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new theory on striper decline

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dogboy

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Stripers might be able to spawn in dishwater, but it doesn't mean that you will get any baby stripers out of it! Water quality parameters including salinity, turbidity, flowrate, temperature, oxygen, etc. all play critical roles in the spawning success of all fish, not just stripers. Just because you have a lot of energenic spawners laying lots eggs, it doesn't mean anything if the water quality conditions won't allow the eggs to fertilize, and then develop into larvae, and then into fry, and then into fingerlings, etc. For anadromous fish like stripers and salmon that spawn in freshwater rivers, water quality factors are especially critical factor for spawning success. Water quality (or variability of ) in rivers is largely dependent on precipitation, and if this weather phenomenon affects precipitation then it certainly would have an effect on spawning success.

 

Mitch, I won't argue the factors mentioned above. My contention is that in spite of the negative values of some of the factors you mention, successful spawning DOES occur and in fact it does so despite those conditions regardless of cause. Is it ideal? No. Is it survivable? Thriveable even? Absolutely. PROVIDING other positive factors exist. As Tim and others have pointed out, deep sixing both Apex breeders and bait is a serious blow to the health of this population. It is one we can control provided everyone sees the 4000ft elephant I keep talking about.

 

Here's my own personal theory about near shore bait that I've developed over 25 years of spending weeks at a time on the Cape (mostly Wellfleet) fishing the outer beaches. Based on ground water flow I believe that the huge development that occurred during the 60's is beginning to push nutrient rich ground water (from old style septic tanks) out in the near shore areas around the cape in the narrowest areas. I think it's even causing the explosive growth in mung on the back beach. The bait most affected would be sand eels. I have no 'proof' just educated guesses and observation. Seals don't help.

"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end -- which you can never afford to loose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be .."

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View PostMitch, I won't argue the factors mentioned above. My contention is that in spite of the negative values of some of the factors you mention, successful spawning DOES occur and in fact it does so despite those conditions regardless of cause. Is it ideal? No. Is it survivable? Thriveable even? Absolutely. PROVIDING other positive factors exist. As Tim and others have pointed out, deep sixing both Apex breeders and bait is a serious blow to the health of this population. It is one we can control provided everyone sees the 4000ft elephant I keep talking about.

 

Here's my own personal theory about near shore bait that I've developed over 25 years of spending weeks at a time on the Cape (mostly Wellfleet) fishing the outer beaches. Based on ground water flow I believe that the huge development that occurred during the 60's is beginning to push nutrient rich ground water (from old style septic tanks) out in the near shore areas around the cape in the narrowest areas. I think it's even causing the explosive growth in mung on the back beach. The bait most affected would be sand eels. I have no 'proof' just educated guesses and observation. Seals don't help.

 

Glad that we are on a similar page then. Considering that the YOY index has been very poor the last few years in the Chesapeake combined with the lack of schoolies as noted by many surfcasters, I'd agree that we have a spawning problem for the younger portion of the population and an overfishing + lack of food for the older portion of the population. Not a good combo! You guys are right that the easiest one to tackle is the overharvet of bass & bait, which hopefully we can solve.

 

You hit the nail on the head with our bait problem on Cape. Eutrophication of our estuarys on Cape due to human development is a huge problem that hopefully we can address in the coming years. The nutrients from waste water creates algal blooms (and mung) that kill the eel grass and deplete oxygen from the water which in turn can kill bait.

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The water is cleaner but run off from farming and golf courses and everyone using these super fertilizers on their lawns are causing these blooms to happen. What in the natural world can get rid of the blooms before they happen????????????? BUNKER what stock is being decimated??? BUNKER!! What is the main food for Stripers and a host of other game fish?? BUNKER!

 

Also and this is only my opinion or theory! If there is a shortage of food what should people do to make sure they had enough to eat or less competition for food?? Stop reproducing!! Are the bass hungry enough to stop producing fry so as to guarantee they won't have so much competition for food from future generations?? I don't know!!

