THE TYRRANY OF THE MINORITY

 

In last Sunday’s edition of One Angler’s Voyage, I wrote about a pair of Maryland legislators who, at the apparent request of the charter boat industry, are holding up new regulations that would potentially benefit both the striped bass and the state’s striped bass fishermen.  (NOTE:  As I was preparing to publish this post, I learned that the hold had ended, the relevant legislative committee approved the new regulations yesterday, and that such regulations will be printed in the Maryland Register on March 20, allowing them to go into effect on March 30, in time for the spring catch-and-release season to extend through the full month of April.)

About a month before, I focused on a piece of Maryland legislation, introduced to appease the charter boat industry, that would allow the charters’ clients to retain two striped bass per trip instead of one, dictate the length of the season, and outlaw catch-and-release seasons in the striped bass fishery.

And in 2024, a group of waterman, including the Maryland Charter Boat Association, Inc., brought a legal action against the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, challenging the validity of Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, claiming that its harvest reductions, and in particular, its reduction of the Maryland striped bass bag limit for charter boat customers to one fish from two, hurt the for-hire business.  Shortly after the courts dismissed that action, the original plaintiffs initiated another in a different court, but this time they were also joined by three other charter boat groups, the Cape Cod Charter Boat Association, the Connecticut Charter and Party Boat Association, and the Montauk Boatmen and Captains Association.

Once again, the goal of the suit was to invalidate Addendum II, and reverse its mandated landings reductions so that the charter boat groups’ customers could kill more striped bass, regardless of how that action impacted the currently overfished striped bass stock.

Robert Newberry, a spokesman for the Delmarva Fisheries Association, another plaintiff in the lawsuits mentioned above, expressed his support for the Maryland legislation that would increase the bag limit for charter boat customers and take away the Maryland Department of Natural Resources ability to set striped bass seasons in the Chesapeake Bay, saying

“We have said this adversely affects our industry, but there’s been no economic study done.  You know, all we get from DNR.  Well, you know, some of the guys are going to get hurt, not some—everybody’s hurt.”

With all of the pending legislation, the lawsuits, and the comments about “everybody” being hurt, one might get the impression that the charter boat fishery for striped bass in the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay is a huge industry or, at least, a huge part of the region’s striped bass fishery.

But nothing could be farther from the truth.

For the truth is that, in all of 2025, anglers fishing from Maryland charter boats took an estimated 66,278 fishing trips targeting striped bass, a figure that shrinks into near-obscurity when compared to the estimated 1,135,664 striped bass trips taken by Maryland’s private boat anglers, or even the estimated 317,507 bass trips taken by anglers fishing from shore.

Yes, that’s right.  Despite all the noise that they make, based on the number trips taken that primarily target striped bass, the Maryland charter boat fleet only accounted for 4.4% of the state’s striped bass fishery last year.  And even that number is deceptive, because not all of the Maryland charter boat fleet seeks to kill more fish while eliminating the catch-and-release seasons.  While the Maryland Charter Boat Association still relies on a century-old business model that emphasizes putting dead bass on the dock, and unsuccessfully sued to block Addendum II’s landings reductions, the Maryland Light Tackle Fishing Guides Association embraced Maryland’s proposed spring catch-and-release season, with members’ businesses built around the overall angling experience, and not just around harvest.

Thus, the Maryland charter boat operators who are trying to increase striped bass harvest while eliminating the catch-and-release season undoubtedly accounted for far less than 66,000 trips last year.

Still, they act as if they were the dominant sector in the Maryland striped bass fishery.

We see the same thing on a coastwide basis.  

In the runup to the adoption of Addendum II in early 2024, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board solicited public comments on issues such as landings reductions and the question of whether passengers on for-hire vessels should be singled out for special regulations that would allow them a wider slot size limit than that governing shore-based and private boat anglers.  In supporting the special regulations for charter and party boat anglers, a group calling itself the East Coast Fishing Coalition wrote

“The East Coast Fishing Coalition (ECFC) membership consists of many of the charter boat associations along the east coast from Maryland to Massachusetts.  We are unified in our representation of hundreds of Charter and Party-Boat operators engaged in the for-hire industry along the Eastern seaboard.  Our mission is simply to preserve the recreational harvest of marine fish through responsible and sustainable management.  It is our belief that most recreational fishermen have the distinct goal to ‘fish4dinner’ as a primary objective when they embark on a recreational fishing trip.  The for-hire fleet has the expertise and infrastructure in place to offer that opportunity to those recreational fishermen.”

Once again, we see the for-hire fleet posturing as if they have the right to speak for “most recreational fishermen,” even though for-hire striped bass trips only accounted for 1.45% of all directed striped bass trips taken between Maine and North Carolina in 2025, and claiming that most anglers want to bring home striped bass for dinner, even though the ASMFC recognizes that

“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…Since 1990, roughly 90% of total annual striped bass catch is released alive…”

Once again, we see the very small for-hire sector try to dictate fishery policies that will impact the much larger universe of anglers.

And such efforts aren’t limited to striped bass.

Right now, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is working with the ASMFC to develop a “Recreational Sector Separation Amendment” that

“may consider options for managing the for-hire recreational fisheries separately from other recreational fishing modes,”

which would be fine if the for-hires were given their own quota, based on current landings, and allowed to harvest that quota while governed by bag limits or seasons different from those governing private boat and shore-based anglers. 

Unfortunately, the momentum seems to be swinging toward a scenario where anglers fishing from for-hire boats will be granted special privileges, in the form of smaller size limits, larger bag limits, and/or longer seasons than those governing the great majority of anglers who fish from shore or from private boats, but will be fishing on the same pool of fish. 

Fisheries management is effectively a zero-sum game, in which any extra fish given to one sector must be taken away from another.  Although for-hire anglers only accounted for about 2.74% of the summer flounder trips, 5.15% of the scup trips, 10.60% of the black sea bass trips, and 1.23% of all bluefish trips taken in the Mid-Atlantic region last year, managers seem to be leaning toward granting them extra fish at the expense of the great majority of anglers, who generate the majority of the social benefits, and likely also the majority of the economic benefits, generated by the fisheries in question.

It seems that, at both the state and regional levels, the for-hire fleet has a significant influence on the management process, which is all out of proportion to its small contribution to overall fishing effort. 

Perhaps, before adopting management measures that provide more special privileges to for-hire anglers at the expense of the greater angling community, fisheries regulators ought to step back, examine the relative economic benefits provided by the for-hire and shore-based/private boat sectors, and begin to craft measures that provide the greatest overall benefit to the community and to the nation, rather than just to a single sector that seems to believe it is entitled to special treatment, regardless of the species involved.