Stripers Forever urges its members and all others interested in protecting wild Atlantic striped bass to write the ASMFC and state delegations to the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board and request they do the same. According to the Draft Addendum:. Under all sub-options, states have the flexibility to develop alternative regulations through conservation equivalency, including the allocation of the required reductions between the commercial and recreational sectors. Option One would maintain the status quo. Option Three would cut the commercial harvest by only 1.
When you catch a striper and measure its length, you can estimate its age using the table below. Note the large variation in length to weight and age. This is most likely due to an individual fish's luck in finding food during its lifetime. Fish scales can reveal the age of a fish in a fashion similar to the rings of a tree. Scales get larger as the fish grows by adding growth circles, called circuli, to the outside edge. When a fish feeds heavily from spring through fall, the scales grow pretty fast with wide spacing between each circulus.
As a native New Yorker, I found that my first morning in North Carolina did not match my preconception of a temperate southern dawn. The Piedmont air was near freezing and as it passed over the warmth of the Roanoke River, it kicked up a ribbon of vapor that coursed like a wall over the river channel. My guide, Jerry Medlin, steered his johnboat more by memory than by sight through the thick fog and among the large boulders that give the nearest town its name, Roanoke Rapids. I was fortunate to be on the water at all. Although the Roanoke was extremely high and off color, it was a trickle compared with the Susquehanna, the Rappahannock, and the other major rivers I passed on the drive down the day before, all of which resembled frothy chocolate soda from the week's rains.
The striped bass Morone saxatilis , also called Atlantic striped bass , striper , linesider , rock or rockfish , is an anadromous perciform fish of the family Moronidae found primarily along the Atlantic coast of North America. It has also been widely introduced into inland recreational fisheries across the United States. Striped bass found in the Gulf of Mexico are a separate strain referred to as Gulf Coast striped bass. The history of the striped bass fishery in North America dates back to the Colonial period. Many written accounts by some of the first European settlers describe the immense abundance of striped bass, along with alewives , traveling and spawning up most rivers in the coastal Northeast.