[delete]

Our Bay of Fundy striped bass, shortnose sturgeon, american eel and of course atlantic salmon are all on the SARA listing. While the salmon are classified as endangered, thus having all fishing salmon fishing closed, what about other species like the striped bass that was up for consideration as endangered (presently threatened) yet nothing was done except the lengthening of the season so that more fish could be retained. The season started July 1st for a reason, to allow resident fish to spawn, but because some yuppy DFO or university biologist did not find any evidence of spawning, the local fish were declared to be American or of Shubenacadie strain that were merely overwintering or visiting. Odd that myself and many others have caught many large spring stripers full of eggs, stripers under 12" (of which I caught 3 2 nights ago) and have noticed suspected spawning activity in historical spawning sites. I had sent in my response to the SARA questions and I know of others who also recommended more stringent conservation of the species due to lack of data, yet they loosened regulation due to the same reasons, lack of data!!!

So, what is the sense of any species being listed on SARA if it is only going to be protected if it declines to similar levels of the Bay of Fundy salmon?

 

[ipop]

well, this opens a big kettle of fish...

bigfish, they didn't change the fishing dates, they just stoped lieing to us about it. the province said july1 but in fact that only had applied for fresh water, not ocean/tidal. they lied. and got caught.
also, they didn't keep it open to get more info, in fact their idea was to shut it all down, using 20 year old info from the miramichi, not even our stripers to justifie it. when this was challenged as nothing more than a reason to get a grant, they tried other methods to get the info, including from people like me. i supplied them with all the data they requested, including scale samples (a procces they told me was fine, yet other info says this can cause disease and possible death to the fish...!).
their concern was that 2 of the 3 main river populations for fundy were basicly gone, the St. John and Annapolis river stripers. the problem for any sort of SARA listing is that Schubinacadie has more stripers now than it's had for almost 200years. so the stripers are far from indangered by recreational fishing on bay of fundy rivers, and by all reports they are coming back on the gulf coast side because of stocking on the st.lawerance.

now all that said, are the stripers in trouble - yes, just like every other fish. last year 4 guys were convicted of pouching stripers in chesapeak bay - 4million pounds of stripers!!!! no population can take that sort of a hit without at least a dip in numbers, which is what they are seeing this year, a drop in small striper numbers.
since raising and stocking stripers is one of the easier and common fish to do this with, we should be stocking them here, and we have known this for years, since the dam was built.

the problem is not egg ladden fish - as you mention, those we have - almost all are from chesapeak but also some "reminant stock" from here and N.S., and of course all the "little " rivers on the fundy that they don't even count. the problem is successful spawning, as far as a poorly run test study could find, it's just not happening. is this true? weeeeeeell, since stripers will spawn where ever they are in spawning season, weither from that area or not, i'm sure some must survive. are these "our" stripers? i don't know if we can tell any more or if we ever could, for the study they called them stripers from "an unknown source" - we would just call them local stripers i think. the former head of fish canada says they spawn in sw grand lake, which would not have been affected by the dam, so i personaly can't say why we don't have a good local population, other than perhaps he was wrong, or conditions in grand lake are too poor, or it's just too low numbers to tell. stripers seem to start traveling from about 11" and up, most commonly 14" and better, so catching that size here doesn't mean local fish. they are also easy to mix up with white/silver perch, they are similar when very small. i'm not saying they weren't striper you caught, just saying they could be from anywhere. i hope they were from here.

would putting stripers on SARA help? certainly not if you want to fish striper here again. ever. so far as anybody can tell, there is no procedure to take a fish off the list. it would be much much better to simply fix the problem by stocking striper in sensible locations to encourage more local numbers. stripers spawn in april and may, maybe going c&r during that time would be an idea... maybe. with a school of between 5-11million stripers running along the coast, we just don't have the numbers of fishermen to put a dent in it by legal fishing. maybe a better idea would be to shut down the shad, herring and sturgeon (!!!!!) commercial fishery in the St.John river. the striper study in N.S. showed this does effect the stripers, even worse, the adult stripers, and i know for a fact they get them here too - no provitions or anybody watching for them to only keep their one fish per day. i have to wonder about a fishery for bait fish that has virtualy no economic impact yet at the same time we are concerned about numbers of fish.(we are talking only a couple thousand dollars total between the 2 provinces! seriously, any striper is worth their entire seasons catch!! and these numbers come from the guy that buys the bait fish. very disturbing.) of course this is also a limited fishery. according to the N.S. study the herring nets weren't to bad, the stripers could be released alive - the shad net killed them more often than not.

