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hairyfishhead

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  1. If you’re in the business of sending your clients home with fillets or selling dead fish, of course you’d fight to keep doing that (no matter what the data says). If you’re a guy who fishes for fun (like many of us are here) or a C&R charter, you’ll want to keep catching and releasing fish so having an abundance of different size classes of stripers swimming is seen as a public benefit not as lost profit. The unfortunate thing for the small for-hire and even smaller commercial sectors in this striped bass fishery is that this is clearly a very valuable and desirable species for millions of recreational anglers. No amount of anyone arguing can change that fact and these captains know the times are changing. Besides nearly all the striped bass for sale these days is farmed, unless you’re shopping at a pricey boutique fish monger…
  2. Could a single States court really overturn a broader decision from a regional management board like ASMFC? Seems like an odd legal entanglement to get caught up in, but have you ever seen anything like this come up in the past?? It’ll be a tough argument for them to win when thousands of recreational anglers clearly commented on wanting more conservation focused management like what Addendum II was working towards.
  3. This video has some great comparisons between both of the 500 reels. Everyone’s discussion in this thread is showing how we all use our reels differently and I think its important to assess what will work for “you” most of all. Unfortunately we’re stuck with only these 2 options… would love to see an Okuma Komodo 500 one day! I’ve always felt the Tranx 500 is too bulky and pricey for what it is. It’s not a good low profile baitcaster and it’s not a good tuna reel. Can it do both, absolutely, but with compromises that don’t cut the cake for me. Daiwa did miss their mark on pricing the Lexa 500, but I was able to use some discounted gift cards to get mine at a more reasonable price. While it may be more of a “400 wide” as the video points out, it is a lighter and lower 500 reel, which I like a lot. Hopefully the Lexa 500 will hold the amount of straight mono-fluoro I need since I really want a levelwind for the hours of casting and retrieving I’ll do in a night for stripers. I have no plans of using it offshore for tuna, but maybe on some other tough inshore fish.
  4. I ordered a Lexa 500 and am personally quite excited for this reel, even if it “only” has a larger line capacity than the 400 size. Why fix something that isn’t broken and doesn’t seem to break right? The Lexa 400s have landed many +100lb bluefin tuna after all. The Tranx offers a lot, but isn’t a perfect big baitcaster by any means since they’re prone to some issues and don’t cast the best. The Okuma Komodo 400s are way tougher (unbreakable?), but don’t cast that far either. I found the older Curado 300s to be easiest to service/adjust with the side plate you can flip open, but have less line capacity. The Calcutta 700 is a freaking tank, but a little too heavy for me. The Ambassador 10000, while bulletproof, lack some modern benefits while also just being “big” too. @Heavy Hooksetter has helped a lot to weigh in with his wisdom on reels. The bottom line is it’s tough to find a big levelwind reel without some trade offs. I’m going to spool straight 30-40lb mono or fluoro on my Lexa 500 for drifting big metal lips, swinging soft plastics and working Docs. After trying many of the reels I listed above to do this, I’m certain the Lexa 500 is the perfect tool for the job because it will hold enough line. I am especially excited to have the Magcast feature that makes instantaneous on-the-water adjustments a breeze to help get smoother casts with farther distance. This will be especially helpful with metal lips that tumble around midcast or when the wind keeps changing directions all night. 1 click of that dial can reduce backlashes or get that extra 20-30ft of distance that can make all the difference some nights… this is also a very “light” reel weightwise for its size which will be nice when fishing 4-6oz baits a lot.
  5. 1 good spawn can never recover a stock and not a single fisheries scientist would ever say that. But if 2 guys in the Chessy and a bunch of charter boat captains say fishing is great, I guess we have nothing to worry about? It is dangerous to think we've got a handle on this fishery at all now since harvest/mortality has been increasing, YOY recruitment is decreasing, poaching is rampant and angling pressure is spiking all year long, coastwide. These are serious large scale population level problems without even factoring in all the environmental issues too. We need several strong successive spawns in both Rivers for this stock to fully recover and are many many years away from the fishery being as good as it once was. It took 10 years with a few record level spawns to recover the stock in 1995 from the collapse in the 70-80s. The upcoming ASMFC 2024 stock assessment should really shed some light on where things are and how long we can expect to see a lot of slow days of fishing ahead…
  6. Also the slot was to 35” in 2022. But let’s look back at 2020 recreational number of fish harvested then before the 2015s got hammered… Maryland Charter Boat: 234,376 fish Private Boat: 467,005 fish Shore: 33,427 fish New Jersey Charter Boat: 3,742 fish Private Boat: 436,839 fish Shore: 79,810 fish New York Charter Boat: 14,631 fish Private Boat: 176,390 fish Shore: 12,666 fish Marylands Charter Boat’s kept 13 times more bass than NY and NJ for-hire fleets combined. Marylands commercial sector harvested 8 times the amount of bass as NY did (NJ has no commercial). See the story here? Year after year, Maryland has been taking a tremendous amount of bass out of the fishery for being such a lowly populated State. This is why almost every other State opposes Maryland and New Jerseys management options in ASMFC Board meetings, they can read the data and see this BS plain as day. Please check the data yourself, it’s free. We’re going to see a lot less bass harvested in 2024 that’s for sure since the Ocean 28-31” slot will protect a lot of what fish are left in the strong 2015 year class and the Bay will have a tight slot too (while still killing immature bass that have never spawned). Maryland will still be the single highest harvester in 2024 no doubt!
