CAN CHESAPEAKE STRIPERS CATCH A BREAK?

Chesapeake Bay is the single most important place in the world for Atlantic striped bass.

The benchmark stock assessment released in 2013 noted that

“Tributaries of Chesapeake Bay, most notably the Potomac River, and also the James, York, and most of the smaller rivers on the eastern shore of Maryland, are collectively considered the major spawning grounds of striped bass…”

and anyone who has spent the last three or four (or more) decades fishing for stripers has probably noticed that the Maryland young-of-the-year index seems to be the most reliable predictor of future striped bass abundance.

That being the case, one might suppose that fishery managers would take particular care to protect both the big females that spawn in the Chesapeake rivers, and the immature fish that sometimes abound in Bay waters before they have recruited into the spawning stock, but it turns out that neither of those suppositions are true.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s first striped bass management plan, released in 1981, noted that

“Many states adopted larger minimum sizes and other restrictive regulations to conserve the stocks. Maryland instituted a 15 pound maximum in the early 1930’s, which was changed to a 32 inch [total length] maximum in the mid 1970’s, but stayed with an 11 inch [total length] minimum until 1957 when 12 inches [total length] was instituted.  In a package of new and revised striped bass regulations put into effect in 1980, the minimum size in the Upper Bay only was raised to 14 inches [total length] from June through October.”

Those were the commercial rules, and apparently the best that Maryland could do.  At what was close to the depths of the last stock collapse, they were willing to limit harvest—but only in part of the Bay, for part of the year—to a two-year-old fish, that only would have had to live for another four or five years before it could, perhaps, start to replenish a population that had already headed most of the way downhill.

Recreational fishermen were held to somewhat less restrictive limits; the same pioneering stock assessment tells us that

“The age classes taken in the recreational fishery are much the same as those described in the commercial section…However a trophy fishery for the large fish is permitted.  Beginning in 1962 the sport fisherman was allowed to take one striped bass per day over 15 pounds during the period May 15 to March 1 (presently 32 inches [total length], May 1 to March 1.”

Thus, unlike the commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen weren’t limited to immature and newly matured striped bass; they were permitted to harvest some of the oldest, most fecund spawners, too.

As a result of such liberal regulations,

“In 1962 both [the commercial and recreational] fisheries depended heavily on four year olds from the dominant 1958 year class and the sport fishery took significant numbers of the strong 1960 year class as well.  In 1976 the recreational fishery took primarily the already heavily fished 1970 year class from around the Bay Bridge.  Smaller fish were taken in other areas.”

After 1970, the striped bass didn’t have another dominant year class for nearly two decades, and it’s hard not to wonder whether that would have been the case if the Chesapeake fisheries hadn’t “depended heavily” on bass that were still too young to spawn.

Amendment 3 to ASMFC’s striped bass management plan brought a little tough love to fishermen everywhere, and even in Chesapeake Bay, the cradle-robbing came to an end for a while, as fishery managers in every state came together to bring back the stock.  For the first and only time in the history of striped bass management, everyone was on the same page and protecting the same size class of fish.

But as soon as the enforced abstinence began to pay off, Amendment 4 to the management plan, adopted in 1989, allowed “producer” areas, such as Chesapeake Bay, to drop their minimum sizes, arguing that such smaller minimums

“are necessary for the maintenance of historical fisheries on native fish which have primarily small fish available to them.”

The contribution that such “historical fisheries” made to what must also be deemed a collapse of “historical” proportions was not discussed in the Amendment.  And the harvest of immature fish began once again.

So for striped bass, Chesapeake Bay—the place that, given its importance to the health of the bass population, should see some of the most conservative and best-thought-out management on the coast—is once again a perilous place to be.

After the 2013 benchmark assessment advised that striped bass landings should be reduced by 25%, ASMFC began the process of drafting Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan.  

Almost all of the states saw the need for the catch reductions and jumped right on board—or, at least, almost all of the coastal states did.  While the vote to reduce harvest passed, there were four jurisdictions opposed:  Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission—all four of the jurisdictions that abut Chesapeake Bay.

Comments by Kyle Schick, the Legislative Proxy from Virginia, pretty well summed up the Bay jurisdictions' arguments.

