Does The Striped Bass Fishery Leave You Feeling Drained?

This pain I harbor is real.  It's a rather dull feeling, more draining of spirit than anything else I suppose, but the lingering side effects are nonetheless persistently unsettling.  Of late, I'd be lying if I were to point a finger of blame on the influence on a sultry, summertime heat index searing above 100°F for days on end.  Nor can I attest a causality of guilt to some chronic deprivation of otherwise sound sleep.  Rather, it's fish and a multi-billion-dollar fishery that has solicited my concern.  Not coincidentally, these manifestations of my disturbance all point to sea, at the ensuing scarcity of a certain prized surf-fish - stripers.  Mind you, a certain class of rockfish, not the oft unavoidable classes of schoolies, but instead it's the relative absence of linesiders in the mid-30s” range to longer of length that have me increasingly concerned, especially after faithfully casting countless tides over the ebb and flow of annual migrations, both spring and fall.  Localized seasonality (essentially, the unknown that makes fishing, fishing) is generally an acceptable variable, the wildcard of the sport, and outright understandable most of the time, but grand-scale patterns of change are another ballgame.  When one waning season after successive season comes to be weighed on an aggregate scale (think coast-wide assessment), and is measured against one’s personal, historical index of health, I sometimes find myself asking, what does the future of an open-beach surfcaster look like?  What are to make of those charmed and coveted river tides that haven’t surfaced bass near 40” for a number of consecutive seasons now?  Is a 35” fish the seasonal exception?  Are 28s and under the new norm?  Is it simply due to the fact that my nearby, Army-Corps-replenished beaches are devoid of rocky structure and sandy slope for four years?  Did the bass “develop a new migration pattern?”  The boaters are catching – the Raritan Bay produced.  There’s that supposed body of fish beyond the 3-mile line, but where are the big girls that silently stalk and sway fin in the shallow tides of night?  Are they simply all distanced too far from the beaches, nearest to the large pods of Menhaden that school the surface in deep water?  Where have those few seasonal occasions vanished to that once chanced the surfcaster with a run-in of big bass?  

*SPOILER ALERT*  I fear that I quite obviously know the answers to my own questions.  I see the proof evidenced all too often as photographs and videos posted on the Internet’s choice platforms of voyeuristic discovery - fishing forums, social media groups, and as hashtag searches.  It could just be me, but a story-line and visualization of excessive abuse continues to replay its obnoxious script.  Admittedly, the fat lady isn't singing, but in some sort of opening act, I believe I hear the faint blaring of Bowie? “Pressure, pushing down on me, pressing down on you. It's the terror of knowing what the world is about. Turned away from it all like a blind man. Insanity laughs under pressure we're breaking. Can't we give ourselves one more chance? The people on the edge of the night. This is our last dance. This is ourselves under pressure. Under pressure. Pressure.”   

Am I jumping the gun?  Did I jump the shark?  I cannot know for certain and I don't wish to be correct anyway.  After all, what I've griped about is my own experience (something I flirted with in this blog two years ago, HERE).  Perhaps (to some), my own inexperience, or inadequacies of effort and knowledge.  Even so, what haunts my mind's eye of quintessential surfcasting memory is the all-to-recent nostalgia of big, busting bass blitzing and encircling corralled pods of bunker pinned between wave-slashing, mossy, flat-top jetties extended seaward from sharp-faced beaches.  Days of glory.  Nighttime's of triumph. 

But, perhaps I'm not so far off.  My parting question to you however, am I the only NJ surfcaster asking himself of these questions?   

           

A roadside storm drain in my hometown adorned with an embossed casting of the east coast's most popular gamefish.  Appropriately so, in that every other drain I've seen that empties to a saltwater watershed depicted castings of freshwater bass, trout, or salmon.  Ironically, it can be argued that the spawning stock of the Atlantic Striped Bass biomass (breeding females) is currently reeling from a cumulative pressure having been applied upon her, in enduring years of recreational and commercial fishing exploits, luring the proliferation of its reproductive-class fish, its only future, closer to the dangers of an open drain. 

... to get worse, mess up...

…consider the data projected in the following graphs:

On April 30th, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) accepted the findings of a Striped Bass stock assessment report, concluding that corrective measures in multi-state fisheries management are vitally warranted in order to remedy the trend of a declining biomass of spawning female breeders populating this heavily-pressured fishery.  (The above image is a screenshot captured from the homepage of StripersForever.org.  An online article of the organization’s findings can be read HERE).

