If it ain?t broke, don?t fix it. Apparently, that basic premise doesn?t register with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
The DNR is proposing a change in the Susquehanna Flats catch-and-release season, allowing anglers to keep one striper daily, with an 18- to 26-inch slot limit during a May 16-through-May 31 season.
DNR biologist Marty Gary notes that the proposal accommodates upper Bay anglers, who want a chance to keep a striper during late spring, when lower Bay anglers are allowed two stripers. Of course, upper Bay anglers also have a nearby shot at catch-and-release fishing when stripers are closed elsewhere. This proposed regulation suggests favoritism.
The new-regs plan was just approved by the overall governing body ? the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission ? although nixed in earlier discussions. According to Gary, the DNR argues that the 18- to 26-inch stripers are not sexually mature fish, and they don?t add to the spawning effort. Also, they are not included in the trophy-season catch numbers, which Maryland exceeded by about 30,000 during both 2005 and 2006.
Opposing arguments to this plan are easy:
>> We are adding 100,000 people annually to the 15 million living in the Bay watershed, with more phosphorus, nitrogen and other bad stuff flowing downriver to the Chesapeake.By DNR figures, 60 percent of Bay?s striped bass have mycobacteriosis. The DNR knows so little about the long-term deleterious effects of myco that it is conducting stocking/tagging/recovery surveys with money payouts for tagged striper returns.
>> We have increasingly larger summer dead zones in the Bay, creating anoxic water where nothing can live. Perhaps tying in with other problems is the huge number/poundage of menhaden taken by Omega Protein of Reedville, Va. Menhaden are often the main course on the striper entrée menu.
With these negatives, it?s not good public relations to open a sensitive area to more fishing pressure. It?s just disingenuous.
The sheer idiocy of this plan is evidenced by the fact that the DNR closes the catch-and-release season in early May to prevent stripers from being stressed with warming water in late spring. They extend the May 3 closure by a few days only if water temps stay below 65. Opening a one-fish limit season two to four weeks later ? when water temperatures are even higher ? contradicts their own biological guidelines.
Fish caught and released ? and there will many with this plan ? will suffer more stress than with the current early May season closure.
Using the “keep-a-striper” analogy, the DNR could also propose bag limits on American and hickory shad, year-round striper fishing throughout the Bay, taking yellow perch from currently closed rivers and reducing size limits on almost everything. That would make some happy ? until all the fish are gone.
There is no end to the folly that the DNR could conjure up or the biological contradictions that it could enact. Right now, catch-and-release striper regs ain?t broken. Let?s not “fix” them.
C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally known sportsman and award-winning writer on fishing, hunting and the outdoors. He can be reached at [email protected].
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