Striped Bass

ANNAPOLIS -- Monday night in a conference room at the Department of Natural Resources, the Striped Bass Advisory Board convened another in a series of work sessions intended to formulate recommendations for the 1991 striped-bass season or seasons in Maryland waters.3 1/2 hours of discussions and deliberations, the eight board members who were present decided one point and seemed to backtrack on several others.a meeting on Oct. 1, the advisory board announced that it had reached a consensus on several tentative recommendations dealing with a late-spring fishery for striped bass, including separate charter and recreational seasons and a May trophy season.

The Bounty of the Bay dinner is Thursday. The dinner moves this year to the Rockfish in Annapolis. Hosted by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the dinner celebrates Maryland seafood and the watermen, retailers and restaurants who bring it to consumers. The five-course dinner from Rockfish chef Chad Wells includes both established favorites like local oysters and striped bass and overlooked species like spiny dogfish and blue catfish. The $60 ticket includes a raw-bar reception.

You may have to do a little traveling or put some innovation into your techniques, but the striped-bass fishing continues to be good and promises to border on the terrific later in the month and into June.Last Monday morning, I fished the Chesapeake a bit south of Bloody Point with Capt. Gordon Haegerich (410-255-5792) and his brother, Bruce. I always enjoy fishing with Gordon, because he is a professional who truly loves to fish. In fact, this was his day off, so naturally he went fishing.

While the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay requires attention from all the half-dozen states in the 64,000-square-mile watershed, there is one step that must be taken almost entirely by one state alone. When the Virginia Assembly reconvenes for its annual 45-day legislative session in January, it needs to impose a strict quota on the harvest of menhaden. Perhaps no species is more important to the bay — and to the major East Coast fisheries in general — than the lowly menhaden, a small, oily fish that is familiar to Maryland anglers primarily as bait.

A St. Mary's County fish wholesaler who authorities say is at the heart of the largest striped-bass poaching case in Chesapeake Bay history pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt to falsifying Maryland catch reports and interstate trafficking in illegal fish. Robert Lumpkins, owner of Golden Eye Seafood in Piney Point, admitted that from 2003 to 2007, while acting as a commercial check station for the state Department of Natural Resources, he and his employees falsely recorded the amount of striped bass, or rockfish, that fishermen caught.

ANNAPOLIS -- Maryland's first striped-bass season in five years opened a couple of hours before dawn yesterday with some anglers expecting a bonanza and others wondering whether the season would be shut down before it had run its five-week course.Based on reports from charter-boat captains and recreational fishermen, Day 1 of the sportfishing season was neither boom nor bust.Prime spots on the bay and its tributaries were, however, crowded."I have been fishing the bay for a long time, and I never have seen anything like it," said Capt.

The Department of Natural Resources has submitted its plan for seasons and bag limits during Maryland's 1990-91 waterfowl hunting season to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is expected to approve the plan as submitted.Under the DNR plan, the Canada goose season will be 51 days with a bag limit of one goose per day in the first 16 days of the season and two per day for the last 35 days.The first session of Canada goose season will open Nov. 14 and run through Nov. 23. The second session will run from Dec. 3 through Jan. 12, with no hunting on Sunday, Dec. 9. The two-goose limit will take effect on Dec. 10.The initial proposal made by the DNR's Forest, Park and Wildlife Service called for a 47-day split season.

Maryland's spring trophy striped-bass (rockfish) season has passed through the approval process, and now all that remains is for area anglers to get out on the Bay, beginning May 1, and have a ball.During the monthlong season each fisherman is allowed up to three rockfish, each measuring no less than 34 inches.To participate in the trophy season, anglers will need a current Chesapeake Bay sport-fishing license, plus a $2 striped-bass permit stamp.Stamps are available from these Carroll County locations: ACE Hardware or True Value in Hampstead; Fish Maryland, Eldersburg; Fritz's Radio-TV, Taneytown; and K mart in Westminster and Sykesville.

ANNAPOLIS -- The charter-boat season for striped bass will close Saturday at 8 p.m., William P. Jensen, director of fisheries for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Tidewater Administration, said yesterday."

Wayne Hizer's 52-inch striped bass was the winning catch in the eighth annual Chesapeake House Inn and Restaurant Pro-Am Fishing Tournament on Tuesday.Hizer, a businessman from Pittsburgh, landed the fish from the ++ deck of Captain John Motovidlak's Retriever II charter based out of Tilghman Island. The 45-pound rockfish hit a trolled 9/0 green Crippled Alewive near the C&R Buoy.The trophy fish already had spawned -- she was empty of her eggs -- when she lost the battle to Hizer.I have been fortunate to be an invited pro at this tourney since its inception.

