If you’re a fishermen who targets striped bass and you monitor the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries proclamations and stock-status reports, your heart may have skipped three or four beats since Jan. 1.
That’s because it appeared NCDMF had lost its mind regarding commercial striped-bass harvests in the Albemarle Sound and Roanoke River.
First, some background: To set commercial rules for striped-bass harvests, NCDMF’s director announces proclamations based upon the advice of the agency’s fisheries biologists, who watch daily trip-ticket reports.
Meanwhile, stock-status reports are year-end overviews of the health of individual fish species. The 2014 stock status report called striped bass a species of concern, meaning there was room for improvement in their management. The report said review of the stock likely would mean harvest reductions.
When the 2015 striper netting season opened Jan. 1, netters could keep 10 stripers per day if caught incidentally to other species. Two months later, on March 3, the limit was increased to 15. On March 18 a proclamation bumped the limit to 20.
Many recreational fishermen thought NCDMF had handed the Albemarle-Roanoke rockfish farm to the netters, and complaints exploded. Yet there was a reasonable explanation, according to Charlton Godwin, NCDMF’s striper expert.
“Striped bass are one of the more complicated species we manage,” he said. “The (annual) quota had been 550,000 pounds since 2004, but we reduced it to 275,000 in 2014.”
NCDMF split the quota, 137,500 pounds each for netters and recreational anglers. The netters’ season was Jan. 1-April 30 or until the quota was reached, but most spring stripers are netted incidentally during the 3-week-long American shad season, so that’s when the agency often changes daily catch quotas. In 2015 it started at 10 fish per day, rose to 15, then to 20, then fell back to 10 fish on March 24.
Because stripers are a by-catch fish — netters can’t target them — a species other than stripers must account for at least 50 percent by weight of the total catch.
Godwin explained the 2014 stock-status report was published before biologists had completed the latest stock assessment — and obtained better information. The assessment showed shad netters caught more stripers than flounder netters. So to approach the quota, NCDMF upped the daily striper by-catch from 10 to 15 to fish before dropping it back to 10.
Godwin anticipates the 2015 Albemarle-Roanoke commercial striper by-catch total to be approximately 97,000 pounds, 30-percent shy of the quota of 137,500 pounds.
“This happens every year, so people shouldn’t get panicked by fluctuating daily netted striper allowances,” he said.
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