 

[gmac]

well, this opens a big kettle of fish...

bigfish, they didn't change the fishing dates, they just stoped lieing to us about it. the province said july1 but in fact that only had applied for fresh water, not ocean/tidal. they lied. and got caught.
also, they didn't keep it open to get more info, in fact their idea was to shut it all down, using 20 year old info from the miramichi, not even our stripers to justifie it. when this was challenged as nothing more than a reason to get a grant, they tried other methods to get the info, including from people like me. i supplied them with all the data they requested, including scale samples (a procces they told me was fine, yet other info says this can cause disease and possible death to the fish...!).
their concern was that 2 of the 3 main river populations for fundy were basicly gone, the St. John and Annapolis river stripers. the problem for any sort of SARA listing is that Schubinacadie has more stripers now than it's had for almost 200years. so the stripers are far from indangered by recreational fishing on bay of fundy rivers, and by all reports they are coming back on the gulf coast side because of stocking on the st.lawerance.

now all that said, are the stripers in trouble - yes, just like every other fish. last year 4 guys were convicted of pouching stripers in chesapeak bay - 4million pounds of stripers!!!! no population can take that sort of a hit without at least a dip in numbers, which is what they are seeing this year, a drop in small striper numbers.
since raising and stocking stripers is one of the easier and common fish to do this with, we should be stocking them here, and we have known this for years, since the dam was built.

the problem is not egg ladden fish - as you mention, those we have - almost all are from chesapeak but also some "reminant stock" from here and N.S., and of course all the "little " rivers on the fundy that they don't even count. the problem is successful spawning, as far as a poorly run test study could find, it's just not happening. is this true? weeeeeeell, since stripers will spawn where ever they are in spawning season, weither from that area or not, i'm sure some must survive. are these "our" stripers? i don't know if we can tell any more or if we ever could, for the study they called them stripers from "an unknown source" - we would just call them local stripers i think. the former head of fish canada says they spawn in sw grand lake, which would not have been affected by the dam, so i personaly can't say why we don't have a good local population, other than perhaps he was wrong, or conditions in grand lake are too poor, or it's just too low numbers to tell. stripers seem to start traveling from about 11" and up, most commonly 14" and better, so catching that size here doesn't mean local fish. they are also easy to mix up with white/silver perch, they are similar when very small. i'm not saying they weren't striper you caught, just saying they could be from anywhere. i hope they were from here.

would putting stripers on SARA help? certainly not if you want to fish striper here again. ever. so far as anybody can tell, there is no procedure to take a fish off the list. it would be much much better to simply fix the problem by stocking striper in sensible locations to encourage more local numbers. stripers spawn in april and may, maybe going c&r during that time would be an idea... maybe. with a school of between 5-11million stripers running along the coast, we just don't have the numbers of fishermen to put a dent in it by legal fishing. maybe a better idea would be to shut down the shad, herring and sturgeon (!!!!!) commercial fishery in the St.John river. the striper study in N.S. showed this does effect the stripers, even worse, the adult stripers, and i know for a fact they get them here too - no provitions or anybody watching for them to only keep their one fish per day. i have to wonder about a fishery for bait fish that has virtualy no economic impact yet at the same time we are concerned about numbers of fish.(we are talking only a couple thousand dollars total between the 2 provinces! seriously, any striper is worth their entire seasons catch!! and these numbers come from the guy that buys the bait fish. very disturbing.) of course this is also a limited fishery. according to the N.S. study the herring nets weren't to bad, the stripers could be released alive - the shad net killed them more often than not.

It's funny,I happened to be filling my tank up yesterday and along came a buddy that has been dropping nets for gasperaux and doing a bit of eel trapping. He tells me he had to haul his nets up early last year because of all the stripers he was catching.There are some spots in the river where he will not drop nets this year because of the stripers.The first wave of stripers were up to 46" in length,they hung around for awhile then moved out into the main part of the river,then in come the schoolers,3-4 lbs. It was frustrating for him since he is only allowed to keep one, the same as us,but at the end of the season his catch of gasperuaux and shad was way down compared to some of the guys fishing farther north.