The Striped Bass Spawning Stock Biomass (SSB) – total weight of spawning-age fish estimated in the population – has downtrended below the fishery’s threshold level for the previous five recorded consecutive years.  At their April 30^th meeting, the ASMFC requested the scientific Technical Committee to detail measures of enforcement and prevention (e.g. slot limits, closed seasons) that would purportedly reverse exploitations of overfishing and trend the fishery towards compliance with a 17.5% reduction in harvest that is believed to be a required countermeasure in successfully rebuilding the population of the SSB.  Supposedly, a 35” minimum size limit in the recreational fishery would achieve the required reductions, cutting recreational harvest dramatically (estimated by half), but as a result, induce a measurable rise in catch-and-release mortality.  

   

The current SSB is estimated to be at approximately the same level as it was in 1992.  Worse yet, spawning success in the Chesapeake Bay (where approximately 80% to 90% of the total Atlantic stock of migratory stripers originate) during the last 15-years has slumped to about one-half of what it was during the fecund and abundant years of the 1990s.  

Additionally, fishing mortality of fully-recruited Striped Bass (the percentage of the reproducing population inadvertently killed by fishing), has over this same 15-year-period up-trended and risen to levels well-above those deemed sustainable for the future reproductive resiliency of a healthy SSB.  

“Striped Bass cannot be everything to everyone. We cannot, simultaneously, fish for them commercially, make them the target of head boats, hold up the dead bodies of the big breeders, gut hook them with bait in lukewarm water, have unlimited season-long possession limits, and expect to have an abundant resource and the great fishing opportunities that provides. Stripers Forever will be advocating for a new day in Striped Bass management that stewards these fish for their greatest socio-economic value to the public.”

-           StripersForever.org – 05/10/2019     -  

ACTION

The ASMFC is scheduled to meet on August 8th to advance discussions regarding forthcoming addendum guidelines (year 2020) that may (with greatest hopes) hinder the current overfishing of Striped Bass and initiate the rebuilding of stocks over ensuing years.  The elemental well-being of the prized fish we all love, and its fishery we all love to participate within, is undeniably entangled in a perilous trial of future sustainability.  The fishery will regrettably continue to crash unless change is implemented and conservation prevails.  While the power of commerce, politics, industry, and influence presides, consider clicking HERE to contact your appointed state ASMFC commissioner.  The American Saltwater Guides Association bids the suggestion of seven bulleted comments that each address the subject straight to the point.  Make your voice heard before the next guideline meeting.

Release A Breeder – Our future as tomorrow’s fishermen teeters upon the fulcrum of today’s choices and actions.  Be one who casts to restore balance with each release.  

Instagram user account "callofthesurf" (Catch & Release Crew).  "Leading others to good habits that will make a good fishery for all.  Fish with honor."

Instagram's "callofthesurf" (Catch & Release Crew) also believes that "the times they are a changin'."  The group quoted "until new regulations are voted on, agreed, and implemented, this fishery requires us to 'fish with honor' and lead by example.  Catch & release, follow the code, represent your water, and continue to spread the good word.  If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less."  The group's Code of Honor are littoral-ly axioms to fish by and may as well be likened to a surfcaster's guiding Ten Commandments.

Instagram's "callofthesurf" (Catch & Release Crew) logo.  "By representing this badge, you are part of a crew that lives the ethics of C&R.  A brotherhood that respects the Code of Honor for Striped Bass." 

As an aside, but in an analogous effort of consideration and conservation...

Bill H.R.2040, the "Striped Bass American Heritage Act," was introduced in the House of Representatives to the 114th Congress on April 28, 2015 by (former) Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) with objective of designating Atlantic Striped Bass (Morone saxatilis) as the National Fish of the United States.  MacArthur quoted, "New Jersey has always appreciated the importance of the Striped Bass, as it is our distinguished state saltwater fish.  I am honored to introduce this bill to finally recognize the Striped Bass as our national fish and enshrine its place in our nation's cultural heritage."  Historically, stripers suffered from various forms of pollution that ultimately brought about the Clean Water Act, and after the passage of the Striped Bass Conservation Act of 1984, the biomass began its recovery, growing as the healthy spawning stock we came to appreciate for decades after.  Rep. MacArthur's bill was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, with no further legislative action(s) taken to present date, four-years later. (Illustration by Savio Mizzi)

Has the larger picture now sharpened and come closer into view?  I hope so.  I also hope that we are not watching our splendid swimmer in her troubled fishery go down the drain of mismanagement before our eyes.