With catch limits on Atlantic menhaden being tightened to end overfishing, a new study is getting under way to look at just how many of the little oily fish need to be left in the water to maintain the health of other fish in the Chesapeake Bay and along the East Coast. Under a $320,000 grant from the Lenfest Foundation , fisheries scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science plan to investigate where the balance needs to be struck between fishing for menhaden and preserving them for their value in the ecosystem.

From Virginia, New Jersey and points in between, busloads of fishermen are coming to Baltimore for a showdown Friday over how much to curb the industrial-scale harvest of a small, oily fish that figures prominently in the seafood industry, though no one eats it directly. It also is an important food source for fish and wildlife in the Chesapeake Bay and beyond. After decades of study and debate, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates near-shore fishing, is meeting here to adopt a first-ever plan to limit the catch of menhaden, the most intensely harvested fish on the East Coast and second-biggest catch nationwide.

Six people have been charged since the start of this month with illegally catching striped bass in federal waters more than three miles off the coast of Ocean City , according to the Maryland Natural Resources Police. Police said the recreational fishers had caught the fish, all more than 28 inches in length, in what is known as the Exclusive Economic Zone - a designated area of waters between 3 and 200 miles off the United States coastline where the federal government holds jurisdiction.

Fishermen and conservationists sparred Thursday over how much to cut back the commercial catch of Atlantic menhaden along the East Coast to rebuild an ecologically and economically important fish population. Members of conservation and recreational fishing groups called for a reduction of 25 percent to 50 percent in the commercial harvest of menhaden, pointing to scientists' warnings that overfishing was depressing their number to near-historic lows. "For decades now, people have been taking too many of these fish, and now it's time to pay back," said Ken Hastings of Mechanicsville.

The number of young striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay fell to a record low this year, a drastic decline from a near-record high the year before, state officials reported Tuesday. State biologists checking Maryland's part of the bay found the fewest newly spawned striped bass that they've tallied in any year since annual surveys for the fish began 59 years ago, the Department of Natural Resources reported. Maryland's state fish, also known as rockfish, is closely monitored because it supports a multimillion-dollar recreational and commercial fishing industry that employs thousands.

Marylanders will get a chance to make their views known at a pair of upcoming hearings on whether fishing for Atlantic menhaden ought to be curtailed to protect "the most important fish in the sea," as some have dubbed it. Hearings are scheduled from Oct. 16 through Nov. 1 from Maine to North Carolina on whether to cut commercial harvest of menhaden, and if so by how much.  The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is weighing reductions of...

Let's say you have a product that people automatically associate with you. Except for one hiccup in the timeline, it's been on the market since before Capt. John Smith rowed a boat around the Chesapeake. And it's so popular that people will do crazy things to get it, like sneak around at night and break the law. There's even a black market supplied by crooks willing to risk going to jail to feed the beast. But instead of treating this treasure like, well, a treasure, you keep it in a filthy hovel.

Shawn Kimbro catches Chesapeake Bay striped bass Tennessee style. That is to say this son of the Volunteer State thinks of stripers as oversized largemouth bass with black racing stripes. There's a lot of running and gunning. And a lot of twitching and jigging. See the birds. Make a beeline for the birds. Fine-tune location with an eye on the fish finder. Drop lines. Crack the whip. Repeat as needed. It's not for the laid back. Or the introspective. But it is too much fun. And, most importantly, it works.

Tony Tochterman, who along with his wife, Dee, owns Tochterman's Fishing Tackle, the city's oldest bait and tackle store, remembers it well. Tony and Bob Wall, division chief of Baltimore's Recreation and Parks Department, helped introduce area children to fishing by hosting a tournament. As they led the group down the hill, rods in hand, the Inner Harbor slowly came into view and the children's eyes lit up. "Wow," one youth said. "That's the ocean. " Wrong. "They had never seen water before," Tochterman said.

The big one got away again at Saturday's Maryland Fishing Challenge finale in Annapolis. For the eighth straight year since the contest was established, no anglers caught the special Diamond Jim striped bass worth a $25,000 prize. Though the $25,000 striped bass wasn't caught, it marks the second year in which the Jim Diamond prize money was split among those who caught a fish carrying the designated tag. Instead, the nine anglers who caught fish that were tagged in the popular Maryland Department of Natural Resources' contest took home nearly $2,800 each.