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View PostI've lived on the East Coast my whole life. Been fishing since I was 6. Been to the county fair and around the block and I have seen stripers spawn in places where science says "NO WAY". I'm talking from Delaware to Maine and trust me there were some places where dishwater would have been a welcome change. I understand the science but I still have to call BS on this one. I understand factors and temperature is certainly one but there really IS a 4000 ft elephant shaky.gif

 

 

What do you know that biologists don't? For years I wanted to believe that stripers successfully spawned locally. I never did kid myself into thinking that it was significant or even happened every year, but I was convinced that some, if not all, of the fish that wintered over in places other than the Hudson were somehow 'natives'.

 

A couple of years back I discussed my theories with one of the fishieries biologists here in Connecticut. His first question was, have you ever seen any fry? My answer was no. Part of my belief about local spawners is that I have caught bass as small as 6" in places that are reasonably far from the Hudson, like Rhode Island for instance. I was convinced that there was no way a 6" long striper could make a migration from the Hudson or especially the Chesapeake. However I must admit that I have never seen any evidence of stripers smaller than this in my local waters. Also recent tagging studies have shown that these small Hudson River fish do undertake limited coastal migrations as far as Rhode Island.

 

The explanation I got about spawning is that it requires an estuary that has the right combination of size and current speed. I figured for sure one of our big rivers here could support spawning but I was told that the currents were too fast and the lengths were too short. Stripers don't lay eggs on redds like some other fish. The eggs float downstream as they develop and the brackish water at the bottom end of the estuary is the nursery for the fry. In our rivers, the eggs would wash out to the Sound before they had a chance to hatch.

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View PostThe water is cleaner but run off from farming and golf courses and everyone using these super fertilizers on their lawns are causing these blooms to happen. What in the natural world can get rid of the blooms before they happen????????????? BUNKER what stock is being decimated??? BUNKER!! What is the main food for Stripers and a host of other game fish?? BUNKER!

 

 

In Long Island Sound harbors the blooms cause hypoxia which in turn kills the bunker.

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View PostThe water is cleaner but run off from farming and golf courses and everyone using these super fertilizers on their lawns are causing these blooms to happen. What in the natural world can get rid of the blooms before they happen????????????? BUNKER what stock is being decimated??? BUNKER!! What is the main food for Stripers and a host of other game fish?? BUNKER!

 

Also and this is only my opinion or theory! If there is a shortage of food what should people do to make sure they had enough to eat or less competition for food?? Stop reproducing!! Are the bass hungry enough to stop producing fry so as to guarantee they won't have so much competition for food from future generations?? I don't know!!

 

But don't forget the Oysters! Oysters used to filter out the entire chesapeake bay in a few days, but now it takes months if not longer. Oysters populations crashed due to overfishing back in the day. Then when populations stabilized at lower levels they were hit by disease (sound familiar?) causing further population decline. These diseases still ravage oyster beds to this day and prevent them from recovering. Crabs have been on a major decline for 15 years now too.....seems that the only thing thriving are cownose rays!

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View PostTim -

 

Sorry that I ruffled your feathers but that's not short sighted commercial whatever, it's rational resource utilization. If we know that reducing or eliminating fishing mortality will have some positive effect, then do it (I think that's what I wrote). If we know that reducing or eliminating fishing mortality won't have any beneficial effect, then why bother? What are we "saving" the fish for. Our choice is to have no fish in a given area while getting some benefit as they're going or to have no fish and to have had no benefit. We still end up with the same no fish.

 

^^I agree with that - except we don't KNOW anything. There was an unproven theory presented and you suggest we keep killing them as fast as we can because they are gonna die anyway. There was no proof of anything, no assurance that the stocks were going to crash - not even a hint that reducing mortality wouldn't help. Sure, if reducing mortality wasn't going to help then there's no reason to reduce it - except there's not a chance in hell reducing mortality wouldn't help. The more fish we don't kill means the more fish that get to spawn and when there's a lower recruitment for whatever reason, you need to start with as many YOY as possible. Common sense says stop killing all the fish when they are in trouble - uncommon sense says keep killing them just in case there was nothing we could do.

