There are going to be a lot of discussions by a lot of people on the subject of striped bass, or as I was taught to call them, rockfish. Some people will say they are on the brink of extinction, others will claim there are plenty of them available, and still others will fall somewhere in between. We have been here before.
I first became interested in striped bass management in the late 1960s and early 1970s when I met Bob Pond and Avis Boyd at a fishing show. For you young folks out there, Bob Pond invented the Atom plug and the entire line of Atom lures. He saw what wood plugs did in freshwater fishing and decided to try making the same style, only larger, for saltwater anglers. Bob fished Cape Cod waters, and in those days, every fish caught was sold. Anglers didn’t use coolers; they used 100-pound fish boxes.
Bob’s lures were so popular that he switched from wood to plastic, and that gave him more time on the water. The fact that Atom plugs are still available today is testament to their ability to catch striped bass and numerous other species.
When I met Bob and Avis, they were trying to convince the powers that be that something was wrong with the striped bass eggs. Bob would visit the Chesapeake Bay every spring and do research on the eggs, but because he didn’t have a degree in biology, no one paid any attention to him.
We were trying to get funding from the federal government to study the striped bass spawning habits, but to no avail. I wrote a story where I equipped a striped bass with all sorts of radar and covert listening devices, and released it in the Moskva River where it could spy on the Kremlin. I figured if we could make the striper a military device, the feds would throw all sorts of money at it. I tried to sell the story to all my outlets and none would buy it. Finally, I gave it to Bob, and he ran it in his newsletter.
As time went on, the government did realize there was something wrong with striped bass. The State-Federal Striped Bass Advisory Council was formed, and I was selected to represent Delaware’s recreational fishermen. Roy Miller was the state’s representative, and I believe Frenchy from Bowers Beach represented the commercial fishermen.
There were three representatives from each state, from Maine to North Carolina. At the first meeting, we discovered that each state blamed another state or area for the decline in striped bass. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
It took a long time to finally arrive at a consensus that we needed to stop killing striped bass so they could recover. Actually, it was not a complete consensus; the commercial boys didn’t like the idea of a moratorium at all.
After that, it was a matter of lobbying Congress to have them put a moratorium on striped bass. We failed horribly. Finally, Gov. Hughes put a moratorium on striped bass in Maryland. Delaware quickly followed suit. It took about two years for Virginia to do likewise.
Then Gov. William Donald Schaffer came into office, discovered the Hambrooks Bar and raised the Young of the Year above the threshold, and rockfish were back in commercial nets.
Since then, we have seen some excellent Young of the Year results in the Chesapeake Bay. Now, those numbers are falling off again. This time, I think it may be because of global warming.
This past spring, there were thousands upon thousands of big female striped bass in Raritan Bay in New Jersey. These are the big spawning females that are supposed to be in the Chesapeake Bay. Instead, they were in New Jersey at the south end of the Hudson River.
Was this a one-year event? Is the water in the Chesapeake Bay getting too warm for the striped bass to spawn? Is the dissolved oxygen in the Chesapeake Bay too low because of the warmer water? I have no answers to these questions.
I do know after 50 years of sitting on various advisory councils, I have learned that there is very little man can do to change the habits of fish in the wild. We can cut or increase bag and size limits, cut or lengthen seasons and even place moratoriums on select species. In the end, the fish will follow the water temperature, the bait and the seasons, as they have done since before old homo sapiens walked upright.
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Eric Burnley is a Delaware native who has fished and hunted the state from an early age. Since 1978 he has written countless articles about hunting and fishing in Delaware and elsewhere along the Atlantic Coast. He has been the regional editor for several publications and was the founding editor of the Mid-Atlantic Fisherman magazine. Eric is the author of three books: Surf Fishing the Atlantic Coast, The Ultimate Guide to Striped Bass Fishing and Fishing Saltwater Baits. He and his wife Barbara live near Milton, Delaware. Eric can be reached at Eburnle@aol.com.
