SPRING THOUGHTS ABOUT STRIPED BASS

 

New York’s striped bass season opened yesterday.

From what I heard, a few fish were caught, and some of those were of reasonable size, although anglers who had been fishing for and releasing their bass prior to the season opener—which is perfectly legal in New York’s marine waters—have been reporting less than stellar action in most places.

It’s difficult to say what this season will bring although, given the poor striped bass recruitment in recent years, it’s safe to say that, overall, this year’s striped bass fishing won’t be as good as last year’s, but will probably be better than anything that we’ll experience for the next decade or more.

Still, there will probably be times and places that provide some fast action, even when bass are generally scarce.  We saw that sort of thing happen in the depths of the last stock collapse during the early 1980s, when Block Island and parts of Cape Cod provided extremely good fishing for very large striped bass at a time when bass were somewhat scarcer than unicorns everywhere else.

Right now, Raritan Bay, which sits between New York and New Jersey, seems to be particularly hot.  In recent years, Raritan Bay has often provided good early-season action.  2021 was an especially good year, that saw anglers catch, and mostly release, a little over four million striped bass during March and April alone—49% of the coastwide striped bass catch during that period--over the course of about one million fishing trips, although things have slowed down since then.  Last year, New Jersey anglers only caught about 733,000 bass—42% of the coastwide total—during those two months, even though they took about 100,000 more trips in March and April than they did in 2021, a catch total that was more in line with historical norms.

The lower 2025 catch figure is significant, as it contributed to unexpectedly low striped bass catch totals in the first half of last year, which helped to convince the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board that no further restrictions on the striped bass fishery would be needed to fully rebuild the striped bass stock by the 2029 deadline set by the management plan.

Should the Raritan Bay fishery result in striped bass catch levels seen in the early 2020s—almost certainly not the big spike of 2021, but at least levels twice that of 2025—it is very possible that the Management Board has underestimated the 2026 fishing mortality rate, and perhaps the fishing mortality rate for 2027-2029 as well, and that striped bass rebuilding will, as a result, fall short of the biomass target.

And that’s not a good thing when we already know that seven years of very poor recruitment is going to lead to low striped bass abundance in the 2030s.

Now, the big question is whether we will only have seven years of poor recruitment before striped bass spawning success returns to something close to the historical average, or whether low recruitment—and the recruitment over the past seven years has been so poor, that it is well below the level contemplated in the management plan’s “low recruitment assumption—will continue into the indefinite future.  If such “very low recruitment” scenario continues, the spawning stock biomass, which has been increasing due to the growth of the fish already in the SSB, will begin to decline in 2030 or 2031, with the depth of that decline determined by how long the very low recruitment regime lasts.

For some years, we believed that the success of striped bass spawns was solely dependent on just two factors—a cold, wet winter and a cool, moist spring.  Now, we know that things aren’t quite that simple, but I still hear quite a few anglers say that, given how cold last winter was—and it really wasn’t particularly cold, if you compare it to winters thirty or more years ago, when New York clammers regularly ventured out on a frozen Great South Bay and cut holes in the sea ice to get at the clams—they expect a very good bass spawn this year.

I truly hope that they’re right, but I expect that they’ll be disappointed.

Even if we rely solely on the old cold, wet winter/cool, moist spring formulation, once we get past the cold winter, there are reasons to be concerned.  Almost all of Maryland is experiencing drought conditions, with the United States Drought Monitor showing most of the state, including most of the state where the spawning rivers are located, under “Moderate Drought” conditions, while the lower half of the state’s western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, which includes the important Patuxent and Potomac River spawning grounds, are experiencing “Severe Drought.”

That’s hardly the sign of a cool, moist spring.

Martin Gary is the current Director of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Resources Division, but before he came to New York, he spent decades, beginning in the early 1980s, as a fisheries manager in Maryland, where he became intimately familiar with the factors affecting Maryland’s striped bass spawn.  In recent years, he has analyzed those factors and published his annual analysis on Facebook, to provide some insights into how the striped bass spawn might turn out.

He lists five criteria—river flow rates, water temperature, the timing of the spawn, the coincidence of the striped bass spawn with the peak abundance of the zooplankton that the young bass feed on, and predation by the blue catfish—as the factors impacting striped bass spawning success, with river flows and water temperatures the “most critical” of the five.

