On October 29th, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) meets in Delaware where their Striped Bass Management Board (Board) will vote on a potential month-long-or-so harvest closure for striped bass. The highly debated 12% mortality reduction proposal is aimed at increasing likelihood of meeting a 2029 deadline for rebuilding spawning stock biomass (SSB) to the 247-million-pound mark. For reference, SSB currently stands at approximately 200 million pounds.
I couldn’t make the Delaware meeting, which I’m told was only sparsely attended, but I did attend both the New Jersey and Pennsylvania public hearings. ASMFC’s Emilie Franke gave the official presentation and capably answered public questions, after which the majority of those 90 anglers in attendance in Manahawkin supported status quo (one fishing club and one individual spoke in support of the 12% reduction), same with the 70 attendees in Bristol, PA (one individual openly spoke in favor of the 12% reduction).
I don’t know what the official tally looks like in terms of actual written state-by-state public comments – they’ll be posted at ASMFC.org prior to the October 29th meeting – but there’s clearly ample and overwhelming support in the New Jersey, Delaware Bay region for retaining the one fish at 28- to 31-inch slot limit on striped bass as opposed to a seasonal harvest closure over the 2026 Thanksgiving weekend (as per regulatory examples cited in the ASMFC presentation).
Despite what you may have seen posted in private internet groups by philanthropically funded attorney/activists with axes to grind, I haven’t taken a personal/professional position on the ASMFC’s striper proposal, nor has The Fisherman Magazine, in any official capacity. Instead, we’ve tried presenting a balance of relevant data without bogging things down with ancillary noise from angry extremes. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that what starts as a laundry list of options ultimately leads to a couple of stark selections, which is basically how we’ve arrived where we are today and what I’ve reported along the way.
Striped bass management is highly emotional, and the editorial decisions on what to leave in and what to leave out have put me in the crosshairs. It’s probably why legacy media has shifted their news reporting, left or right, pandering to one market demo’s ideologies while ignoring and infuriating the other. I figure if I’m ticking off both sides when presenting the facts, I must be doing my job. But at this point it all comes down to a choice of the best available data, one which calls for a 12% reduction, the other is the best available data supporting status quo until the next full-scale striped bass stock assessment in 2027.
Science shows a recruitment problem in the Chesapeake where most of our coastal stripers are born. If that science is accurate – and there’s ample reason to believe that it is – expect some lean years ahead with fewer school size to nearly mature (28”) stripers in the fishery. Whether it’s due to warming waters, industrial runoff, blue catfish predation, localized menhaden depletion or something else, it’s clear that there’s a problem. That said, shutting down 34 days of the striped bass fishery does nothing to address it.
The reason for the 12% reduction proposal is simply to ensure a 50% chance of reaching the 247-million-pound SSB target by 2029. No, SSB is not collapsing, quite the opposite if you saw page 6 of the ASMFC addendum showing SSB on an upward rebuilding trajectory. In fact, if the Board voted “status quo” the ASMFC Technical Committee believes the SSB target will still be reached by 2032, just 3 years after the 2029 deadline.
I’ll share more thoughts on the “noise” generated in the fall meetings in our final three digital weeklies of the year, with a full write-up of decision ’25 in our December edition of The Fisherman going to print on November 16th.
