What’s Up With Wild Striped Bass?
What’s Up with Bass?
By Stuart Altman
I recently had a conversation with a vendor on the eastern shore of Maryland to ask about the Wild Striped Bass that we’ve been receiving. I was concerned that there was so much Striped Bass coming in last month; more than we’ve seen at this point of the year than ever before. Also, the fish are larger than what we typically see, and there are a TON of female fish with very large roe sacs. This concerned me as it related to the future of the fishery.
This is what I learned: There are more Striped Bass in Chesapeake Bay than there were when the first settlers came to Jamestown 400 years ago. Small boats are making one set and coming in with 200 to 300 pounds a day. Because they are protected by government regulations, the Striped Bass are growing like weeds. This is the reason there are no Sea Trout, Lobster or Soft Crabs in the Chesapeake Bay like there used to be. In New Jersey, where you’re not allowed to commercially fish Striped Bass at all, these other species have disappeared entirely. The vendor told me that a friend of his was on his boat in January, 12 miles off the coast of Ocean City MD, and his Fish Finder went black. There was a school of Stripers 15 miles long. He had never seen anything like that in his 30 years of fishing.
He confirmed that fish are running very large, and he has seen some weighing 50 to 60 pounds. He also continues to be concerned about Striped Bass eating a lot of the other species in the Bay. He was fishing the other day and caught an eight to nine pound Striper that had 15 blue crabs in its belly INTACT! Striped Bass are predators and will eat whatever they can get their hands (fins!) on. He speculates that we could fish year-round for 5 years and it wouldn’t affect any of the conservation efforts.
When I asked him about the females and their large roe sacs he said that, as of March 25th, the state of Virginia no longer allows any fish over 28 inches to be caught. This is done to protect the spawning class of female Bass. This type of restriction typically leads to a significant glut of fish starting in the middle of March. Once the fish move inshore from protected waters to where fishermen can catch them boats all rush to use up their size-specific tags before the March 25th deadline.