Happy holidays FishTalkers, I hope everyone’s chock-full of holiday cheer and has all their cold weather gear ready for some hot winter fishing action. As we enjoy it, let’s remember that in some areas, Maryland’s portion of the main-stem Chesapeake Bay in specific, in a few months will be shut down from catch-and-release fishing for rockfish—even though there’s zero scientific evidence that it affects the striper’s population or spawning success. The DNR says this is out of “an abundance of caution,” even though release mortality is spectacularly low at this time of year and every drip of water within 20 or so miles of a spawning area was already off-limits to fishing prior to these no-targeting restrictions being initiated. Many of us are quite disappointed by this. Many guides, tackle shops, and marinas which could be benefitting from an early spring blast of business will suffer from it financially. We’ve been begging for more science on striped bass since FishTalk first came into being, because making rules like this merely as a result of finger-pointing and blame-shifting serves no one well, least of all the fish. Yet in the past 10 years the state has done… how many studies related to recreational fishing mortality regarding striped bass?
The worse news, and something we need to be watchful for, is making angling policy based on science that’s demonstrably wrong. The Marine Recreational Information Program, MRIP, which alleges to count how many fish we take out of the water, continues to trigger reductions in fishing for sea bass along our coast even as the fish’s population grows. Evidence of radical miscalculations and utter impossibilities in MRIP’s numbers are too numerous to list and too blatant to deny. So far, however, here in the Mid-Atlantic region we haven’t been subjected to the most onerous results of its continued use. The Atlantic red snapper fishery provides us with an example of just how bad MRIP can make life for anglers. The science shows that red snapper are more abundant now than they have been in decades, but thanks to MRIP’s calculations the Atlantic red snapper season in 2024 lasted for all of 24 hours. Yes, it was a one-day season. Just imagine having that for sea bass.
Remember that back in 2017 the Gulf snapper fishery experienced a similar outrage and was cut to a three-day season. Gulf states took over management from the feds, a study showed three times the number of red snapper that MRIP claimed existed, and since then the season has expanded to months instead of days—as the fishing has just gotten better and better.
As for the current state of the Atlantic red snapper fishery, Bill Bird, chairman of Coastal Conservation Association National Government Relations Committee, summed things up well. “This is a data failure and a leadership failure,” he said. “The Council recognizes that the information being provided by NOAA with regard to recreational discards does not compute, but rather than address the known data problems, NOAA has decided to act unilaterally to close angling opportunity. This is setting a troubling precedent in the management of recreational fisheries.”
A troubling precedent indeed, but this is far from the first time MRIP numbers have been nonsensically used to pummel a perfectly good fishery. Some people might argue that it’s even more onerous to “manage” a fishery based on science that’s known to be incorrect as opposed to managing it on none at all. So, who’s doing the recreational angling community a bigger disservice? MRIP, or Maryland’s state regulators? That’s something to ponder as we sit at home during the striped bass no-target closure, wishing we were fishing.