But at the same time that was happening, something else was
happening, too. The number of striped
bass caught on each trip was beginning to go down, falling from 1.95 bass per
trip in 2021 to 1.62 bass per trip in 2022.
And the decline didn’t stop there.
In each subsequent year, the average number of bass caught per trip continued to fall,
to 1.61 fish in 2023 and 1.33 in 2024.
There’s still a lot of 2025 to go, and we only have catch
and effort data available through the end of June, but so far this year, the
average number of bass caught per trip has fallen even farther, to just
0.82—less than a single fish for each trip taken.
That doesn’t mean that such a low success rate will continue
throughout the year. Over the past few
seasons, we have seen bass migrating down from New England and eastern Long
Island stall off western New York and northern New Jersey late in the season,
providing very fast fishing that might—if it recurs again—push
the success rate over the one-fish-per-trip mark for the entire season, although
it’s probably unlikely that the rate will come close to equalling last year’s 1.33
bass per trip.
But the other thing that we need to think about is that the
number of directed striped bass trips taken in the first six months of 2025 is
also the lowest in the past five years—by far.
Trips during that six-month period peaked at 7.93 million in 2022, but by the time
2025 rolled around, they had fallen to slightly less than 4.75 million, which
was a substantial reduction in angling effort.
2023 and 2024 effort in the first half of the year had declined
modestly, to 6.79 and 6.34 million trips, respectively. But the sharp drop in 2025 effort seems to
signal that something new is going on, that is causing anglers to lose interest
in the striped bass fishery.
Some angling industry and “anglers’ rights” advocates will undoubtedly argue that anglers are losing interest in striped bass fishing because more restrictive regulations are making it more and more difficult for anglers to catch a legal-sized fish.
While
that may have contributed to the declining effort in 2023 and 2024, when the
new, 28- to 31-inch slot size in the ocean fishery put many of the fish in the
2015 year class off-limits to catch-and-keep anglers, in 2025, the above-average
2018 year class entered the ocean slot limit in large numbers, and
should have spurred increased angling activity, just as the larger 2015 year
class spurred increased activity in 2022.
In making the projections needed to rebuild the stock, the
Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Striped Bass Technical Committee
predicted that the availability of the 2018s would lead to more fishing effort,
and cause 2025 recreational removals—landings and release mortality combined—to
increase by 17 percent compared to 2024.
But that didn’t happen—at least not yet. Instead, recreational effort for the first
half of the year is down by 25 percent, while total catch is down
even more, having fallen about 48 percent from 2024 levels.
Why?
While no one can say for sure, it is very possible that we have finally
reached the point where the declining availability of striped bass is discouraging anglers from going fishing.
Although some members of the recreational fishing industry
continue to deny it, striped bass are largely pursued as a sport fish, rather
than merely for food. Saltwater fisheries
managers still have problems making such distinctions, and still tend to focus
on yield when managing fisheries, employing the same philosophies
whether managing striped bass or scup, bluefish or black sea bass. They have yet to learn what their freshwater counterparts learned years ago--that most anglers who seek sport fish such as muskellunge or native brook trout have
different attitudes and different motivations from those who target bluegills
and bullheads. Unlike marine fisheries managers, inland managers understand why it is wrong to apply the same management
approaches to every species, without first considering the motivations of the anglers who pursue them.
“The recreational fishery is predominantly prosecuted as
catch and release, meaning the majority of striped bass caught are released
alive either due to angler preference or regulation (e.g., undersized, or the
angler already harvested the daily bag limit).
Since 1990, roughly 90% of the total annual striped bass catch is
released alive…”
When managing a catch and release fishery, one should
not manage for yield, but for abundance, as the ability to find and catch fish,
rather than the ability to kill fish and bring them home, is the primary driver
of angler effort.
That is illustrated by the recreational striped bass effort data for the
years 1995 through 2014. During all of
that time, recreational regulations were relatively stable along the
coast. Most states adopted a two-fish
bag limit and 28-inch minimum size, and even those states that did not—for example,
Maine’s
regulations allowed anglers to retain only one fish, that either fell within a
20- to 26-inch slot or measured over 40 inches in length—remained relatively
consistent during that time, so changing regulations had no impact on angler
behavior. Yet angler effort varied
during that time.
Now, we’ve reached the point where first-half effort has
fallen well below 5 million trips. Given
that, for the years 2021-2024, directed striped bass effort through June 30 accounted for roughly 40 percent of all directed trips for they year, we should expect total directed
striped bass effort to fall below 12
million trips in 2025, the lowest number of directed trips in over 30 years.
So we must ask hether the striped bass fishery has finally reached an inflection point.
That is, have we reached the place where anglers have decided that a fishery that only sees them catch, on average, a mere eight-tenths of one striped bass per day is a fishery that they no longer want to be a part of?
