Amid signs that a hoped-for recovery of Atlantic striped bass may be faltering, East Coast fisheries managers are moving to further tighten already restricted catch limits on the popular but beleaguered migratory fish.
At a meeting on Aug. 6 in Arlington, VA, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s striped bass management board voted to proceed with a plan to impose a 12% reduction in 2026 on both recreational and commercial catch of the prized species.
The plan, if adopted later this year, would trim the commercial harvest quota by that amount, while it would require East Coast states to curb the recreational catch by shortening the fishing season or adjusting the size limits for legally catchable fish.
The coastwide striped bass population is currently struggling to recover from years of being overfished, a problem exacerbated by poor reproduction in the Bay — for six straight years in Maryland waters and for the past two years in Virginia. Striped bass spawning tends to vary year to year, but it has never been this low for this long, and scientists aren’t sure why.
The fisheries commission ordered catch restrictions in the Bay and along the coast in 2020 and again in 2024 to halt overfishing and rebuild the stock. But higher-than-expected recreational fishing in 2024, mainly along the Mid-Atlantic coast, cast a shadow over the projected recovery, lowering the odds the stock could reach a healthy level by 2029, as federal law requires.
Commission members had considered acting last December after being warned that the catch could surge still more in 2025 when the last bumper crop of striped bass spawned in the Bay reached legally catchable size. But they held off then, deciding to take more time to gather information and weigh options. Though the 2025 fishing season is still underway, preliminary data confirmed an uptick in fishing pressure, reducing the odds of rebuilding the stock by 2029 to below 50%.
The commission’s plan, known as Draft Addendum III, contains a menu of measures under consideration for states to choose from for achieving the required catch reductions. It is to be posted online in late August.
Commission members debated proposals for “no-targeting” season closures, during which sports anglers would be barred even from the popular practice of catch-and-release fishing for striped bass.
The commission’s technical experts had estimated that coastwide about 9% of all striped bass caught and released died anyway. But in summer, especially when shallower Bay water heats up, mortality of released fish can go much higher. Virginia already closes striped bass season during the summer, and Maryland has imposed no-targeting closures in spring and the last two weeks of July.
Some commission criticized “no-targeting” season closures in the plan, saying they are unenforceable because anglers might accidentally hook a striped bass while fishing for something else. But others argued that something is needed to curtail catch-and-release, which the commission estimates kills as many fish as are hooked and kept. Coastwide, sports anglers harvested an estimated 1.7 million striped bass in 2024, according to the commission, roughly three times the size of the commercial harvest.
Ultimately, the commission retained no-targeting closures as an option, which if adopted by a state could slightly reduce the number of additional days anglers would be prohibited from catching and keeping striped bass to achieve the 12% reduction.
Further catch restrictions are unwelcome news for sports anglers, but they’re likely to hurt the livelihoods of watermen, proprietors of bait and tackle shops and charter fishing captains. Brian Hardman, head of the Maryland Charter Boat Association, said his group’s members saw their business drop by 75%-80% after the last round of cuts took effect in 2024.
I am pretty sure a moratorium is coming if we don't get a good recruitment year soon. Even so, it takes three years from spawn to a legal sized fish.
The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: The Last Champion of Cracker Barrel up at the Other McCain.
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