Striped Bass

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.

Anglers and watermen are at odds, again, this time over fishing license fees.  With the Maryland Department of Natural Resources facing a looming deficit in funds for overseeing both recreational and commercial fishing, anglers are pushing a bill that would require the state to cover 90 percent of its costs for managing each fishery with license fees from the people engaged in that activity. They testified before the House Environmental Matters Committee in support of HB1173 , while watermen argued that the issue needs more study.

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.

A year after the rockfish season was cut short because recreational and commercial fishermen were charged with poaching with illegally tied-down gill nets, a bill proposing the ban of all gill nets in Maryland waterways will be considered by the General Assembly. Sponsored by the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishing Association and state Sen. Kathy Klausmeier, a Baltimore County Democrat, Senate Bill 1032 calls for the ban of gill nets whether they are weighted down or not. Gill nets are legal, but it has been illegal to hold the nets down with weights since 1985.

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."

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.

Officers have returned to the scene of the crime, where last year they pulled up miles of illegal nets filled with 12.6 tons of striped bass from the frigid waters off Kent Island. This year they are armed with new weapons: side-scan sonar to detect underwater nets, new laws passed by the General Assembly that expand their authority and public sentiment that has demanded a halt to poaching of the state's signature fish. "It was just a few bad apples, but they almost ruined it for everyone," said Natural Resources Police Cpl. Roy Rafter as he prepared to board a waterman's boat Wednesday near a spot known as Bloody Point.

Mike Dodson will be following a family tradition when he enlists next month in the U.S. Navy. His grandfather, James Dodson, served in the Navy during World War II. His uncle, James Jr., was on a Navy ship that was part of the blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Last weekend, Dodson and his father, Steve, carried on another tradition - fishing together in the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishermen's Association's Chesapeake Bay Fall Classic. Steve Dodson, 52, figured it would be the last time they fished in a tournament together before his 21-year-old son left to pursue a military career.

Two important decisions emerged from the recent meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission that should have a positive impact on the Chesapeake Bay's striped bass (rockfish) industry. The first was a decision not to restrict the harvest of striped bass, the other to significantly curb the Atlantic menhaden catch. How could a decision to leave alone rockfish, a species highly prized by commercial fishermen and recreational anglers alike, while restricting the harvest of the lowly menhaden, an oily little fish that no self-respecting hook-and-line fisherman would use for anything other than bait, be a win for conservationists and the fishing industry?

The interstate panel that oversees fishing along the Eastern Seaboard voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to cut the menhaden catch by up to 37 percent next year in an effort to protect the species and, by extension, striped bass. The 14-3 vote by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission was hailed by environmentalists and criticized by commercial fishermen who make their living catching menhaden for processing into animal feed and dietary supplements and for bait. "This is historic," said Ken Hinman of the National Coalition for Marine Conservation.

— A proposal that could have slashed Maryland's annual striped bass catch by more than 50 percent in 2012 was shelved Tuesday morning by the commission that oversees East Coast fisheries. The 9-6 vote by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's striped bass board will most likely postpone any further discussion of a harvest reduction until 2013, when a new population assessment is due. "I think it was appropriate," said Ed O'Brien, an official with the Maryland Charter Boat Association and the National Association of Charterboat Operators.

A big fight is brewing over a little fish - a fish that no one wants to eat but that many regard as the most important in the sea. Catch restrictions loom on menhaden, which is too unsavory to grace a dinner plate but much sought by commercial fishermen. They catch them in staggering numbers to be ground into animal feed, to extract their heart-healthy oils for humans and to be used as bait to catch other fish, including Maryland's iconic blue crabs. Menhaden also play a vital role in the Chesapeake Bay's ecosystem, feeding on plankton and serving themselves as food for many of the fish, birds and animals that people do eat or care about.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, I suppose, that the striped bass season began Saturday with uneasy folks focused on the intensity and direction of the wind. Concerns about our own health and well-being on the water aren't much different than the worries a lot of people have about the health and well-being of the fish themselves. Two decades removed from the end of the moratorium that helped bring striped bass back from the brink of extinction, there's a growing feeling that the winds have shifted and we're seeing the makings of another crash.

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.

After several years of discouraging results, Maryland fisheries officials say the number of juvenile striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay this summer was the fourth highest in the 58-year history of their annual census. The abundance of palm-sized newborns bodes well for those who catch — and those who eat — the official state fish, also known as rockfish. "We had a widespread good spawn in the bay. … In three to four years that will translate into excellent fishing," said Tom O'Connell, director of the Fisheries Service for the Department of Natural Resources.

Equating the stocking of menhaden in Maryland's waters to a set of traffic lights, Mike Waine sees the current plight somewhere closer to red than green. Waine, the fisheries management coordinator for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, said Tuesday's two-hour hearing in Annapolis helped gauge the public's view on the overfishing of menhaden — and the future management of the species. Once considered a delicacy, menhaden are now more highly regarded as the main forager of unwanted algae as well as a source of food for the region's striped bass population.