IS IT TIME TO CONSIDER RECREATIONAL STRIPED BASS TAGS?

 

NOTE:  The inspiration for today's essay comes from a veteran fisheries biologist, with whom I correspond from time to time.  He recently raised the idea, and the more that I thought about it, the more sense that it seemed to make.  Yet, while the original idea wasn’t mine, please understand that a number of the ideas presented below are products of my own speculation, and shouldn’t be blamed on anyone else.

Anyone who has listened to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board debate the possible parameters of the proposed Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fisheries Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, or who may have sat in on recent meetings of the Plan Development Team charged with preparing the first draft of such Addendum, has probably come to recognize the limits of traditional recreational management tools—size limits, bag limits, and seasons—when it comes to addressing the current state of the striped bass stock.

The recreational bag limit in every state and in every bay and sound has already been reduced to just one fish; it is impossible to go any lower.  And it’s very difficult to accomplish further meaningful reductions, at least in the coastal, or what managers deem the “ocean,” fishery with any imaginable size limit.  Recent Plan Development Team meetings have revealed that the 36-inch minimum size, often suggested by anglers who lived through the last stock collapse and successful rebuilding, would actually increase striped bass removals by 10% in 2026.  It would take a 40-inch minimum size to achieve a 5% reduction, and the only thing that would reduce coastal recreational removals by 7%--which is what managers believe would be needed to achieve a 60% probability that the stock will be rebuilt by 2029, as the management plan requires—is a 37- to 40-inch slot, something that no one seems too ready to implement.

That leaves only seasons to get the work done, and while there are combinations of seasonal closures that would reduce recreational removals by 7% or more, no one is particularly in love with any of them.  Any closure would have a bigger impact on a short-season state like Maine than it would in New Jersey, where bass are, to at least some extent, available for 10 months of the year.  Closed seasons—particularly those that would prohibit anglers from even targeting striped bass in a catch-and-release fishery—could be reasonably set to achieve the needed reductions in the northeast and upper Mid-Atlantic without too much disruption, but in the lower Mid-Atlantic, the ocean fishery is so small that even closing it for an entire two-month “wave” wouldn’t reduce removals by 7%.

And, of course, not everyone supports “no-target” reductions.  Most anglers and for-hires specializing in light-tackle fishing don’t like them, because they won’t allow any bass fishing at all, while law enforcement discourages no-target closures because they’re just about impossible to effectively enforce.  On the other hand, traditional “six-pack” for hires, which generally engage in a catch-and-keep fishery, support the idea, because any no-target closures would be shorter than those merely outlawing harvest, and would allow the six-packs to return to their business of killing striped bass in the shortest possible time.

To date, the difficulty of devising “fair” seasons that treat all states and all stakeholders in a reasonably equitable manner has caused striped bass conservation efforts to stall.

Striped bass tags, which all anglers would be required to affix to any bass that they retained, immediately upon capture, could break the current stalemate and jumpstart conservation efforts.

The tag concept certainly isn’t new.  Currently, all commercially-caught striped bass must be tagged, usually upon capture, although Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina permit tagging at the point of first sale.  New Jersey, which has outlawed commercial striped bass fishing and uses its commercial quota to provide “bonus” bass for recreational fishermen, has issued “bonus tags” to its anglers for many years.

Other states have used tags to control landings of other species for many years.  In Texas, recreational red drum are subject to a slot size limit of 20 to 28 inches.  However, anglers receive a Red Drum Bonus Tag that allows them to retain one “bull” drum, a fish  more than 28 inches long, when they purchase their fishing license, and may purchase a second such tag each year if they choose to do so.  Not everyone does.

While there are certainly some details that would require real thought before they were worked out, the basic parameters of a tag-based recreational striped bass management program would fairly easy to set. 

The current 1-fish bag limit and current slot sizes for the coast and the Chesapeake Bay, as well as for the specially-regulated fisheries in the Hudson River and in portions of the Delaware River and Delaware Bay, would remain in place.  Any further reductions in recreational fishing mortality would be achieved by limiting the number of striped bass tags issued in each state.

The ASMFC’s Striped Bass Technical Committee would begin the process by estimating the number of slot-sized striped bass that could be caught and still constrain fishing mortality to or below the fishing mortality target (with release mortality and commercial quota also a part of that calculation).  With that estimate in hand, managers would determine how many striped bass tags could be issued to anglers in order to approach, but not exceed, the fishing mortality target.

The initial estimates of how many tags to issue would be a little rough, as managers recognize that not every tag will be filled.  To account for unfilled tags, states would issue more tags than the number of bass to be removed, just as is done with commercial tags today.  In the beginning, managers would have to be conservative with the number of tags issued, to avoid overages.  But after the system was in place for a few years, they would gain some idea of how many unused tags would likely be left at the end of the year, and could fine-tune the number authorized.

States could then be given an initial allocation of tags, based on the proportion of bass landed in their state in recent years compared to the number landed coastwide.  Allocations could also consider the coastal and Chesapeake Bay fisheries separately, with the number of tags available in each fishery tailored to size/year class abundance.  For example, given the six consecutive years of poor spawns in the Chesapeake Bay, if a recreational tag program was already in place, the Technical Committee might advise, if it saw fit, that Chesapeake jurisdictions issue fewer tags for Bay anglers than would otherwise be the case, to help assure that a larger percentage of the smaller year classes might eventually enter the spawning stock.

