A real good striper read.......

[winxp_man]

A real good read about stripers from around the 50’s/60’s......

[JasonB]

Thanks for sharing that Aron, I just learned a ton! I’ve been thinking about stripers quite a bit lately, kind of eager to get after them again.

[Tony Buzolich]

Aron,

This IS really good reading if you care at all about stripers as I do. Aside from the technical aspects of growing and feeding and food sources, several things really jumped out to me. This was written some time ago when the Dept. of F&G really seemed to care about these fish. They looked to be searching for better ways of improving striper populations for the general public and for a sporting purposes. There was reference to the stopping of commercial harvesting all the way back to 1935. There was also attempts at artificial farming of stripers in the delta to further improve populations of this sporting fish.

It also talked about the mortality factors of stripers being the SAME as for salmon which they had already studied. There was no mention of stripers being a cause for the salmon decline. They simply did what all predators do, big fish eat little fish.

The two biggest causes of striper decline was from commercial netting (which has now stopped) and by an even bigger problem of gigantic proportions that being WATER DIVERSIONS.

First, netting was allowed in San Francisco bay for salmon and shad. But, any stripers caught in the nets had to be released either DEAD or ALIVE. This amounted to an estimated 500,000 pounds per year until 1957 when netting inside the bay stopped.

But, by far the biggest culprit to both stripers and salmon is WATER Diversion (pages 82-83). The article referenced the Contra Costa Steam Plant of PG&E located in Antioch as using 868 cubic feet per SECOND for cooling purposes and conceivably could account for 10% of the entire striper population being decimated per year, and the same would hold true for the salmon that got sucked into the plant.

Even worse was the WATER Diversions of the TRACY Pumping Plant sending water south from Old River in the delta to the Delta-Mendota Canal for irrigation purposes in the San Joaquin Valley.

These findings are NOT new. They go back to the mid fifties. And now today with all the talk about canals and pipe lines and more water diversions, what's going to happen to the rest of our fish population, stripers AND salmon ?
Tony

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

About 30 years ago I had a customer who worked for the Federal Fish & Wildlife and was involved in a big study about the huge decline of the West Coast Stripped Bass population in the 1980s.

After a big study they printed their results in a book that looked about as big as the phone book.

He had some extra copies and gave me one.

We talked about the results and he said there were dozens of things that they figure attributed to this.

I have looked for that book but have not found it yet. Might have loaned it out.


In the 1970s they had a huge population of Stripers in and around the Coos Bay and the Umpqua River in southern Oregon.

The fly fishing record was around 68 pounds.

https://myodfw.com/fishing/species/striped-bass

Then the Striper population on the entire west coast crashed.

The drought of the late 1970s did in many West Coast fisheries.
.

[Ned Morris]

Smith River (OREGON) had fantastic Striper Fishing in the mid 90's. Would launch my old drift boat 2 hours before high tide at night in April. Some of the fish were HUGE!!! Saw one caught and kept that was 50+ lbs.
It's stomach was full of Sea Run Cutts and Smolts. I kept one that was 15 lbs and it was full of worms. Never kept another one after that. Those Stripers owned the lower river. Never fished the main Umpqua though. Heard they were ever bigger there. God I miss college!

About 30 years ago I had a customer who worked for the Federal Fish & Wildlife and was involved in a big study about the huge decline of the West Coast Stripped Bass population in the 1980s.

After a big study they printed their results in a book that looked about as big as the phone book.

He had some extra copies and gave me one.

We talked about the results and he said there were dozens of things that they figure attributed to this.

I have looked for that book but have not found it yet. Might have loaned it out.


In the 1970s they had a huge population of Stripers in and around the Coos Bay and the Umpqua River in southern Oregon.

The fly fishing record was around 68 pounds.

https://myodfw.com/fishing/species/striped-bass

Then the Striper population on the entire west coast crashed.

The drought of the late 1970s did in many West Coast fisheries.
.