A Gamble On Playing Slots?

The ASMFC Striped Bass Board convened in VA on Oct. 30th, voting consensus for one out of the three primary options billed as proposed management scenarios tailored to reduce SB mortality/removals by a measure of 18% from 2017 harvest levels.  With primary option 2 voted for (equal % of reductions in BOTH the commercial and recreational sectors), the commission then had to choose a sub-option mandating daily bag and size limits for 2020.  Although the overwhelming majority of written comments, emails, and public hearings by state favored a conservative proposal of 1-fish per-day at 35" minimum length (sub-option 2-A1), the board instead approved implementation of a coast-wide slot fish of 1-fish per-day measuring between 28"-35" (sub-option 2-A2). 

While various young-of-the-year classes of SB are "under construction," the ASMFC has anted-up a big fishery management bet, pulling a lever of risk while rooting for triple-7's by way of corralling all recreational harvesting pressure into a single 7-inch range (28"-35").  They chose to gamble by playing slots - in order to reduce an overall recreational harvest removal rate.  While it's undoubtedly important to protect the breeding, fecund females larger than 35" for the beneficial propagation of the species, discard mortality rates could only increase upon classes of fish that exceed the "safe," upper-threshold of 35" (due to fighting fatigue, angler mishandling, unhooking/bleeding - BUT, just as fishing always been, really), however with the mandatory release of these fish, and hope of successful resuscitation and survival instead, breeds the logic of the added benefit of an increased SB breeding biomass.  Only Father Time will tell, but it remains the onus of fishermen to offer their best and most-conscientious practices supportive of healthy catch-and-release (crushed barbs, for one) with the hope of a reduced mortality rate among ALL size-classes of SB.  

Will the proposed ASMFC slot limit consequently, if not detrimentally, increase sufficient removals of 28"-35" fish that first need to eventually reach 35", such that a class of 35"+ fish decline from current levels in future years to follow? (the bag limit being reduced to 1-fish per-day, great, but ASMFC statistics argue that 90% of all release mortality is attributed to recreational angling.  More so, overfishing is occurring and the SB fishery is overfished, which is why an 18% reduction in coast-wide removals/mortality was approved).  Will tape measures that often magically stretched to reach the (legal 28") length of pinched caudal tails now do their damnedest to substantiate a keeper measured of a splayed tail or fork-length instead, somewhere short of 35.001"?  No one answer can be so prescient or straightforward in offering assurance to so complex a scenario as a multi-billion-dollar fishery puppeteered by man.  That being said, hoping for the best..

The above-average 2011 and 2015 year classes are the fish that already fall within (2011 avg. length 31") or nearing (2015 avg. length 22") the 28"-35" slot range.  There doesn't seem to be an abundance of those fish as it is, as learned by time spent angling in/on the water.  Worse yet, years 2016 and 2019 offer a less than desired stock of young-of-the-year class fish that will eventually mature into the targeted slot range anglers may be restricted in harvesting from in future years, compounded by whatever regulations may be set to be then.