Striper Recovery: Not

Circle hooks could go a long way toward reducing hooking mortality. And if you can train yourself to let the fish hook itself rather then hauling back on the rod, these hooks actually catch more fish. In virtually all cases they penetrate the lip only. There is ample evidence that circle hooks save fish of all species, but managers are reluctant to push them on the public because they're new and because no one has bothered to work up a definition of a circle hook--an easy-enough task. The situation is reminiscent of steel shot for waterfowl: It was new; the ammo companies wouldn't make it because it wasn't mandatory, and it wasn't mandatory because the ammo companies didn't make it. To its great credit the Recreational Fishing Alliance is one fishing outfit loudly demanding mandatory circle hooks for bait fishing.

Finally, on charter and party boats both intentional and unintentional mortality need to be drastically trimmed. Clients are defined as "recreational" anglers but they are a different breed of cat than the folks you see bobbing around the saltchuck or trudging flats and beaches. "Charter and party boats need a one-fish limit and only six fish a day--not per trip, but per day," declares legendary Montauk fly-fishing guide David Blinken. "Now they're allowed two fish per person per trip. They [the charters] have six guys on the boat plus the captain and mate, and they're taking 12 to 20 fish a day, all big breeders. They get the guys with the gold chains, beer bellies and slicked-back hair. I know lots of captains who want to release, but their clients want to kill, kill, kill. If the boats all switch at the same time, no one will lose business."

I worry about the future of striped bass because I know managers and their agencies. Rarely do they act for the resource. More often they react to the last and loudest special interest that shouted at them. Sometimes it's less their fault than the fault of our Pollyannaish public-comment process, which wrongly assumes the public knows something about how to manage fish.

"With overall abundance high, you start getting into opinion," says Shepherd. "You ask a waterman in Chesapeake Bay what he wants to see. He wants to see as many 18- to 25-inch fish as the system can produce. You talk to a surfcaster on Cape Cod about what he wants to see, and he says as many 50-pound fish as the system can produce." The trouble is that Shepherd and his colleagues are going to be hearing a great deal from watermen and relatively little from anglers. In this prediction, I pray I am proved incorrect everywhere--but especially on the Hudson River. Now that this, the greatest striper source after Chesapeake Bay, is less contaminated with PCBs Governor George Pataki thinks it would be a dandy idea to open up commercial fishing: "Commercial fishing on the Hudson was a way of life for generations of New Yorkers. We owe it to today's New Yorkers to assess whether it's time to reestablish this tradition."

A state-assembled advisory committee has declared that Hudson River shad fishermen, who accidentally kill about 23,000 pounds of stripers each season, should be allowed to sell them. "Being a bycatch in progress, it shouldn't have a major effect, since these fish are being caught now and discarded," proclaims a spokesman for the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation. But, of course it would have a major effect. Only about 20 of the roughly 300 permitted shad fishing enterprises actually fish. With stripers, which bring far more than shad per pound, they'd get back on the water and launch a horrendous, targeted "bycatch" fishery.

"If you take more fish from the Hudson, you're going to have to give some up somewhere else," comments ASMFC's John Carmichael. "We're taking about what can be taken."

By the time you read this the ASMFC will probably have finalized its draft of Amendment VI, a document that will serve as the source for public comments and hearings up and down the coast. If the final version turns out to be as bad as Amendment V, anglers will have no one to blame but themselves.

The draft version of Amendment VI will be posted on ASMFC's website: www.asmfc.org. You can comment on it there or by writing: Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, 1444 Eye Street, NW, 6th Floor, Washington, DC 20005.

ASMFC wants to know how you think it should manage striped bass. If you don't say anything now, don't blame it for listening to those who do.