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Dear Striped Bass Fisherman,
Our favorite fish is under more pressure than ever, and Stripers Forever, a free membership, internet-based organization, is fighting to end commercial fishing for the wild striped bass and to manage the resource for personal use/recreational fishing. We need as many members as possible to show the politicians how many people depend on striped bass for recreation, food and income.
If you haven't signed up yet as a member of Stripers Forever, here are a few things you should know:
Ø Membership is free – no dues
Ø There are no meetings to attend
Ø Everything is done via the internet and e-mail
Ø Many of the top fisherman in the country support Stripers Forever
Ø Stripers Forever’s only goal is to make striped bass a game fish, which means it would be managed for the benefit of the recreational fishing public, now and for future generations
Here is all that you have to do -- it will take less than a minute and costs nothing:
Ø Go to www.stripersforever.org
Ø Select “Become A Member”
Ø Fill out the very easy to follow sign-up sheet.
Last, but not least, forward this message on to your fishing friends. The larger our membership, the more clout we’ll have to accomplish our goal.
This is a critical time for striped bass. Help Stripers Forever successfully advocate to protect the wild striper by “Making It A Gamefish.”
Fred Jennings
Massachusetts Chairman, Stripers Forever
Stripers forever is a joke. They were laughed out of MA years ago due to their propaganda campaign. There's a reason why they stick to internet recruitment as opposed to public appearances. If you ever see a tackle shop promoting groups such as Gripers Forever, Pita, Etc..., simply boycott them.
striped bass are not a game fish, there are more now than there has ever been, ending commercial harvest of them is absurd considering the amount of fish killed by commercial fisherman does not even come close to compare with how many are killed by recreational anglers. If you are at all concerned about the population of stripers the best way to protect them would be to change the recreational possession limit either lowering the limit to one fish or making a slot limit of some sort. Most of the time recreational fishing and commercial fishing do not cross paths, the fish being caught by commerical fisherman are not usually targeted by recreational fisherman. not trying to start a fight here. Don't get me wrong I am not a kill everything you catch fisherman and when I go fishing on my own for fun I rarely take a fish home, on charters I try and encourage customers to stop taking fish once they have enough, but the quota system seems to be working, there are more stripers now than ever, if it isn't broke don't fix it, over protection could do more harm than good in the end. As long as commercial fishng for stripers remains rod and reel I think things will be alright
Does The Stripers Forever President Really Share Your Interests?
What non-flyfishermen and those who eat stripers need to know before supporting Stripers Forever
bass and disinformation hand in hand, who’d have guessed it? – An anti-commercial fishing… oops, we meant a fisheries conservation organization called “Stripers Forever” has made available on their website a letter sent to John O’Shea, Executive Director of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, requesting “that the ASMFC deduct at least 2,000,000 pounds from the striped bass commercial quotas for 2004,” based on the imagined commercial bycatch. The letter was signed by Brad Burns, president of the organization.
In the justification for this request, Mr. Burns writes “Recent estimates by NMFS that the bycatch of striped bass in the multi species trawl fishery off New England is 1 ½ to perhaps more than 2 million pounds confirm the reports we’ve heard for years about that fishery.” Neither we nor anyone else we’ve contacted with any familiarity with striped bass management on anything approaching a professional level was familiar with these purported NMFS estimates. In fact, NMFS representatives have emphatically stated that the agency never produced them. The closest we could come to the actual source of these mysterious estimates was the above-mentioned Pew-Oceana website, where the Pew-Oceana “scientists,” using a statistical methodology that wouldn’t pass muster in an elementary fisheries course, extrapolated a commercial striped bass bycatch mortality in the multispecies trawl fishery of from 1.13 to 2.15 million pounds.
Normally it would be hard to imagine how anyone could accidentally misidentify Pew-Oceana’s naïve attempts at fisheries statistics as estimates by the National Marine Fisheries Service, but we’ve grown accustomed to such “mistakes” by so-called marine conservationists.
Perhaps the next time John Geiser is on the lookout for disinformation specialists, he should set his sights a little closer to home.
(An interesting addendum to this is the fact that Thomas Fote, listed as the vice president of Stripers Forever, is the New Jersey Governor’s Appointee to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Stripers Forever describes itself as “a not for profit organization dedicated to making the striped bass a gamefish.” Reading further, we find “by eliminating commercial exploitation of the #1 recreational saltwater fishery on the east coast, over 3,000,000 recreational anglers will enjoy the social and financial benefits that will come from an improved striped bass population.” We wonder how New Jersey’s over 8,000,000 non-fishing consumers – or John Geiser’s “250 million persons in the nation” - will feel if they can never eat a striped bass, not just in New Jersey but anywhere. We also wonder, considering that each state gets only one “public” appointee, how good a job Mr. Fote is doing in representing the full range of New Jersey’s citizenry, not just his recreational fishing cronies, at the Commission.)
