Weakfish meeting

is the weakfish an important rec. business in the mid atlantic states? (Southern NJ to NC) If we had a moratorium north of NJ, the fishery wouldn't even be missed (it doesn't really exist currently). So there's only upside. The striped bass is the perfect case study. I do agree they are highly cyclical, but to do nothing is crazy.

is the weakfish an important rec. business in the mid atlantic states? (Southern NJ to NC)

I know a bunch of Delaware Bay party/charter boats and a few bait shops that would scream "YES" to this question.

Taking 2\\3 of the population sure leaves a lot of weakfish for natural preditors.

When 77 million baby weakfish are killed at just one powerplant you have to think that is damaging the stock. That 77 million number wasn't made up for good looks. There was an actual study done counting the dead fishies at the plant paid for by the plant......

I can't say for sure what the total impact of power plants are. I would be willing to bet that not only have plants expanded to need more water for cooling because they need to produce more power over the last 25 years but I would also bet there are a fair number of new plants installed over the same time frame which could be a reason we just keep seeing a decline over the long run with a few spikes up and down here and there.

If just .5% of those 77 million weakies from just ONE plant survived that would be an additional 385,000 fish in the stock. Give them an average weight of 2#'s and that would add almost 800,000 pounds to the stock from just 1 year. See where we are going with this?

Sure, We are told that year of young numbers are still consistent and at the same time a powerplant is telling us they killed 77 million weakies over a year. Who should I believe? Hell, year of young survery's in the Deleware Bay region(former weakfish capital of the world) are pretty much a joke. They have been doing the survey's since the early 90's and the findings have no consistancy.

Take a look for yourself:

http://www.njfishandwildlife.com/pdf...l_weakfish.pdf

In my limited experience, one state that isn't afraid to take strong measures to improve stocks of fish is Florida. The have successfully brought back snook and reds that put alot of money into the rec. fishing economy.