Striped Bass Management
Striped bass are a fish restoration success story. States along the Atlantic coast all agreed to take the necessary steps to restore this fish population when its population foundered and through cooperation succeeded in their objective by the early 1990s. Since that time, there has been a notable increase in the number of striped bass observed in the Connecticut River every spring with some estimates as high as 1-1.5 million stripers. Striped bass are a coastal species – they don’t need the river to complete their life cycle. They enter the river to feed. Once in the river, they are opportunistic feeders, targeting the most abundant prey species, whether salmon, shad, herring, eels or some other fish. Recent data collected at the Holyoke fishlift indicates passage of 13-3 inch long striped bass, moving some to wonder if these fish are now spawning in the river.
Management Plan
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has a fishery management plan for striped bass. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader software to open this document. If you do not have this software, you may obtain it free of charge by following this link.
To learn more about the habitat that striped bass prefer, take a look at the ASMFC Habitat Fact Sheet.
For more local information on striped bass, check out the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries striped bass profile.
Left: Sampling striped bass in the Connecticut River. Right: Taking measure of a striped bass collected from the Connecticut River.
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