While we can’t expect balance from people or groups advocating particular positions, we should be able to count on it from people who are elected or appointed to represent large and diverse constituencies. There are hundreds of millions of people who, while they don’t fish, have as much right to our rich fisheries resources as anyone else. It’s up to the fisheries managers to insure that their rights to those resources are protected to as great an extent as the rights of those who fish for a hobby. To expect otherwise is to misunderstand our fisheries management legislation, our fisheries management process and what our government is all about.
For an eminent fisheries biologist’s view of the expansion of recreational fishing, see The Problem With George or The Role of Development in Fisheries Management by Peter A. Larkin at http://www.fishingnj.org/artgeorge.htm.
It isn’t all the fishermen’s fault? – In a seeming breath of fresh air, marine biologists at a Royal Society meeting in London reported that “overfishing is not the sole cause of dramatically declining fish stocks in the north Atlantic Ocean, or worldwide. Environmental changes such as climate warming may be just as important.” Michael Heath, a biologist at the Scottish Fisheries Research Services' Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen, and UK chair of the international pro-ject Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC) was quoted as saying “Marine ecosystems, particularly in the northern Atlantic, are much more vulnerable to natural fluctuations than previously realized." This is a point we’ve been making, and that the anti-fishing activists have been maliciously ignoring, for years. Relating changes in the fisheries in the North Atlantic to similar though more pronounced changes in the Pacific, "there is evidence for significant decadal-scale biological changes, which have major consequences for the abundance of natural resources," said Grégory Beaugrand, a marine biologist at the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth. (Climate findings let fishermen off the hook - Overfishing isn't the only reason fish have disappeared, Q. Schiermeier, Nature News Service, March 3, 2004)
Pew expanding its anti-fishing influence – Over the past three years the Pew “Charitable” Trusts have donated $5 million to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP). Represented on its Board and Policy Council are organizations that most of the people in the commercial fishing industry are far too familiar with; the Coastal Conservation Association, Environmental Defense and the American Sportfishing Association. In the first public utterance we’ve seen from the TRCP, Chairman Jim Range, in an article in the hunting and fishing magazine Field and Stream, comes out strongly supporting Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and opposing the various permutations of the Freedom To Fish legislation that have been or will be introduced “If MPAs can be a useful tool in management it doesn’t seem a good idea to make it impossible to use them.” It seems as if Pew has bought yet another ally in its ongoing efforts to zone our coastal and offshore waters and to zone both recreational and commercial fishing out of large areas of them.
Rock on and junior have it 100% right-burns and the frauds behind this gripers forever crap are out for nothing more than a quota grab. There is not now, nor has there ever been any scientific information or biological justification for denying a commercial fishery on stripers and they readily admit this, proving the fraudulent nature of their elitist bullsh!t. The fact is that the recreational catch and the associated bykill for the recreational catch is somewhere between 5 and 7 times that of the commercial catch. In the People's Republic of M- Sorry, I will learn to watch my language -achusetts, commercials catch them the same way as recs-one at a time. Funny thing, as someone mentions, this crap all started in that little state and burns gets most of his money there. Ya know, I made a mistake when I called them frauds-they need to be more truthful to even be called frauds. Aszholes is more appropriate. so go ahead and join these scumbags in their unwarranted quota grab but keep in mind that when you lie down with dogs, you get fleas...
Hi Hoop, what can I say except great minds think alike right? After all, we both married women named Melissa Ann! BTW, did you ever get that t-top fixed? If not, I can take careof it for you over the winter...
Sounds to me that CBP may have asked one us stripper catching commercial boys where he caught all those strippers and he was told "east of the bouy" now he's out to settle the score! Put me down for 2800 lbs caught and sold this year and never killed an under size fish!
Dexy,
East of the bouy...... you from Duxbury...... And 2800 # of stripper might be messy...... Striper on the other hand might pay ya some gas money....
__________________ ________
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog!
I got in touch with Tom Huckman in Chatham, four weeks and $150 later I was squared away. In realty, I lost 4 weeks of fishing, but I probably saved $1,500 in fuel!
He did a great job BTW, if you ever need a welder, I would absolutely recommend him.
__________________ Seems there are more people riding in the wagon these days and far fewer pulling
Stripers Forever !!!!!! Join now 