“We don’t have to stop [fishing above the target fishing mortality rate] in one year; we don’t have to do such a drastic thing over three years.  We need to do something, but I don’t think that the economic impact that this is going to catch—and recreational fishermen, they don’t want to go to one fish.  They don’t want to have this huge catch reduction.  They may talk about it now, but we’ll see what happens.  Right now we have marinas that have been going out of business at the highest rate in history; the same thing with tackle shops.  It doesn’t have anything to do with the lack of catching rockfish; I can tell you that right now.  That statistic is way off.”

“Economic impact,” not biological impact, you might note...

You could almost hear the Spirit of ’76—1976, that is, when what had been the big 1970 year class, “already heavily fished,” was pounded hard around the Bay Bridge—pass through the meeting room.

In the end, ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board tried to be kind, and made a special concession to the folks on the Bay, allowing them to reduce their harvest by only 20.5%, and to use 2012, rather than 2013, as their base year.

But, as so often happens when such concessions are made, the Management Board’s good deed did not go unpunished. 

While commercial fishermen in the Bay made the required harvest reductions, the recreational fishermen didn’t come close.  Instead of cutting back, they actually increased their landings by 35%.

To say that the Bay states were unrepentant for missing their mark would be an understatement.

At the October 2016 Management Board meeting, Phil Langley, representing the Maryland Charterboat Association, complained that

“the charter-recreational fishery is being squeezed into part of Year 4 and part of Year 5 fish,”

and asked that restrictions be eased.

Robert T. Brown, of the Maryland Watermen’s Association, said that

“To me, the 20.5 reduction in the Chesapeake Bay, we were trying to be politically correct instead of a common sense approach to fish and management…

“Mother Nature, on its own, limits the upper size of the fish during the migration of the spawning stock, because 95 percent of the fish 24 inches and greater migrate out of Chesapeake Bay back to the ocean.  This shortens the window of harvestable size fish 20 inches to 24 inches, a four inch window that we pretty much have.

“This has caused economic hardship on our charterboat fisheries as they cannot catch their two fish per person limit during the regular season…”

Which is an interesting argument, because if you take it at face value, harvest somehow spiked even without folks limiting out…

But then, some folks always want more.

And some people are fine pushing the burden of conservation onto other folks’ shoulders.  Despite the recreational overharvest in Chesapeake Bay, overall striped bass landings met the required reduction because coastal anglers reduced their harvest far more than the required 25%.  Thus, when questions were raised about the Bay overage, Michael Luisi, the state fisheries administrator for Maryland, got his back up a bit, saying

“When we see numbers, an increase in harvest of 58.4 percent in the Chesapeake Bay [which revised recreational landings estimates have reduced to “only” 35 percent], it kind of leads I think, board members to believe that Maryland and Virginia, Potomac River may not have contributed to the successful management…Did the Technical Committee intentionally not make any comments regarding this performance being a basis for success?”

Later he went on to say that

“The actual written report that we have in our briefing materials speaks to the emergence of the 2011 year class.  It reads that ‘the harvest in the Bay in 2015 was undoubtedly lower than it would have been, had regulations remained status quo.’  I just wanted to make that comment, because I believe it strengthens what was reported as kind of a likely reduction.”

In other words, “Forget that we failed to meet our obligation to reduce harvest, and actually increased our landings.  We could have done even less, and caught even more…” 

In fact, the regulations imposed pursuant to Addendum IV weren’t even in place for a year when fishery managers from the Bay region began their effort to have them relaxed.  By the November 2015 Management Board meeting, Michael Luisi of Maryland had already put a motion on the floor to

“initiate an addendum to reconsider the reduction options in Addendum IV for the 2016 fishing season in the Chesapeake Bay based on the results of the 2015 assessment update and retrospective projections.”

He said that

“I think some people—I know a lot of my stakeholders are under the impression that this addendum was a one-year plan to get fishing mortality to the target and they’re expecting that there be some consideration of relief.”

That’s a somewhat ridiculous argument on its face—sort of like a dieter who, having cut back on meals for a year in order to reach their target weight, says “OK, I’ve lost forty pounds.  Now I can go back to eating nothing but Dunkin Donuts, ice cream, Big Macs and pizzas—four times a day.”

Because reductions don’t mean a thing unless, once you’ve reached your goal, you continue the behaviors that got you there in the first place.

