New state bill is proposed to end commercial fishing for Atlantic striped bass in Massachusetts through House Bill 796 in the current state legislative session. Patrick has filed the bill on behalf of the South Portland, Maine-based Stripers Forever. He said that fewer than 30 people fish commercially for Atlantic striped bass in this $24 million fishery in Massachusetts.
As the fishermen are less in number and the stocks of striped bass falling continuously, it would makes sense to permanently close a fishery that supports so few fishermen and yet is culling out so many of the species’ breeding females. He told that this law, modeled after an identical law in Maine, if enacted, would also reduce the number of striped bass recreational fishermen could keep from two per angler per day to one fish per fisherman a day.
According to Patrick the main reason behind the closure is to take the pressure off the large breeding fish. The big fish that come up here from Maryland are the large breeding females. Commercial and recreational fishermen on Nantucket alike are, largely against the closing the commercial fishery and in support of lowering the recreational limit to one fish per day.
Patrick said he is getting a lot of pressure from both sides of this bill, but there is still plenty of wiggle room. But Nantucket commercial fisherman Doug Smith, who has fished commercially for striped bass in the recent past, refutes Patrick’s low harvest numbers, pointing to the DMF’s Web site, which lists the commercial quota at or around one million pounds per year, a cap that for the last seven years was met and in most years exceeded.