Have we gotten to the point that anglers have decided that fishing in a
largely empty ocean—at least, an ocean largely empty of striped bass—in not a particularly
enjoyable activity, and not an activity that they want to engage iny?
Right now, we can't answer that question with any certainty, but I strongly suspect that the answer is yes. People whom I know—some hardcase surfcasters,
others anglers old enough to have fished through the last stock collapse, the sort of diehards
who refused to stop hunting unicorns throughout the early 1980s—are saying that
they just aren’t bass fishing as much as they did just a few years ago.
Some have stopped fishing because the fish just aren’t there. Others fish less often out of a sense of
responsibility to the resource, feeling that if the striped bass stock is not
doing well, they shouldn’t be adding to its troubles by heading out to kill
fish, even if the fish that they kill are only some of the estimated 9 percent of striped
bass that die after being released.
Another factor that might be coming into play is that, as striped bass become less abundant, their distribution begins to get spotty.
The center of striped bass
abundance during the summer months seems to extend from, perhaps, the East End
of Long Island, New York to Cape Cod, including Cape Cod Bay. When striped bass abundance is high,
competitive pressure causes quite a few fish to spend their summers outside of
that core range. At those times, anglers are able to find a few summer holdovers on the New Jersey shore, and some wide-ranging fish up in northern
Maine. There aren’t as many fish out on
the fringes as there are in the core range, but there are enough to provide a worthwhile angling experience,
at least for those who know where to find the fish and how to catch them.
But when striped bass abundance declines far enough, the
population contracts into the core range.
There is less competition between individuals, and so less need for fish to spread into adjacent waters. As abundance
declines further, even fishing in the core areas gets spotty, with good fishing
in a few areas—maybe the Montauk rips, Block Island, the outer Cape, and/or
Boston Harbor--but hit-and-(largely) miss everywhere else.
At that point, anglers who don’t live and fish near the
productive areas tend to turn to other species--provided that other species are available, which is not always the case—or just stop fishing until the spring
and fall migrations bring a temporary abundance of striped bass to their section of coast. And even those spring and fall
runs become shorter and less productive as the population shrinks.
2025’s sharp drop in directed striped bass trips may be the
first real signs that significant numbers of anglers are leaving the fishery.
Some will doubtless leap upon the decline in effort as an excuse to maintain
the status quo, and take no further action to rebuild the striped bass
population. The
American Sportfishing Association—the largest recreational fishing industry
trade group—has already argued that
“Additional seasonal closures are not necessary. Strict recreational fishery management using
a narrow slot limit has effectively lowered fishing mortality to a 30-year low
which is well below the target and threshold needed for rebuilding,”
while Michael Waine, the American Sportfishing Association’s
East Coast spokesman, called in to a recent ASMFC hearing held in New York, to speak
against a 12 percent reduction in striped bass removals, arguing that the
striped bass catch for the first six months of 2025 was only half what it was
for the same period in 2024, and so no further reductions in landings were
needed.
But maybe the ASA, along with the rest of the recreational
fishing industry, ought to take a long, hard look at what they’re asking for. For as the American Sportfishing Association
has already noted,
“The recreational striped bass fishery drives billions of
dollars in economic activity, supports tens of thousands of jobs, and sustains
countless small businesses up and down the Atlantic coast.”
If the decline in striped bass catch is occurring not
because of more stringent management measures—and management measures have now
been unchanged since the spring of 2024—but rather because anglers are losing
interest in a fishery where, due to declining abundance, they are often unable
to catch even a single fish over the course of a trip, it’s not going to be
very long before those “billions of dollars in economic activity” begin to dry
up, those “tens of thousands of jobs” are put at risk, and many of
those “countless small business up and down the Atlantic coast” are forced to close their doors.
If 2025 truly marks an inflection point, where many anglers
are beginning to walk away from a badly deteriorating striped bass fishery, then the economic benefits of the
striped bass fishery will also wane, and the very people and businesses that
the American Sportfishing Association was formed to support will suffer as a
result.
If 2025 truly marks an inflection point, we can expect
fishing effort to continue its slide, and the businesses that the striped bass
fishery to decline in harmony with the reduced number of striped bass trips.
The only remedy for the woes of striped bass-related
businesses is the same remedy that will aid the striped bass itself: Reduce fishing mortality to whatever level is
needed to rebuild the stock, so that renewed abundance will convince estranged
anglers to rejoin the fishery, and entice anglers who have been fishing less,
due to reduced striped bass abundance, to increase their efforts in response to
increased opportunities to encounter fish.
A failure to adopt such remedy is likely to push the striped
bass stock into further decline, and to condemn many striped bass-dependent
businesses to a slow but still avoidable death.
No comments:
Post a Comment