explain to you why that is. Next time is I want you to take a look. We hear about the Y-O-Y in the Chesapeake, right, so I want you to take a look at the Y-O-Y in the Hudson River. Those are art fish. No one can say that any of the striped bass that are in the New York bite in the spring are going anywhere, but up the Hudson River. These are not Chesapeake fish, these are Hudson River fish. Now look at the Hudson River chart. I believe it was 2020, 2021, that they had the fourth largest Y-O-Y and if you look at that fishery, it is at or above target. That's in spite of the so-called slaughter that we do in the spring. But now we're hearing that's gonna get all shut down To save the Chesapeake fish. So here's my question. This is what I'm leading up to and I hope you guys are getting it and gals, here we are. We're looking at the Hudson River fishery, which we don't know the number, but the majority of those fish that we catch and we fish here, and every single one of those fish in the spring are all Hudson River fish. So why can't we fish them? We've been fishing them and the Hudson River is doing great. Are we relying now on the Hudson River to carry this entire striped bass quota? I don't know. Maybe or we supposed to do all the heavy lifting and hard work while Chesapeake continues to allow 5 million pounds a year and striped bass commercially targeted. Even worse, over 120 million pounds of men hated are pulled out of the Chesapeake every single year. That fishery is collapsing because it's been mismanaged. If you look at their regulations, they got an in and an out. They shut it down for a couple of weeks, but if you look at them, they have always caught whatever they wanted. I'm doing this for 30 years. I've sat at the table over and over and over. Chesapeake always gets what they want they always have. Now look, this is not a slide on Chesapeake anglers. I'm just saying the state has put these regs in. You guys haven't done the heavy lifting. You folks in Virginia. You're allowing all those men hating to be pulled out of that bag. And now here we go again. Common sense, believe it or not, in striped bass amendment that came out recently. It's discussed, it's still on a table that they wanna transfer commercial quotas from one state to the next. You see, it's always something. To give an example what that means, let's say well, you got New Jersey actually right. They have a commercial quota that they don't take. So should they sell that then? Because it's gonna be worth money. They could transfer that wherever they want. Think about that. So they're looking for more ways to take fish. At the same time, they're telling you that you are not allowed to fish. I think it's time that we seriously look at managing these fisheries differently. New York has time and again done the heavy lifting, gone out and did fought the fights that were not easy, and our commercial fishery is not five million pounds, it's a million pounds and we don't allow. Rather, all the fish are tagged. So we know what's going on in commercial fishery here, while at the same time, half of the fish coming out of Chesapeake are all going to commercial fisheries. Now, if they don't catch them, they want to transfer the quota. So New York has saved the men hating. You think that has something to do with why our striped bass fishery is so healthy. Come on folks. You're on the water. How healthy are those fish that you are seeing out there? I mean these? I've never seen so many big fish ever in all the years I'm doing this. So, yeah, so let's talk about what New York has done to make the Hudson what it is today. Number one A there is no commercial fishing. There are no nets. There are no gill nets, because remember those, that's a 50% mortality. Half the fish that are caught at gill net that they can't keep die, and I think the number is higher. But we'll leave it at that. So we don't have that. And that wasn't simple. There is no commercial fishery in the Hudson River period. So we did that. We saved our bunker, we kept the reduction boats out of New York waters and we saved all of our bunker. Look at what we have Whales and dolphins and more wildlife than we have ever seen. And that's because, again, we did the heavy lifting that they can't do down there and they can't ever do it, because Omega is out of Virginia and the Omega is the company that owns the reduction menhaden fleet. Have you ever heard such crazy name Reduction fleet. Like they don't want us to favor by reducing the amount of bunker. So, anyhow, new York has done everything it possibly can. It was a time when we went from one fish at 36 inches to two fish at 28 inches. Many people in New York opposed it. I did also took a lot of heat from my advertisers. They wanted the two at 28. I felt going from one at 36 to two at 28 was a little bit crazy and, sorry to say, I was proving right. Later on All the states had a back down to one fish at 28, but we fished on one fish at 28 when the rest of the entire coast fished it too. We did the heavy lifting on our own and now we're being penalized for it. Now they're expecting the Hudson River fishery to carry this entire mess that they created. I think it's time to split this thing up. Get this some intomingo? Yeah, some of them do, but we don't know what that number is. I mean, there's guesstimates out there, but there's no real hard studies on that. I just don't see what closing our spring fishery will do to help the Hudson River Y-O-Y. It will do nothing, nothing. Their Y-O-Y is going to continue to go down, because just take a look, go to NYanglercom. I don't want to get into it right now? It's because they have like the most convoluted regulations you've ever seen in your life. They can fish up to with 35 inch fish in the spring. Maybe now they can't because of the emergency rigs, but these guys have an angle for everything. They close a couple weeks here and a week there. There's still fish in 19 inch fish. They've been doing this forever, forever. Just a few years ago they went to the commission See, this is why I don't get this. They managed to go from a 20 inch fish to a 19 inch fish, saying that they use encircle hooks. Now it's amazing how they listen to them then, but they're not giving us any credit for what we're doing. So listen everyone. You need to take this seriously because is for real and I've been telling you for a long time that this was coming we kind of a lot of people in the know felt this was coming. Is it fair? I don't believe it's fair. A lot of people don't like my attitude of trying to get as many fish as I can for the recreational fishery. You see, I always felt, and I still feel to this day and will always feel, that recreation, as long as a fishery is in the hands of the recreational fishery fishermen. It will be fine Because we do whatever we have to do to sustain that fishery. We don't want all the fish here. We don't want to kill fish needlessly. We have changed our ethics 100% from 1996 until now. I hope regulators will listen. I know some of them are. Take a look at the charts. I'm sure you see them. I don't know why no one else is speaking about this. The Hudson River fishery is golden. The temperatures in the spring are the coldest they are all year. Every catch and release study proves that fish survive much longer in cooler temperatures. That is the number one factor in mortality rate. Catch and release mortality rate is water temperature. That much I agree with them. All Kind of makes sense right, use common sense. Hot water Okay, and the fish is going to stress more. This is spring. Those waters are freaking. You don't want to fall in I'll tell you that much, because it'll be awfully freaking cold. Don't shut us down, guys and gals. You need to stand down. If you care about striped bass fishing at all and the future of striped bass fishing, you need to listen to this what I'm telling you. Stay on top of it. However, you do that, whether that be Facebook, instagram, tiktok, whatsapp, whatever the hell you're using. I'd hope you go to NewYorkAnglercom because we will give you the facts and keep you up to date on everything that's happening behind the scenes. Well, the last thing I'm going to do before I run right now is give two minutes on the saltwater fishing license in New York. I can tell you right now that there is not a great appetite for this license. We've been keeping our own record of how anglers are replying to the survey those that have filled out a survey and have responded to us in our questionnaire. It does seem like it's slanted pretty heavily towards no license at all. I guess NewYorkers have had it with fees. But this is going to take a huge effort, organized effort. Those of you folks in the fishing industry, you know you're going to be affected the most by this and the average angler we're all going to be affected by it. I'll tell you this. Stay in touch with us here at NYUAnglercom and NewYork Fishing Podcast. We're going to keep you up to date on what's happening with this license. There is going to be an organized effort to knock this thing down. It's being handled right now behind the scenes the NewYork fishing industry, tackle shops, party boats, charter boats and everyone's selling tackle and bait, and wholesalers are organizing as I speak to stop this license from moving forward. That's a wrap, folks. Thanks for tuning in and be sure to check out NYUAnglercom and subscribe to this podcast so you can stay up to date on everything that's happening here in NewYork waters.