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Random Quote: Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent.
Thanks Clammer, spread the word.
As Rep Sara Peake said the emails don't have to be fancy just a simple ..... "I am strongly opposed to the Striped Bass Conservation Act"...... will do it
mailto: Rep.SarahPeake@Hou.State.MA.US
not a problem..
i sent a message to my dad, a 30 year commercial fisherman and told him to get right on this. he and a bunch of friends don't really puruse the internet so i told him to get them on the case as well..
even if it doesn't have any teeth, it should still be stopped dead in its tracks. no need to even go further then committee.
Sashamy, I think the director PD usually stands up for what he thinks is right, but If the bill gets thru and to his desk it will because the politicians got it that far. He may feel tremendous pressure from above to approve such a travesty. Keep the battle going and don't get complacent just because we think it would not go all the way. I sent my REP's and Sarah a letter too.
To all in favor of what is right and just, we need to mobilize here. I am trying to get ahold of the contact info, including e-mail addresses, for all 4,720 commercial bass license holders so we can get a serious movement going to kill this bill. I already e-mailed the DMF to see if it is public record or not, and haven't heard back yet. If anyone has any suggestions for how to get this, or if you have it, let me know. If I do get it, I will need some help contacting these license holders. Maybe we can split up the list somehow so we all get a chunk of it to work on. Any takers?
I guess I wasn't clear with my message. When I speak of "what is right and just", it is to retain a commercial fishery that has helped to sustain me, as well as close friends and family, for decades. This attempt to ban commercial bass fishing smacks of class warfare, pure and simple. To deny one the right to support his family in order that another may enjoy unmolested leisure is immoral.
Long Run Fishing - 1/27/2009 8:45 PM Reach out to the FCA, RFA, Stripers Forever as these groups are very well organized and favor Gamefish Status for Stripers...I am a member, are you?
Hi Folks!
Let me introduce myself................................
I grew up commercial fishing for Stripers over 30 years ago. As a young kid I earned my keep and paid my dues humpin fish from the boat to the back of the pickup loaded with rink shavings. We mostly fished Rhode Island, but made the runs to the Cape and the Islands during the spring and fall. We fished boat and beaches, whatever was putting the most cash into the bank. My father was also the president of a fishing club, That for many years took the club trophy for the Schaeffer tourney. I was a junior high point and large fish placer almost every year when I earned my right to hold a rod amongst the sharps that schooled me. I knew Stan Gibbs, and Bob Ponds pretty well, and Daigneault lived right up the road from us. He and the old man had no love lost for each other and could tell you a few stories...........
I remember well the crash of the stocks and the closing of the commercial fisheries very well. I remeber how everyone blamed everyone else. I also remember coming home on leave, to see the SeaOx up for sale. The old man not only gave up commercial fishing that day, he gave up fishing completly. The fish were never the important part of life, it was the money. Money that bought 3 tenement houses, a new boat every 3 years and a new truck camper every other year.
I also remember, long before the crash, hearing Bob Ponds speak about the health of the stocks and the fish that were getting skinney, full of mercury, and slowly disappearing. That was over 30 years ago.
So here we are hearing the same points being made by the commercial license holders trying to continue to kill as many fish as they can, for all the money they can make. I played that game for a long time, too long. I did my research, have followed the science, and have a pretty good educated opinion about the whole thing.
Game fish folks, plain and simple, it's long overdue and there is more than one group of people willing to fight for it, until the day comes.
I really don't think it will take that long either, the commercial fishing industry has proven themselves to be Irresponsable stewards of any resource species they target, right down to trying to drag the last cow Cod from the spawning beds full of eggs. I believe the quote a Captain of a trawler made to Ed Bradley was," When they are gone, people will eat squid".
Lets just say I'm making ammends for all the unregulated, untracked, cash cows I wasted in my youth.
By the way, I had one heck of a season from the surf in Rhode Island, scaled and released a fish at 73 lbs, 7 ounces.
Good for you. Once you can make an effective parallel between the current commercial fishery and the one that crashed, including user groups, their respective effect on mortality, effort restrictions, quotas, minimum sizes, etc. let us know. Until you can do that, making statements about stewardship of the resource is irrelevant. If anyone, other than the bait supply, forced hordes of fish to abandon inshore waters and go to the bank and the ledge all summer and fall, it was the relentless pursuit by ever-increasing numbers of head boats and other rec fishers that chased them from April to December without a break.
Thank you for opening that door so soon.
Who is resposible for the bait fish crash?
Who fights every regulation to protect every fin fish commercial quota, with muti-million dollar lobbyist budgets and law firms on retainer?
We all agree that the bait stock bio-mass must be regulated to bring back the Bass to inshore/nearshore waters. Seems that the commercial fishing industry has a bit of a problem on its hands. the commercial Striped Bass fisherman are now pitted against the purse seiners that rape the pogie stocks, forcing the Bass to leave shallow waters to find food. The offshore stocks mentioned in another post are not fish that have changed migration, those fish existed in all those now commonly known locations going back 40 years. The old man fished those holes back in the 60's.
