The increase in the number of stripers in the Santee Cooper lakes is welcome news to fishermen and biologists alike, but there are differences of opinions on what the next step in management should be.
In response to the decline in the fishery, the Santee Cooper striped bass stakeholder committee was formed in 2007. The stakeholders represented each legislative district around the lakes and included tourism officials, fishing and tour guides, landing operators, recreational anglers, fishing club members and several legislators. The stakeholders’ efforts led to regulations in May 2008 that changed daily creel limits to three fish greater than 26 inches long and prohibited keeping striped bass from June through September due to a high catch-and-release mortality that occurs at higher water temperatures.
Kevin Davis and Alan Weiss of Blacks Camp, along with many other concerned guides and fishermen, think it’s time to make regulations less restrictive.
“I am thrilled that the lake is chock full of stripers,” Davis said, “but I and a lot of the fishermen and guides think it’s time to relax the regulations so fishermen can enjoy the fishery and take home more of the fish they catch.
“I think a limit of four to five fish should be adopted, but fishermen would have to keep whatever stripers they catch, and then you’re done for the day,” he said. “It’s been done elsewhere, and it can work. People enjoy catching and releasing stripers, but really they want to be able to keep more of what they catch. During the cold weather, the catch rate of keeper-sized fish does go up, as it does when they migrate up the river to spawn in the early spring, But overall, I think it’s time to consider a change in the regulations to allow that.”
Scott Lamprecht is a fisheries biologist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources who works closely with the Santee Cooper striped bass stakeholder committee. Lamprecht said the stakeholders can make recommendations to the legislature, but he said the original plan everyone agreed on was to give these regulations seven years to work, and that’s what he hopes will happen.
“In January of 2013, we’ll be 5 1/2 years into the program,” Lamprecht said. “I think the next couple of yeas are crucial, because we have made significant strides in bringing the fishery back. Our goal was to have a population of spawning fish that need to be five years old or older to produce natural recruitment.
“At the end of the seven years, I think we do need to look at the regulations and make recommendations regarding the harvest guidelines so more anglers can catch and keep more fish,” Lamprecht said. “It good for the fishermen and good for the economy of the area, but we have achieved a lot of the goals the stakeholder committee wanted, with one very important one being to restore the fishery to where there are lots of stripers in the system. That’s worked extremely well. Now we need to get the larger females to have time to spawn successfully for a couple of years and get natural recruitment to go along with our stocking.
“From a biologist perspective, I want to see the lakes produce large enough fish to reproduce naturally and provide fishermen plenty of fish to catch and take home. I think we’ll get there.”
Be the first to comment