With the allocations set, anglers would then be able to purchase their striped bass tags.  Every East Coast state already has some sort of saltwater licensing system for its anglers (although, in New York and New Jersey, it’s called a “registration” and costs the angler nothing).  Thus, anglers who wanted striped bass tags could merely order, and pay for, such tags at the same time that they obtained their license.  The cost of the tags would be set by each state, as it deemed appropriate, and could be set high enough to fully fund the costs of the tag program.  Such an approach that would seem very familiar to many East Coast sportsmen who also hunt, and already follow a similar procedure to purchase tags to harvest big game and turkeys.

Of course, unlike big game, where harvest is often limited to one animal per year, anglers would probably be able to obtain more than one striped bass tag, to allow them to retain multiple fish each season.  To accommodate anglers who wish to keep more than one bass each year, while best assuring that every angler who wants to purchase a tag can get at least one, states would probably have to restrict the initial purchase a limited number of tags, and then allow anglers to purchase additional tags after they had reported their landings from the initial purchase to state managers.

And yes, the mandatory reporting of all striped bass caught would provide each state’s fisheries managers with a better idea of when and where fish were being caught in their waters than does the current Marine Recreational Information Program, which can only survey a limited number of anglers and isn’t intended to provide detailed catch information.

It seems like a simple, effective approach to striped bass management that would function well in a perfect world but, unfortunately, this world is far from perfect.  If a tag-based system was proposed, problems would inevitably arise.  Perhaps foremost among them would be how to address fish caught by anglers fishing from for-hire vessels.

In many—I’m guessing most—states along the striper coast, anglers fishing from party and charter boats don’t have to purchase individual fishing licenses; instead, a license purchased in the name of the for-hire vessel covers all of the boat’s customers.  Thus, striped bass tags would have to be purchased by the vessel, rather than by the anglers on board.

But there, too, the problem shouldn’t be insurmountable.

Just as states could receive an allocation of tags based on each state’s contribution to the overall catch, each state could create a pool of tags reserved for the for-hire fleet, based on that fleet’s landings when compared to overall state landings.  Then, because for-hire vessels are required to file daily vessel trip reports that provide a detailed accounting of a boat’s landings, it would be a simple thing to apportion out the for-hire tags based on each vessel’s share of the reported landings.  Should any vessel decide not to purchase tags that it was eligible to buy, such tags could be assigned to a general pool, that any for-hire boat might purchase once it had provided a full accounting of tags already used.

Such an approach would largely maintain the status quo between the for-hire fleet and private anglers, and between vessels within the for-hire fleet.  But it would also provide opportunities for experimentation with new ideas.

For a number of years, the for-hire fleet has been promoting the concept of sector separation.  That is, special rules for customers aboard their boats that would allow such customers to take more or smaller fish than allowed to the great majority of anglers, or fish when the season is closed to everyone else.  A striped bass tag might allow managers to experiment with such an approach, at least with respect to the bag limit.  

Managers could, for example, allow for-hire anglers a second bass, which would require the vessel they fished from to utilize a second tag for the same customer.  In such a situation, each for-hire operator would be able to make the simple business decision of restricting passengers to one fish per trip, so that the boat could carry passengers for a longer period of time, or allowing passengers to take a second fish and utilize a second tag, which might attract more anglers to that particular boat, but allow it to fish for a shorter period of time.

Whether the additional passengers attracted to the boat justified the shorter season is something that each vessel owner could independently decide.

The other big issue complicating tag use is compliance.  A tag system would only work if anglers affixed the tag when a bass is retained, and didn’t let fish remain untagged until a law enforcement officer appeared on the scene.  An angler engaged in the latter behavior could potentially take multiple bass over a span of days, even if only a single tag was purchased.

Poaching is already a significant problem in the recreational striped bass fishery, with far too many anglers willing to take undersized, oversized, over-limit, and out-of-season fish.  The question is whether the adoption of a paid-for tag would inspire some, or perhaps many, previously law-abiding anglers to begin disregarding the rules because they resent being assessed a charge to retain a bass.

My gut reaction is that, while most fishermen would obey the law, there would be a substantial minority who resented the fee-based tag, and would try to find ways to take extra fish for each tag purchased.  It’s funny how the same person who thinks nothing of paying $250,000 or, perhaps, quite a bit more for a boat, thousands of dollars on fuel, and run a four- or five-digit fuel bill each year will grow indignant at the idea of having to buy a $10 fishing license; having to pay for a striped bass tag would almost certainly strike such folks in the same way.

But that is an issue for the Management Board to debate, should they ever consider a recreational striped bass tag.  Over all, the issue seems to have merit.  In theory, at least, it would effectively constrain recreational fishing mortality without the need for controversial seasons.  An appropriate charge for each tag would make the program self-funding.  And the entire cost would be paid by people who want to catch and keep a striped bass, without burdening the rest of the angling community.

At this point, I’m not going to say that adopting bass tags is the right way to go.  There are issues that must be considered, and might ultimately militate against such approach.  But it is an approach that the Management Board should at least consider, and one that could provide relief from the current cycle of constantly more restrictive rules.

It is worthy of serious study.