Yet, no matter how ridiculous, Michael Luisi’s efforts to increase the Chesapeake kill were supported by Robert O’Reilly, his counterpart in Virginia, who argued

“We always stayed within the guidelines that the board had [except, of course, the requirement to reduce anglers’ landings in accord with Addendum IV]; and, quite frankly, there has been opportunities missed already on the 2011 year class, if everyone doesn’t know that.  These fish are pushing out into the coast at a trickle to some extent that will turn into much more than a trickle as we go through this process…”

Those comments sum up what has always been the predominant striped bass management theme in the Bay states, a perceived need to kill off as many immature fish as possible can before such fish enter the coastal migration and so are “lost” to Chesapeake fishermen.

But there is good reason to question whether such “need” really exists.

In December 2018, something called the “Invitational Pigzilla Tournament” was held in Virginia Beach.  Striped bass were the target.

The tournament ran for a month, and the number of big fish killed would have done credit—if “credit” is the right word—to Montauk, Cape Cod or Rhode Island during peak season.  

The winning fish was 60 lbs. 11 ounces, and fish over 50 filled the next 20 places.  The smallest prize winner—and they pay out 30 places—weighed 41-0, and even the five “Junior Angler” prizes went to fish between 57-8 and 53-11.

To put that in context, the winning bass at last year’s Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, also a month-long event held in what is supposedly “big bass” territory at the best time of year, was only 39.20 pounds.

The first reaction a lot of bass anglers will have when they see the “Pigzilla” results is to wonder whether it’s really necessary to kill so many of the biggest, prime breeders when the stock is in iffy shape.

The second reaction should be to ask if, with so many large fish available to Virginia anglers, there is a need to kill the small ones at all.

True, the big bass aren’t generally available to Bay anglers during the summer, but the fact is, given the current state of the stock, they’re not available to coastal anglers in most other places, either. 

Here on the South Shore of Long Island, there is no viable summer striped bass fishery.  In 2018, we got a shot of big bass for maybe two weeks in late June and early July, but not much outside that until the very end of October, when a sand eel bite lasted for three or four weeks.  Outside of that, it was a very quiet season.  

I belong to a fishing club with nearly 100 members, most of whom are active and talented anglers.  Every October, it awards a modest prize for the largest striped bass weighted in.  This October, the prize went unclaimed, with not a single striped bass weighed in.

And the dearth of fish wasn’t limited to the South Shore.  Out in Montauk, the surfcasting community holds its annual Korkers Cup contest on Columbus Day weekend, traditionally one of the best times to catch a striped bass on Long Island’s East End.  Many surfcasters from all over Long Island, and beyond, attend. 

In 2018, for the first time, not a single striped bass was weighed in.

That’s not a good sign.  But more, it is testimony to the fact that, even here on the coast, except for a few select locations, we don’t have any better chance to catch as summer striped bass than Virginia anglers do.  Yet no one allows us to keep 20-inch stripers as a means to assuage our pain.

So the question is, why are Chesapeake anglers allowed a fishery based on hundreds of thousands of little fish, and then allowed to kill big spawners, too?

I was going to end there, with a rant, but just this morning, I heard some encouraging news that makes me hope that, finally, we might see a change for the better.

Someone posted on Facebook, saying in part that

“At the [Virginia Marine Resources Commission Finfish Management Advisory Committee] tonight we were informed that VMRC has been ordered by the Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources to implement a maximum size limit (around 36 inches or so) for striped bass…”

I don’t know if that statement is true, but I have crossed paths with Virginia’s Secretary of Natural Resources before, when he held a previous post, and so know for a fact that he understands the need for good fisheries management and is willing to work hard to achieve it.  Thus, I have reason to hope that the report is accurate.

Because you can probably manage a small-fish fishery successfully, if that’s what you want, and you can sustainably manage a big-fish fishery, too.

But for a very long time, “burning the candle at both ends” has been seen as a sure way to go down in flames.

By snuffing out one end of the candle, and ending its kill of big spawners in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia would be taking a big, needed step to help out the troubled striped bass population, and would create an example that Maryland, if it had any sense, would be quick to follow.

It’s certainly a good idea.  Let’s hope that its time has, in fact, come.