Maryland Young of Year

[TimS]

6 mins ago, Sudsy said:

Most of us are clueless as to how to do that stuff 

As it should be  

[CWitek]

1 hour ago, Fergal said:

Keep mind, the so called data is the product of people hired by the asmfc.
 

Given the quality of their work and vast successes over the years I’m guessing they don’t attract the best and brightest talent. 

Ever sit down and speak with them?  Ever take a look at their resumes?

 

ASMFC staff, including the staff scientists, tend to be very capable, very dedicated people.

 

The problem is that they don't make policy, the management boards do.  While some management board members are professional managers, or just bright people concerned with the health of the resource, others...well, let's just say that they're not.  In the case of striped bass, we have in recent years had a management board member who supported gaff and release, another who tends to live fifty years in the past, and yet another who was busted for substantial bass violations in the Chesapeake Bay.  And that's just touching the surface.

 

There are folks on the ASMFC staff who are at least as frustrated as we are with respect to various management board actions.  Unfortunately, there are no legal standards for management board actions, resulting in many outcomes based on politics and/or short-term economic concerns, rather than on science.

[TimS]

4 hours ago, EliasA said:

Can you blame anglers who’s empirical findings don’t line up with the data for being distrustful when the asmfc has proved time and time again that they are dishonest?

Not even a little bit. In the 2000’s myself and other nightly bass chasers were sounding the alarm - nobody listened. Financially vested recreational industry voices told us we were all crazy and bass were fine. They weren’t. Guys that had been fishing for decades, a couple hundred times each season, we’re sharing their first hand experience. These ‘recreational’ industry folks with loud voices all told us we were crazy. Yet meeting after meeting they would fight to change reference points, to change rebuilding goals, to change targets, to lower expectations, to ask folks to be happy catching smaller fish…anything they could to make what I called then ‘paper stripers’ so they could keep filling coolers. It was nonsense but they got away with it for a long, long time. We could have avoided all this pain now by acting like adults back in the 2000’s, but the recreational industry folks masquerading as rec fishing advocates wouldn’t have any of it. Thank them for you getting excited when you catch 2 bass in the same night when we used to catch 2 bass on the same cast  It’s not that the ASMFC lies, it’s that the ASMFC management board is seemingly full of people that think fish are better off in coolers than swimming around and you can thank the recreational fishing industry advocates and their political purchasing power for that  

[Roccus7]

3 hours ago, z-man said:

You are the ultimate hypocrite. 

How so?  I’m follow all rules.  
 

People can be concerned with a resource while harvesting less than they are allowed to…

[CutGrassCatchBass]

23 hours ago, z-man said:

Have any of you caught any small stripers this year, like 12-15” fish? I have caught none. The smallest have all been around 19-22”. That’s alarming. 
Follow the science though. Everything is fine. 

Although my experiences are observational and not representative of the entire fishery by any stretch, I have caught a fair amount of smaller bass and seen many schoolie blitzes both in the backwaters and the open beach areas I fish on Cape Cod/South Coast areas. I would agree that I haven't caught as many of these fish as I have in past seasons, but this is only because I have switched spots/tactics after catching a few schoolies because I have no desire to potentially damage these valuable smaller fish.

 

One thing that I am very curious about that I haven't seen mentioned a whole lot - With warming water temperature averages, are more smaller fish being spawned/residing in northern waters? I know spawning in known holdover spots is not a well-documented phenomenon, but I would have to imagine that this phenomenon does take place and is not measured/recorded for the most part. How would this impact our current fisheries data?

[Fergal]

1 hour ago, CWitek said:

Ever sit down and speak with them?  Ever take a look at their resumes?

 

ASMFC staff, including the staff scientists, tend to be very capable, very dedicated people.

 

The problem is that they don't make policy, the management boards do.  While some management board members are professional managers, or just bright people concerned with the health of the resource, others...well, let's just say that they're not.  In the case of striped bass, we have in recent years had a management board member who supported gaff and release, another who tends to live fifty years in the past, and yet another who was busted for substantial bass violations in the Chesapeake Bay.  And that's just touching the surface.

 

There are folks on the ASMFC staff who are at least as frustrated as we are with respect to various management board actions.  Unfortunately, there are no legal standards for management board actions, resulting in many outcomes based on politics and/or short-term economic concerns, rather than on science.

