My college journalism professors leaned heavily into the inverted pyramid concept of news writing. Think of an upside-down triangle, with the widest part at the top revealing the most substantial information – who, what, where, when, and why. As a news article tapers down you can glean more specifics if you choose to continue, but a casual reading of the opening paragraphs typically is enough to get the gist of the story.
My first-hand account from Dewey Beach, DE called Striper Decision ’25: No Changes For ’26 on page is rather long, but the headline tells you all you really need to know, with the opening lead paragraphs providing a pretty thorough overview. I’d recommend to those looking for a deeper understanding of how 13 of the 16 potential votes supported status quo to read the entire article from top to bottom.
If you didn’t sit through the October 29th hearing, the social media headlines that night may have seemed confusing. I know some folks questioned the rationale for all those public hearings given the rather overwhelming 13-3 vote at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). And no, the fix was not in! I was there, in the room where it happened, watching as the striped bass management story unfolded, and it became pretty clear within the first hour of the presentation that new data, unavailable to the public in September, had changed the tone and tenor of the entire debate.
Remember, the reason for the 12% reduction proposal was a prediction by the ASMFC technical folks that our recreational sector would experience an increase in striped bass mortality in 2025. That forecast of a surge in angler effort and “removals” (dead stripers) was based on the belief that more slot stripers in the 28- to 31-inch from the 2018 year class would lead to an uptick in the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) catch data, thereby reducing the probability of meeting the 2029 rebuild target from 50% to 30%.
Yet when ASMFC members were presented with preliminary 2025 MRIP data collected through June showing how striped bass removals were actually 44% lower this year than during the same timeframe as 2024, it effectively discounted the original short-term projections. Statistically speaking, the newly released MRIP data indicates that we’re still on schedule to rebuild spawning stock biomass by 2029.
Despite this rather shocking data disclosure, Rhode Island and Connecticut stuck to their reduction guns in the final vote. That shouldn’t come as a surprise given these two New England states were lumped into a regional option that would end striper harvest in late November, which arguably would have had very little impact there when compared to the punitive effects in New Jersey and Delaware during what’s become the height of our fall run. As for North Carolina, striped bass have become virtually non-existent there in recent years, and any semblance of a fishery that does materialize comes in January when MRIP surveys aren’t conducted.
The folks who seemed angriest over the status quo decision were those who would like to see an end to recreational striped bass harvest. A lot of the pure “catch and release” anglers I’ve heard from have been pushing this ideological goal even harder since the ASMFC’s emergency action in 2023 made it that much harder for an angler to find a dinner table striper in the narrow 3-inch slot. This latest ASMFC proposal essentially put the “no harvest” contingent, and faith-based management, one step closer to a harvest moratorium. But as you’ll read in the full article, there was simply no scientific justification for a reduction.
Not at this time anyway. However, I do expect this debate to begin again with the next full-scale striped bass stock assessment coming out in in 2 years; the writing, as the Pharaohs would say, is on the wall.