 

*To all the other folks that responded to Nils - if you can't respond in a respectful, adult manner - even though you disagree - then please leave this discussion to the folks that can. Thanks.

 

Tim

Show someone how to catch striped bass and they'll be ready to fish anywhere.
Show someone where to go striped bass fishing and you'll have a desperate report chaser with loose lips.

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View PostA couple of years back I discussed my theories with one of the fishieries biologists here in Connecticut. His first question was, have you ever seen any fry? My answer was no. Part of my belief about local spawners is that I have caught bass as small as 6" in places that are reasonably far from the Hudson, like Rhode Island for instance.

 

Bob, you were correct, stripers spawn all over the place - they don't know how to read maps, they don't know about boundaries, they spawn in many rivers/creeks. No, I've never seen 1" long stripers either, but that's because they aren't likely to take the flies or jigs we fish smile.gif

 

TimS

Show someone how to catch striped bass and they'll be ready to fish anywhere.
Show someone where to go striped bass fishing and you'll have a desperate report chaser with loose lips.

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Tim -

 

I'll get back to this later or tomorrow. We've got tornado warnings all over the place and a major storm line ten minutes to the West and heading East (they all do down here) so I'm gonna unplug everything and suck on a martini for the duration.

 

Later,

Nils

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This is all somewhat over my head, and I'm not sure if I really want to take the effort to unravel it.

 

I can tell you that in the closed system I fish, an inland river that is capable of allowing natural reproduction, the single source of the decline of the stripers I fish for is man. Stripers boomed very quickly from the late forties, when Santee-Cooper was built, until the middle sixties, when they started to be heavily fished. This included the years of our worst drought of the century, from 1951-54.

 

By 1986, they were no longer self-sustaining, and today overfishing has rendered them a put-and-take fishery. Build your own story for your own reasons, but I cannot escape the reality that in my little fishbowl, I have met the enemy and he is I.

I have become too old to drink bourbon on the rocks. I will still drink it in the parking lot. 

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Bottom line..... Nothing is going to be done til it's too late and we need to experience some real pain through management(moratorium).

 

It was mentioned in this thread to catch all the fish now because they are going to disappear anyway. I know that's not what NilS was advocating but it is the mindset of the comm fishermen. Here's another shocker though. It's also the same mentality that pushed for and has kept us at 2 fish @ 28".

 

As an angler you might say hey I don't care if I can only take 1 fish home but the money interests will never let the 2 fish limit go without a huge fight. It won't make one bit of difference what the science says because they'll just change how they do the math. To them, everyone needs to keep 2 fish so it can be justified to buy expensive reels, nice boats, marina slips, tackle, charter trips, etc..... These interests fight on your behalf even if you don't want them too..... That's just how it works.

 

John

Create instead of living off the buying and selling of others.......
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What do you know that biologists don't? For years I wanted to believe that stripers successfully spawned locally. I never did kid myself into thinking that it was significant or even happened every year, but I was convinced that some, if not all, of the fish that wintered over in places other than the Hudson were somehow 'natives'.

 

I don't know what biologists know. I do know that in my efforts to obtain an Environmental science degree I traipsed all over the places that I've lived and I've found baby stripers in the Mullica river and the tribs of the CT but I haven't spent my life searching. My training does tell me that it would be in the best interests of the species to spawn anywhere possible regardless of the possible outcome. My experience with human beings seems to indicate that it is a common theme wink.gif.

 

Regarding the 'best ever' contentions. I've thought about this as I have been forming my 'near shore' theories. I began to suspect that my experience fishing in the dirt may not be shared by folks fishing a half mile offshore. The dearth of near shore bait is evident. I have chanced to meet and talk to divers who assure me that in the places that I fish regularly there are huge concentrations of bait but that it is off the beach and in much deeper water. This has been the case in both SOCO and CC. Guys in boats see no end of fish and surf fisherman not so much. I (in other posts) have my own theories that I can only back by observation.

"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end -- which you can never afford to loose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be .."

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