Striped bass regs: commercial quota cuts, new fillet rules
From keeping striped bass racks to cuts in the commercial quota, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission approved a set of new rules for the 2024 season during its winter session in Arlington, Virginia held this week.
The decision to make fishermen keep the carcass of striped bass after filleting them at sea, falls in line with other regulated fish such as fluke and sea bass, where fishermen must hold onto the racks when they return to dock in case conservation officers want to inspect the catch.
As far as the size and bag limits for 2024 go, the emergency striped bass measure of one fish between 28 to 31 inches put in the place last season was kept again for this year.
That was the expected result, and there wasn’t too much deliberation on the recreational options among the member states along the eastern seaboard when the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board met over several hours Wednesday.
There was an option to divide the recreational sector between the for-hire boats and private boaters and shorebased anglers. but that measure didn’t survive the afternoon. That option would have given for-hire captains a bigger size limit to fish on at 28 to 33 inches. However, there was little to no support amongst the states and the couple of thousands public comments that were submitted to the ASMFC during the public comment period last fall.
The ASMFC received 2,112 public comments in favor of one size limit for the recreational industry versus just 105 for splitting them up. The ASMFC said most commenters expressed “strong opposition” to any mode split.
The consensus the ASMFC said, was that the entire recreational sector should have the same fishing opportunity and participate equally in rebuilding the stock.
Fishing pressure was one of the main reasons behind the emergency measure that the ASMFC suddenly called for last May.
The ASMFC said fishermen had caught an “unprecedented magnitude’ of striped bass in 2022, which was more than it expected and more than double to the harvest of 2021. To protect the strong 2015 year class of bass and to meet its stock rebuilding goals in the next five years, the ASMFC sought to immediately scale back the amount of bass anglers can take.
Slight hit in bonus bag program
While the size and bag limit is likely staying the same the recreational fishing industry here, New Jersey anglers will take a slight hit in the bonus tag program. That is because the ASMFC and member states voted to slash the coastwide commercial quota by 7%. There was an option to cut it by as much as 14% but that got push back from the commercial sector fearful of losing their market for the fish if its the catch is reduced too much.
Mike Luisi, from Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, said if they can’t supply enough striped bass, the restaurants will pick another fish to sell and the bass market will fall apart.
New Jersey, however, long ago did away with its commercial striped bass fishery and its commercial allocation has been instead used for the bonus tag program.
The regulations approved Wednesday at the ASMFC meeting, now go back the states to be voted on.
dradel@gannettnj.com