  7. This article is mostly cherry picked information from ASMFC with some bogus quotes from a charter boat captain (Rockfish Charters) saying “fishing has never been better.” Not a lot specifically about the Hudson stock, which seems to continue to be poorly understood compared to the larger Chesapeake stock. Lumping the two together in modeling and management is dangerous without understanding how their populations differ. How many Hudson fish are really out there now, nobody knows…
  8. @CWitek has laid out many great points but, here is the 2022 recreational harvest in numbers of striped bass (not pounds) for Maryland, NJ and NY based on MRIP data (not perfect). Maryland Charter Boat: 142,098 fish Private Boat: 434,290 fish Shore: 65,808 fish New Jersey Charter/Party Boat: 18,027 fish Private Boat: 1,017,044 fish Shore: 91,416 fish New York Charter/Party Boat: 44,385 fish Private Boat: 714,859 fish Shore: 123,655 fish Maryland Charter Boats kill almost 8 times as many bass as NJ and more than 3 times as many bass as NY for-hire fleets. Maryland Commercial sector harvests double the poundage of NY fishermen (NJ has no commercial fishery). This is why stricter regulations in Maryland make a big difference for this entire fishery! Yes the recreational sector harvest was very high (this is a public resource), but the 28-35” slot targeted the 2015 class instead of protecting it but that’ll be different in 2024 with the new narrow slot that many bass have grown out of now. If you want to blame anyone, it’s really the damn boat guys doing the most damage not us on the sand… To be clear, I do not support harvest when the stock is overfished. But I do not think Maryland is the hero here by any means.
  9. You seem pretty entrenched in your own opinion and that's just fine by me since the ASMFC doesn't really care what either of us think. I never said anything about NJ or NY recreational harvest because this is a thread about how Maryland is tightening their regulations, which is long overdue and a good thing for everyone in this shared fishery. There is no need for you to try to dump out the whole can of worms here on all striped bass management then pick apart my words so just lighten up man and here's to tight lines in 2024! Hopefully we see some better YOY recruitment results out of Maryland and less harvest from all States in 2024. This striped bass stock really needs both to happen BAD to avoid collapse...
  10. Lots of guys in the South East use tackle bags like this since they wade out pretty deep on the flats. A buddy in Florida I fished with uses a Feral Concepts Satchel and really likes it. I was impressed by the super heavy duty materials/construction and may order one now too.
  11. Uh oh looks like the "rec is bad comms are good" hive has awoken once again! I am well aware of the recent data and numbers for both commercial and recreational, but anyone that wants to defend Maryland's management of striped bass has a deeply misguided understanding of the States selfish policies and special privileges no other State gets. Highest quotas, 2 fish for-hires, trophy seasons, etc and they continue to try to get more more more bass to harvest in every meeting no matter what the data shows. Maryland is the true "fox in the henhouse" here for striped bass and nobody is going to look back on their management and applaud them for what they've done. In fact, almost every State in the last ASMFC meeting opposed their management actions as @CWitek highlighted. As I said earlier, I am not in favor of harvest when the stock is overfished until it has recovered. I think these new tighter regs and emergency actions are a great step forward towards ratcheting down on Maryland's exclusive and excessive harvest of striped bass.
  12. Why does it have to be assembled that long? I’m not sure a wax would stay good for that long. I’d take the rod apart occasionally just to make sure the ferrules don’t lock together and clean them with a quick wipe down each time. Using a good pair of gripped gloves helps a lot when connecting/separating the sections.
  13. I’m not ok with continued harvest when the striped bass stock is overfished, that’s just completely negligent and has never helped recover a fishery (they usually collapse then). Fish in the Chesapeake are the fish in the Ocean stock. It makes even less sense to harvest a bass right before it spawns, especially when we have 5 years straight of terrible spawns/YOY numbers. You can dig into the numbers yourself a little more if you’d like but it’s common knowledge MD takes the lions share of our bass, of which was mostly the larger breeders and young schoolies. The new slots and closed seasons will help a lot.
  14. Maryland kills more bass every year than any other state does. A lot of this harvest also happens as the fish are preparing to spawn. And a majority of striped bass (+75%) originate from the Chesapeake in Marylands backyard. I can’t think of a more deserving state than Maryland to blame for the state of the fishery and they should bear significant responsibility in recovering the stock.
  15. The Elaztech material does take some getting used to. I find it’s most helpful to hold a jig head alongside the bait to find where the hook point will come out. Then shove the bait down hook into the bend of the shank until the point pokes out where I need it to be. Then push the rest of the bait onto the collar, against the jighead. Once it all looks good, I slide the bait back down off the jighead a little and add superglue on collar. That bait will be locked on so good, I’ve got some going on 2 years! I don’t use them on twist locks (ie Beast Hooks), but you can take those off and use a straight piece wire to mount bait to. Hope this helps and makes sense, ZMans indestructible baits have been nothing but awesome for me once I got use to the material.
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