Lurching closer to the drain, of the embossed SB casting.  Pressure from all angles of all anglers and everything between hovers above this species of fish at all times.  To reiterate a few:  Atlantic Menhaden mismanagement and depletion, forage base depletion, habitat destruction and pollution of spawning grounds (run-off of nutrient waste-loads of nitrogen and phosphorus into estuaries, whether agricultural or urban/suburban), algal blooms, mycobacteriosis, hypoxia, man's fishing pressures throughout the migratory and resident class ranges, overfishing, ASMFC fishery management regulations, poachers, Internet boasters...  The breed, and the female SSB especially, need a break!

Damn, You Don't Say

Last April, I first explored under dusty footstep and swam eyesight across oceanic, bluebird-sky the breathtaking geological surrounds of beauty that are Utah’s national parks.  Vistas of topographies, each exposed as stratified rust-colored rocks in the formations of walls, windows, pinnacles, buttes, canyons, narrows, arches, massifs, mesas, spires, bridges, and bends silently and sublimely compose this ancient, desert-like landscape.  At the time, and much to my added surprise, there also existed one particular fusiform form of strata I was much more familiar with viewing – stripes.  I learned that a transplanted tribe of Striped Bass school the vast, freshwater depths of a dammed, man-made section of the Colorado River I had visited named Lake Powell.  A piece I wrote of this experience and published to A Multitude of Fins can be read here. 

This April, at 11:15AM on the second day of the month, on the second day of Heather Litke’s shared fishing excursion of the San Juan River arm of Lake Powell with her husband Ryan, a tautness of exact timing and place suddenly struck out of the clear-blue morning like lightning, electrifying the length of a precariously-deepening arc of eyelets to strain waterward against the startled backbone of a rod quivering of pulse.  Pulling from fathoms below, unbeknownst in the moment, was none other than the freshwater leviathan of a freshwater fisher’s lifetime.  This sinking surge of fighting-fin being only countered in runaway measure at the fulcrum of her clenched hands grasping and working of their serendipitous favor.  An especially weighty resistance of gaining absorption and excitement ensued.  Then, by 11:30AM that morning, a new Utah state record surfaced its gleaming, 44½ inch, 35.33 lb. broadside body painted of seven laterally-running stripes from the drinking-water depths of intrigue to the revelatory exposure of a triumphant sunlight casting sharpest of shadow overhead.  With one hook-set, one watertight queen of the whitewater achieved notoriety as the largest documented catch & release fish captured in the recorded history of the state.  What’s more, she was just ½-inch-shy of the state’s longstanding 48.7 lb. record rockfish specimen landed in 1991 of this same lake’s waters. 

What’s perhaps greatest, it that this genetic wonder she admirably watched come to reanimate with life from the hold of her encouraging revival grip, disappearing downward after a sinuous kick-starting send-off and sweeping rake of broom tail into the depths of Powell, could someday resurface even appreciatively larger and longer.  In essence, Heather has generously entrusted all who cast this reservoir next with her prized, living trophy.  A record-setting and reigning fish of legend for yet some other fortunate freshwater angler’s hoist of honor and inestimable approval of smile.  May Litke's record stand as solid as the rockfish's corralling walls of surrounding red rock, but for all one knows, some angler, with any luck of luring, may some day lean to this lake's waterline to release the lengthened-of-stripe, swimming benefaction of her once-released catch. 

“The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope”  -  John Buchan

“You fish, in essence, for surprise out of nowhere, for an instant in which you suddenly become aware that you’re attached to a heartbeat.”  -  Ted Leeson

The above photo and following caption was posted to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources social media account page on May 23rd: "RECORD FISH: Remember the massive striped bass Heather Litke caught earlier this spring? It was just certified as Utah's newest catch-and-release record. At 44.5 inches, this Lake Powell striper was the catch of a lifetime. Congrats, Heather!" 

Surfcaster's Striper Blog 2019

After waiting all-winter-long for the return of Sax to our waterways, there's no better feeling than that of the sudden strike to a lure left wiggling in a nighttime tide by a fish coming to bend the hell out of your rod.  With any luck of genuflecting graphite strain, the blurred shape, profile, and hinting colors of the season's first fish soon emerge to coalesce within boiling surface convections atop an aqueous conveyor of inky blackness to an angler's hungered sight.  A 34.5" Striper.  "Something important had continued."  

