Striped bass...

[Marty Gingras]

Hi all,

Thanks for the invitation to post here.

The service I can provide you is information about the 'who, what, where, when, and how' about striped bass (etc), not the 'why' about policy or legal matters.

I've been posting on fishing forums since 2005 and have learned that it is usually not helpful for me to post my opinion, so I don't.

I've also learned that --- whether due to the communication format or intent of the poster --- a lot of seemingly rhetorical questions get asked. Rhetorical questions are great of course, but it's gets messy when I try to deal with those. Thus, I'm going to avoid answering rhetorical questions and I may ask if a question is rhetorical.

Let me start with a 'what' sort of answer to a common 'why' question: If we had lost the litigation brought by the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, we would likely be in a situation where a federal judge would either order us to stop enforcing certain State fishing regulations or we would have had to treat enforcement of State regulations as a 'project' under the federal ESA.

Take care

Marty Gingras
BDR-IEP Program Manager
California Department of Fish and Game
Bay Delta Region
4001 North Wilson Way
Stockton, California 95205

Phone (209) 948-3702
Phone (831) 372-2581
FAX (209) 946-6355
email mgingras@dfg.ca.gov

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Welcome to our forum Marty.

It will be nice to hear some of your feed back.

[Tony Buzolich]

Marty,
Glad to see you on board as well and hopefully we'll stay away from politics and religion.

Here's your first question that seems to come up regularly. Is there an easy way to accurately identify the sex of a striped bass without gutting it?

Most of us know that females tend to be larger when mature but what about immature females? And conversely, I've taken larger stripers (15lbs.) that I would have sworn were females that were spilling milt (obviously male).

Again, welcome to the board,
TONY

[Darian]

Welcome Marty,.... I'm wondering what the basis for choosing the numbers for bag/possession limits was (e.g. 6 per day/12 in possession and 20 per day/40 in possession) Why not 4 or even 10 per day, etc.

[Tony Buzolich]

Darian, you're starting right out with a "why".

.

[Mrs.Finsallaround]

Actually - it looks like Darian's asking "What was the basis for choosing the numbers for bag/possession limits was (e.g. 6 per day/12 in possession and 20 per day/40 in possession)" even though he followed it up with 'Why' question of sorts...

I'd be interested in hearing more about what that basis was as well...

[Mike McKenzie]

I guess my e-mail got to the right folks and the glitch got fixed, .....Welcome to the Board and have fun!
Mike

[Darian]

In clarification, I asked the why question as it is the follow-up that clarifies the original and doesn't appear to require and answer dealing with legal or policy issues. But, I'll leave it to Marty to decide that one....

[Marty Gingras]

Is there an easy way to accurately identify the sex of a striped bass without gutting it?

Unfortunately no. Except (of course) for spawners during spawning season.

When we tag striped bass for the population study, it's during April and May and we sex them by seeing if they release milt. Those that don't release milt are called females even though they could be spent males. In recent years we sacrificed some fish and found that our method of assigning sex to the sample was 100% correct. Plenty of the big fish we see are males...

I'm wondering what the basis for choosing the numbers for bag/possession limits was (e.g. 6 per day/12 in possession and 20 per day/40 in possession) Why not 4 or even 10 per day, etc.

That's a 'why' question, but I'll offer this: The selection of bag limits and size limits was not the result of a quantitative analysis. The proposed size limit is in large part about the size at which striped bass become heavily piscivorous and the relatively great abundance of striped bass that size. The proposed bag (and possession) limits are in large part about enforcement, where higher limits are more likely than smaller limits to result in illegal commercialization --- and illegal commercialization is bad.

[Marty Gingras]

Hi all,

Our Staff Report should be released next week some time. It's the narrative rationale for our proposal.

For those inclined to do some reading, here is a link to the documents cited:

ftp://ftp.delta.dfg.ca.gov/Adult_Stu...ature%20Cited/

I would post the entire Literature Cited and Other Pertinent Literature sections of the Staff Report, but the post would be too long. I'll make a document of those sections and update this post with a link...

Thanks

Marty Gingras
BDR-IEP Program Manager
California Department of Fish and Game
Bay Delta Region
4001 North Wilson Way
Stockton, California 95205

Phone (209) 948-3702
Phone (831) 372-2581
FAX (209) 946-6355
email mgingras@dfg.ca.gov