Specific to my point of view and personal opinion, the StripedBass has only paid benefit to part time commercial fisherman that have NO respect for the fish, or the health of the stock, as long as the bank account gets a couple of dollars every Monday morning.
I am firmly planted on my side of the fence, will not be swayed by a challenge to prove my point, nor do I feel the need to.
Why lay out my game plan to someone that does not get it and probably never will.
Let me guess, you gonna call ME a fag now....................................
Retired Marine Force Recon Sniper, 26 confirmed kills 6 combat actions, played in the sandbox and cocain producing countries for a few years. Over 500 jumps and a couple thousand hours on compressed and re-breather air.
Thank you for opening that door so soon.
Who is resposible for the bait fish crash?
Who fights every regulation to protect every fin fish commercial quota, with muti-million dollar lobbyist budgets and law firms on retainer?
We all agree that the bait stock bio-mass must be regulated to bring back the Bass to inshore/nearshore waters. Seems that the commercial fishing industry has a bit of a problem on its hands. the commercial Striped Bass fisherman are now pitted against the purse seiners that rape the pogie stocks, forcing the Bass to leave shallow waters to find food. The offshore stocks mentioned in another post are not fish that have changed migration, those fish existed in all those now commonly known locations going back 40 years. The old man fished those holes back in the 60's.
Specific to my point of view and personal opinion, the StripedBass has only paid benefit to part time commercial fisherman that have NO respect for the fish, or the health of the stock, as long as the bank account gets a couple of dollars every Monday morning.
I am firmly planted on my side of the fence, will not be swayed by a challenge to prove my point, nor do I feel the need to.
Why lay out my game plan to someone that does not get it and probably never will.
Let me guess, you gonna call ME a fag now....................................
Retired Marine Force Recon Sniper, 26 confirmed kills 6 combat actions, played in the sandbox and cocain producing countries for a few years. Over 500 jumps and a couple thousand hours on compressed and re-breather air.
Hey thanks for your service to our country...but I respectively disagree with your parallels here between the 60's and 70's and early 80's versus today....first off the size limit was 16" and the were no limits or quotas...as a charter captain who ran a boat out of the cape 90 charters a summer we would catch and kill well over a thousand stripers a summer, lets not forget the release mortality ect...multiply that by 100 charter boats operating in the cape, north and south side collectively not even taking into account the average weekender, night surf fisherman ....from Maine to to North Carolina...and woah! The measley one million pound quota that subsidizes alot of full-time guys is nothing a drop in the bucket...This not a challenge but merely a point, if stripers need protection its not from the massachusetts commercial fishery, its from the recreational sector from here to NC where 30 million pounds of fish are killed every year...I say if you shut us down because the stock is in trouble, which it isn't...then shut the entire fishery down for everyone...think about it if you are so worried about them then you should sell all of your equipment and just watch them feed under the birds on the historic amount of pogies that are here now...and watch them swallow a soft lobster whole as they follow the boat around...However the 15 to 20 grand a year that I make off the Striped Bass wheteher commercial or on a charter makes a big deal to feeding my child and protecting me from this falling economy...
The fish was weighed on a chattilion 100 pound scale.
We brought it because we were on a school of 50 to 60+ lb fish for several mornings.
It took 20 minutes to revive, and swam off as strong as when it hit the plug.
The next fish I hooked, that took me to school, was the absolute largest Bass I have ever seen.
It scared me.
I wonder how much that fish was worth?
Commercial or otherwise?
I would never know, because it would have been released as well.
Don't get me wrong I love the taste of Striper and have no qualms with taking one or 2 for the table occaisionaly. I even have a couple of neighbors short on cash that truly appreciate every bite I bring them.
The entire industry surrounding The Bass is still stuck on the same old arguments, I've read almost all of them in this thread. Bass are Bass, will always be Bass and yes the corelation to the 60's, 70', and 80's still counts. Whats changed? As far as I'm concerned the head boats should be severly limited as well. Makes me ill everytime I read about a charter going into the EEZ, or offlimits areas, and not only keeping all the legal sized fish that come aboard but get busted over limit and undersized as well.
Here's another question to all the comm's out there, Can you truthfully tell me that you account for every fish you sell, and that you do not or will not break a few inconvienant laws to weigh in a money fish?
I can tell you that virtually none of the comm's that I know, now or have known in the past ever hasn't.
Like I said, commercial fisherman and the propaganda they spew will ultimately be the down fall.
Propaganda is what SF is spewing, we are not spewing anything but the truth. How does 30 million pounds equate to 1 million...you answer that and I will stop spewing forth as you say....and there is no way a 70 pound fish weighed on a scale rubbing all its slime off lived...science will prove that...now what is a money fish...to me a money fish is number one through thirty that is 34" or bigger....
Re: Striped bass gamefish, again, ugh..... 