Master Of The Striper Fly

That was it.  I decided at long-last to just do it, even setting a reminder into my phone's calendar.  This time, I wouldn't forfeit to the coming, onset, and passage of yet another winter season in having never acted to redeem opportunity sunken beneath the darkening depths of flowing time ebbed years prior.  Some long-running tide showed hints of slowing, perhaps even coming to slack, such that with any coaxing gravity of my motive, would soon reverse state, flooding entirely anew.  I could no longer float some buoyant, subtle sense of regret left otherwise unchallenged by action or remedy.  After all, the solution was quite simple enough.  Every January, for a sudden and swift three days, the man from Massachusetts conveniently makes himself accessible to one-on-one, vis-à-vis visitation within the very state I live.

A Wawa coffee was poured, an address entered into GPS for easy E-ZPass passage up the GSP, and with the smeared ink applied of a rubber stamp rolled against the back of my hand, I strayed for the first time about an aircraft hanger-sized venue in peripatetic pursuit of a renowned author and Striper fly-fishing authority by the name of Rich Murphy.  Somewhere among the vast commercial channels of vendors and churning volume of shoulder-bumping passersby sweeping through aisle inlets, he was here, poised and positioned at a table blanketed by a sheet of white poster paper being tattooed with a graffiti of illustration.  At a trade show workstation, weighed-down by tying vises clamping at the hooks of his original, hand-tied creations, precise foils of feather and flash posed on-display and buttressed end-to-end between stacked hardcovers irrefutably recognized the sport over as the man's distilled, encyclopedic anthology of experience, here bound as the inviting inventory of his weighty book, Fly Fishing For Striped Bass.  It was then, that a saltwater fly-tyer and expert stalker of M. Saxatilis lifted his downward-turned eyes away from the attention of his working fingers to curiously glance above a plastic rim of bifocals where he focused instead unto a Fly Fishing Show attendee who suddenly appeared standing before him.

Rich Murphy's tying table at the Edison, NJ Fly Fishing Show.  His 2007 publication, Fly Fishing For Striped Bass, is widely recognized as "encyclopedic" in coverage; an "immediate bible" on the subject of Striper fly-fishing strategy.  Angling author Dick Brown penned it as "the distilled wisdom of an expert stalker of Striped Bass.. a celebration of one man's love affair with a great game fish."  Agreeably, the book's comprehensive and prudent content promptly won my heart.  That afternoon, after a smile and handshake, Rich's parting words to me were "everything in it is the truth."         

RM's Conomo Special, a large streamer fly that proved innovative in its inception at the imitation of the Clupeidae family of finfishes (alewife, blueback and Atlantic herring, Atlantic menhaden, threadfin, gizzard, and hickory shad).  It's Rich's #1, single-most productive, and universally-adaptable Striper fly pattern, named after Conomo Point on the Essex River in Essex, MA.        

The venerable vanguard of the vise was quick to use a pen in illustrating on his table how the profile depth of the Conomo's spreader cone could be manipulated with finger pressure into a shape that bears to appropriate an overall length-to-height ratio to the cross-sectional body profile of prey a tyer intends to imitate.

For some time, I had finally stood present, in-the-flesh, before the enthusiastic character of a man whom some distant six winter's time earlier, I grew to know only in my mind, page by carefully turned page, under the illuminating light of a reading lamp.  Having been befriended by a printed wisdom of words that flood his 457-page saltwater atlas, this same hardcover that I awoke from its bookcase and deliberately accompanied to the show, I imagined it reasonable to possibly personalize our friendship with just a few more - those that I would value as penned-privilege of a master's autograph.  His inscription advancing one last personal cast of wisdom - "Let the big ones go."  Five simple words that mean so incredibly much, and serve equally as important as the backing packed deep onto your arbor, waiting for some day to be revealed to the silence of night as you turn hard to stop your personal best from running-off without first inscribing your excited eyesight with the size and color of her splendor.

"Without this book, an angler can still catch Striped Bass.  But with it the reader will gain a hard-earned advantage in the quest to catch a knee-knocking trophy striper.  The author and I both started fly fishing for this magnificent fish at about the same time and with the exact same tackle.  He became a true gourmet, while most of us are only gourmands.  Rich rose from student to professor.  Now all this knowledge is at our fingertips." - C.M. "Rip" Cunningham, former editor-in-chief Salt Water Sportsman magazine

The event's encompassing parking lots were generously-stocked of clever, fish-inspired vanity plates.  Clearly, this last one I chanced upon, served as a rendered reminder of Rich's drying penned message within the bound covers I carried.  Just do it.

