Another Mild Winter Leaves Little Hope For Striper Spawn

We are at the end of another relatively mild winter in the Northeast. Lakes and even small ponds never froze. We had some big snowstorms, but temperatures never lingered below 30 for very long.

In the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay, where striped bass will start spawning soon, conditions were even more mild.

You may have enjoyed this on your way to work in January and February, but, as we know from past years, it is not a good start to the breeding season for striped bass.

For whatever biological reasons, cold winters and rainy springs are the key to big spawning years for stripers, and we get those kind of conditions less and less frequently these days. Striped bass are coming off three of the worst spawning years ever in the Chesapeake, and the bass born in only three or four good years now make up the bulk of the striped bass population. Big, older fish from 2011 and a decent stock of smaller fish that are just reaching “keeper” size from the big 2015 year class and the decent 2014, 2017 and 2018 year classes.

Sorry if you are a regular reader who has already logged comments on Amendment 7 to the Striped Bass Management Plan, but the point is worth belaboring: If you haven’t done so, please take a few minutes and share some comments with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission about the upcoming amendment. It’s easy, and your comments do not need to recite the laundry list of options in Amendment 7. Simply getting across the point that recreational fishermen want striped bass managed with the utmost care and consideration for rebuilding and sustaining the breeding stock will suffice.

Comments can be submitted via email to comments@asmfc.org, and be sure to put the term “Draft Amendment” in the subject line. They need to be in by April 15, so, please, just a few sentences about how you fish, what your priorities are and how you’d like to see managers handle stripers in the future is worth the effort.

To the specifics of what the ASMFC is considering, the points that should be made, in my estimation, are that “management triggers” should be the most conservative that is reasonable; that regulations should be changed immediately and without opportunity for delay or interference by special interests; that “conservation equivalency” should be ended entirely, but if it can’t be, the consequences for a state exceeding its quota should be dire and immediate; and that money needs to be dumped into protecting striped bass through the “education” of anglers about proper fishing techniques and handling of striped bass so that we can reduce dead discards.

There is a consideration for banning the use of gaffs for the landing of striped bass. This is no-brainer that should have been a universal rule since the first time a size limit or bag limit was placed on the landing of striped bass. I personally think that the ASMFC should be told loudly and clearly that it needs to take much more aggressive regulatory steps to reduce dead discards — because the general public is just simply not conscientious enough to do it themselves. Rules work.

I’ve said it over and over, and I will say it again: Treble hooks should be limited to no more than one on any artificial lure and perhaps should even be required to be barbless.

And the slot limit should be nudged upward. Minimum sizes need to be raised to a point that ensures that any striper that is killed has spawned at least a few times. And a higher end to the slot limit will allow anglers to get more food out of each single striper removed from the stock. I think the slot should be 32 inches to 39 inches, or 33 to 40 inches.

These points are not under direct consideration by the ASMFC in Amendment 7, but I do think that making the points sends a message to regulators that recreational fishermen are most interested in there being lots of striped bass for us to catch, regardless of whether we’re able to take as many home as we once did. If the stock is rebuilt to what it was in early 2000s, it won’t matter what the regulations are — there will always be plenty to go around.

The start of the local fishing season is not far off now. The alewives have been running into the local headwaters for a couple of weeks now, and the first schools of bunker are showing up in the local bays. A few intrepid anglers I know have picked some tiny winter holdover bass out of the warmer backwaters, and freshwater fishing is starting to come alive.

If you know a warm a cove or creek with a mud flat near a deeper channel, it will be worth going and tossing a few little white things on a warm afternoon one day next week. I picked away in the bay near my house over the weekend, to no avail, but it felt good to my hands wet and cold again.

Don’t forget, next week is the last week to buy your Montauk 4x4 and Camp Hero permits. You can do it online this year, but you still have to buy them before April 1.

Catch’em up. See you out there.