01-15-2015

Are large-scale fisheries for sandeels, silversides, bay anchovies etc. coming to a coast near you?

Really, if you fish, at all, this is important… for a very basic reason — If there’s no bait, there’s no fishing. If you spend more than a few days on the water every year, you know this to be the case.

Before I get to all this, you may have noticed I haven’t written a blog in a while. And yes, we had a recent win on striped bass (Charlie covers that pretty well here: ASMFC ALMOST GETS IT RIGHT WITH STRIPED BASS). The lull is for reasons too complicated to get into here, but we hope to be back up and running full steam by early 2015.

Getting back on point, here’s the short version on where we’re at with “the bait” or what the pointy-heads call “forage”.

Yes, some bait species are currently managed by the Federal Councils or the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). Most, however, are not. Absolutely, there have been and are issues with the way managed forage species like menhaden, river herring, shad, sea herring, mackerel, squid, butterfish etc, are managed, but they are indeed managed. I want to be very clear here that other forage species such as sand eels, bay anchovies, silversides, halfbeaks etc., are not. And that’s kinda scary.

Full article here