I have not. 
 

I know the results of the so called quality of their work and the managers that make decisions based off of it. 
 

To quote one of our literary greats, Bill Parcells, you are what you record says you are. I think that their record, long term, speaks for itself. Given that, no one that is associated with that group deserves praise, kudos, or kind words. They deserve every little bit of anger and ire that they get. 

[z-man]

1 hour ago, Roccus7 said:

How so?  I’m follow all rules.  
 

People can be concerned with a resource while harvesting less than they are allowed to…

You’re involved in all of these conservation discussions but then still kill a lot of fish yourself. Regardless of what’s legal or not if you really cared you would stop killing them like many others have. 

[z-man]

26 mins ago, Fergal said:

I have not. 
 

I know the results of the so called quality of their work and the managers that make decisions based off of it. 
 

To quote one of our literary greats, Bill Parcells, you are what you record says you are. I think that their record, long term, speaks for itself. Given that, no one that is associated with that group deserves praise, kudos, or kind words. They deserve every little bit of anger and ire that they get. 

I agree and they’ll get no respect from me until they do something to redeem themselves. 

[Roccus7]

2 hours ago, z-man said:

You’re involved in all of these conservation discussions but then still kill a lot of fish yourself. Regardless of what’s legal or not if you really cared you would stop killing them like many others have. 

Must I remind you that EVERYONE here kills stripers, IF they actually catch any??  Will some of you on your soapboxes now confess to getting skunked every time you go bass fishing to maintain you "innocence"??  Oh, I know, you don't believe those mortality data either...

 

Who's the worst hypocrite?  He who recognizes that he kills fish or those who rely on claiming "I only do C&R striper fishing" and conveniently ignore the fact that they DO KILL fish??

 

So the year I caught 1200 fish, and never caught a keeper, I was a better conservationist than this year when I caught 355 and kept 12??

 

If we use the 9% mortality figure, I killed 108 fish in that 1200 fish year and 33 this year, so I'm a hypocrite in 2022, but not one in 2018 when I killed 3X the number of fish?? 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Roccus7

[Popasilov]

On 11/1/2022 at 4:03 PM, z-man said:

Have any of you caught any small stripers this year, like 12-15” fish? I have caught none. The smallest have all been around 19-22”. That’s alarming. 

 

I did

A lot

Back in 2015

[pakalolo]

9 hours ago, z-man said:

You are the ultimate hypocrite. 

Fish are food

[z-man]

2 hours ago, Roccus7 said:

Must I remind you that EVERYONE here kills stripers, IF they actually catch any??  Will some of you on your soapboxes now confess to getting skunked every time you go bass fishing to maintain you "innocence"??  Oh, I know, you don't believe those mortality data either...

 

Who's the worst hypocrite?  He who recognizes that he kills fish or those who rely on claiming "I only do C&R striper fishing" and conveniently ignore the fact that they DO KILL fish??

 

So the year I caught 1200 fish, and never caught a keeper, I was a better conservationist than this year when I caught 355 and kept 12??

 

If we use the 9% mortality figure, I killed 108 fish in that 1200 fish year and 33 this year, so I'm a hypocrite in 2022, but not one in 2018 when I killed 3X the number of fish?? 

 

 

There’s a difference between intentionally killing them to eat and accidental death from release mortality, but you know that. 
I’ve drastically cut down on fishing for stripers the last few years to give them the break that they need. 

[z-man]

32 mins ago, pakalolo said:

Fish are food

Quiet. The adults are talking here. 

[buddha162]

7 hours ago, TimS said:

 And boomers aren’t the ‘hey, like my photos, subscribe and smash those buttons’ generation  

 

If you take a peek at the book of faces, you'll see boomers are overwhelmingly the guilty party burning down every spot and every bite as soon as it happens. A dangerous few even figured out how to post live videos  

 

As a fellow gen Xer, I remember boomers telling me decades ago You can't believe everything you read on the internet! but now they are the ones sharing insane conspiracy memes and spending 8 hours a day perusing and vomiting drivel on social media.

[pakalolo]

8 hours ago, z-man said:

Quiet. The adults are talking here. 

What an on point response! Your holier than thou comment about their being a "difference" between killing a bass to eat and killing a bass through C&R is crap. Dead is dead . Food for the fisherman or food for the crabs ,