Merry Fishmas! '18

Wishing you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas, a joyous holiday season, and a prosperous 2019!  See you on the sand next year..

"Santa's 50"  For the 2018 holiday season, I "present" a layout that I altered after I first posted it for this blog in Dec. '16.  The most notable change is the use of artist Ford Flick's beautiful and lively-looking Striper illustration titled "Mature Striped Bass."  Although it's nearly impossible to discern, I would like to note that for this picture, Santa is standing on a snow-covered 8th Ave. jetty that I photographed (and fished) in Asbury Park, NJ a few years ago before beach replenishment covered most of it.

Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer and Morone Saxatilis!

Striped Bass: Illustrations & Wildlife Art

Shared in this post are what I find to be a healthy sampling of the most admirable and accurately-depicted Saxatilis illustrations and works of art that I have chanced upon in my years of having lived immersed within the salty subject of everything Striped Bass.  Selected are thirty (keeper) pieces created with mediums of ink, pencil, oil, acrylic, watercolor, or digital pixel.  While there are seemingly countless examples of this celebrated fish found throughout various realms of the art world, whether professionally-commissioned or humbly-sketched and shared on the internet, I find it striking that no two artists seem to express this same fish in the same manner.  That is, each artist has a different eye or physical capability for what he or she mimics and envisions.  Some aspect (whether coloring, curves, overall proportion, anatomical accuracy, body and fin shaping, attitude, or state of motion) of a finished product is always different from extant pieces of work, and moreover distinguishes what I as an observer and fisherman believes to be a convincing representation of the East coast's most popular gamefish.  With that, some really do stand-out against the "school."  I suppose it's just enough to share a few that should merit any Striper enthusiast's artful appreciation, and in this case especially, exhibit the true-to-life and apropos valediction commonly used of an angler - tight lines. 

Amadeo Bachar
https://studio-abachar.myshopify.com/

Arthur Shilstone - "The Striped Bass"

Flick Ford
http://www.flickford.com/

Flick Ford

Flick Ford - "Mature Striped Bass"

Guy Harvey

Guy Harvey - "Striped Bass Collage"

Jim Roszel

Jim Roszel

Joe Higgins - Gyotaku (ink & paper) fish prints.
"Joe's Fresh Fish Prints"  https://www.fishedimpressions.com/ 

Mark Susinno - "Mopping Up" (2004)

Mike Savlen - "Striper Rise" (giclee on stretched-canvas)
http://www.savlenstudios.com/

Nick Mayer
https://www.nickmayerart.com/

Nick Mayer

Samuel Kilbourne (1858)

H.L. Todd (1884).  This illustration is used for the logo of the 154-yr-old Cuttyhunk Fishing Club in Massachusetts.

Savio Mizzi - "On The Fly"

Stanley Meltzoff - "Eighth Avenue, Asbury" (July 1966) oil on panel
http://silverfishpress.com/

Stanley Meltzoff - "Barnagat Inlet, North Jetty" (June 1966) oil on mounted canvas

Unknown

Unknown (appeared in On The Water magazine, 2017)

Jacqueline Stella
https://jacquelinestella.com/

Unknown

Unknown (appeared in Utah Fishing Guidebook 2018, page 58)

Unknown

James Prosek
https://www.troutsite.com/index.html

David Danforth
https://www.relogear.com/art

David Riina - "Realistic Striped Bass" (watercolor)
https://davidriina.bigcartel.com/

Glen Hacker - "Striped Bass" (oil on canvas - 2015)

Captain Stephen Ferrell
https://www.etsy.com/shop/CaptStephenFerrell

Rockfish à la Norman Rockwell

A Photoshop edit made of Rockwell's "Freedom From Want" (1943) in which a Striper was made the main course. Although the serving platter edit was not my work, I added four other elements to give it a slightly (hardly noticeable due to low resolution) more surfcaster edge. While this particular fall run has not liberated my own feelings of want with respect to beaching migrating bass, the Thanksgiving Day holiday casts upon us a much greater appreciative appeal - friends & family - the very unmoving rocks of our existence.  To surfcast is to perhaps have washed-away in the briny prescription of a saltwater tide the mind's most minor misgivings, even those as inconsequential as bemoaning the spirited absence of one's favorite gamefish, as the keepers and personal bests are always patiently waiting to your back and over your trying shoulders, on dry land, at home. Give thanks to them.  Never stop fighting for them.  But also give thanks to Sax. I fear she may need the help of our good fight too..