His thoughts on 2026 spawning success aren’t particularly encouraging.

With respect to water flows, he noted that flows in mid-March were “close to the long-term median.”  Unfortunately, such near-normal flows didn’t continue.  Instead,

“the worst case scenario has played out, with very little precipitation and plummeting flow volumes in the tributaries.  A quick glance at the USGS watershed dashboard shows nearly every monitoring station in the upper bay drainage either maroon or crimson (all below the 25^th percentile).  It’s a pretty grim picture…”

With regard to water temperature, he says,

“This year…too warm, too soon,”

although he notes that

“one positive that has me curious is the severe oscillations in temperature that we often get (warming trend and then plunging temperatures from a cold front).  Have [sic] been absent, and perhaps if we are lucky, very little mortality will occur from thermal shock to larvae.”

Based on that hope, he scores this year’s water temperatures a little higher than water flows, although still only rates it a 3 out of a possible 10.

He also doesn’t hold out too much hope with respect to the spawn’s timing, observing that peak spawning activity once occurred in May, and that in the 1960s and 1970s, bass didn’t even show up on the spawning grounds until mid-April, while a 1997 publication set the peak of the spawn in late April and early May.  Still, he while he notes that bass are spawning much earlier today, he doesn’t insist that the earlier spawn forecloses the possibility of a strong year class. 

Instead, he suggests that the earlier spawn

“raises important questions on how a warming climate may be influencing timing of the spawn and reproductive success for Striped Bass.  Timing is different now than it was decades ago, and the trend has been to an earlier peak of spawn.  Does this mean strong year classes can still be produced in these earlier windows?  If they can adapt to this earlier window, perhaps they call pull of a decent spawn this year.  If those conditions are insurmountable, it may be a bust again.  And if we do get a successful spawn and production of larval fish, the next question is even more vexing…Do they have food to eat to survive those most critical days/weeks of life?..”

Which leads to the next question:  Will the peak abundance of the zooplankton occur at the same time that the bass need them in order to survive?

That’s a difficult question.  Research shows that cold, wet winters tend to lead to larger, later zooplankton blooms, but a recent paper also suggested that even when there is enough zooplankton available, a shortened spawning season, caused by water temperatures that rise too quickly to levels fatal to eggs and larvae, could still result in a poor year class.  Mr. Gary didn’t make any firm prediction on how a possible zooplankton match/mismatch might impact the 2026 spawn, but rather chose

“to suggest that the [latter] paper provides evidence that feeding MAY NOT be the sole or dominant driver, but also express concern that that [sic] feeding is perceived as unimportant overall.  There may still be a role mismatch plays in poor recruitment years.”

Finally, there is the great unknown—the impact of blue catfish predation.  There is little hard data to suggest what that impact might be, but in Mr. Gary’s words,

“I do not pretend to know what the possible impact could be, but I believe it is not zero.”

So, in the end, what is his prediction for the 2026 spawn, remembering that last year, he predicted a Maryland juvenile abundance index of 4.0, and was just about dead on target?

“Is it possible we have dominant year class?  Possibly, but not likely.  More likely is an average to slightly above average year class if the temperature profile that warmed quickly but without severe oscillations that might favor reproductions.  But my gut tells me conditions are conducive for a weak year class, and possibly a dismal one.”

Given Mr. Gary’s long experience with Maryland striped bass, and his rational analysis of the governing factors, I’m inclined to trust his gut, and not get my hopes up.

Bass have already been seen chasing menhaden in Long Island’s Great South Bay, so the best advice I can give at this point is to get out and catch (and hopefully release) a few fish now, while the opportunity is still there.

Next year, most of the 2018s will have grown out of the slot, with little coming in to replace them.  At that point, the chances for catch-and-keep striped bass fishing will become increasingly low.  Decent catch-and-release fishing for larger bass should go on for a few years after that, but by the mid-2030s, both fishing and natural mortality will have reduced the once-large 2011 and 2015 year classes to a handful of very large fish, with the 2018s holding on for a very few years longer.

After that, the real drought will set in.

I hate to say it, but if you’ve just started bass fishing over the past three or four years, get out now, fish as much as you can, and try to enjoy it.

Because, for fishermen who never experienced the abundance of years past, these are the good old days.