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Striped Bass

Marone saxatilis

Description

The striped bass, or "striper," one of the most avidly pursued of all coastal sport fish, is native to most of the East Coast, ranging from the lower St. Lawrence River in Canada to Northern Florida, and along portions of the Gulf of Mexico. The striped bass has been prized in Massachusetts since colonial times. In 1670, Plymouth Colony established a free school with income from coastal striped bass fisheries. Thus, one of the first public schools in America was supported by this highly valued resource. The unique angling qualities of this trophy species and its adaptability to fresh water environments have led to a major North American range expansion within the last 100 years. A valuable fishery has been created on the West Coast and inland fisheries have been developed in 31 states by stocking the striped bass into lakes and reservoirs.

Several characteristics distinguished the striper from other fish found in coastal Massachusetts waters. The striped bass has a large mouth, with jaws extending backward to below the eye. It has two prominent spines on the gill covers. The first (most anterior) of its two well-developed and separated dorsal fins possesses a series of sharp, stiffened spines. The anal fin, with its three sharp spines, is about as long as the posterior dorsal fin. The striper's upper body is blueish to dark olive, and its sides and belly are silvery. Seven or eight narrow stripes extending lengthwise from the back of the head to the base of the tail form the most easily recognized characteristic of this species.

Striped bass can live up to 40 years and can reach weights greater than 100 pounds, although individuals larger than 50 pounds are rare. The all-tackle angling record fish, taken in New Jersey in 1972, weighed 78 ½ pounds and measured 72 inches long. The Massachusetts record of 73 pounds has been equaled on three occasions, the most recent of which was at Nauset Beach in 1981. The following table lists average lengths and weights of striped bass at selected ages; the fish were collected in the Chesapeake Bay and Albermarle Sound (North Carolina) regions.

Female striped bass age at maturity

Females reach significantly greater sizes than do males; most stripers over 30 pounds are female. Thus, the term "bulls," originally coined to describe extremely large individuals, has been more accurately changed to "cows" in recent times.

The number of eggs produced by a female striped bass is directly related to the size of its body; a 12-pound female may produce about 850,000 eggs, and a 55-pound female about 4,200,000 eggs. Although males reach sexual maturity at two or three years of age, no females mature before the age of four, and some not until the age of six. The size of the females at sexual maturity has been used as a criterion for establishing minimum legal size limit regulations in recent years.

Habits
Striped bass are rarely found more than several miles from the shoreline. Anglers usually catch stripers in river mouths, in small, shallow bays and estuaries, and along rocky shorelines and sandy beaches. The striped bass is a schooling species, moving about in small groups during the first two years of life, and thereafter feeding and migrating in large schools. Only females exceeding 30 pounds show any tendency to be solitary.

Schools of striped bass less than three years of age (sometimes called "schoolies" by anglers) occasionally travel from upstream into rivers such as the Hudson, Connecticut and Merrimac. Although adult striped bass move into rivers to reproduce, fish less than three years old probably make such journeys to take advantage of a river's abundant food resources.

Striped Bass migration routes from the principal spawning grounds of the Chesapeake Bay, Delaware River, and Hudson River

Striped bass normally do not migrate during the first two years of life. However, adult stripers generally migrate northward in the spring and summer months and return south in the fall. Individuals that hatch in the Hudson River generally do not migrate beyond Cape Cod to the North and Cape May to the south. Fish hatched in the Chesapeake Bay exhibit more extensive Migrations, some being captured as far north as the Bay of Fundy in coastal Canada.

Stripers are strictly spring to fall transients in Massachusetts. Only a few fish inhabiting coastal Massachusetts waters in the summer have been known to overwinter in the mouths of southern New England streams. Some stripers frequenting coastal Massachusetts in the summer will overwinter in the mouth of the Hudson River, while many spend winter along the New Jersey coast in the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays.

Stripers reproduced in rivers and the brackish areas of estuaries. Spawning occurs from the spring to early summer, with the greatest activity occurring when the water warms to about 65 degrees F. The eggs drift in currents until they hatch 1 ½ to 3 days after being fertilized. Because newly hatched larvae are nearly helpless; striped bass suffer their highest rate of natural mortality during the several weeks after hatching.

The major spawning activity for the entire East Coast fishery occurs in the Hudson River, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Roanoke River-Albermarle Sound watershed. Striped bass are most abundant in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states following year when reproduction in the Chesapeake Bay has been particularly successful, suggesting that much of the East Coast is strongly dependent upon the success of spawning in that one watershed.

Striped bass eat a variety of foods, including fish such as alewives, flounder, sea herring, menhaden, mummichogs, sand lance, silver hake, tomcod, smelt, silversides, and eels, as well as lobsters, crabs, soft clams, small mussels, annelids (sea worms), and squid. They feed most actively at dusk to dawn, although some feeding occurs throughout the day. During midsummer they tend to become more nocturnal. Stripers are particularly active with tidal and current flows and in the wash of breaking waves along the shore, where, fish, crabs, and clams become easy prey as they are tossed about in turbulent water.

Management
Striped bass populations have a history of periods of abundance interspersed with periods of scarcity. A major coast-wide reduction in abundance occurred at the end of the 19th century. No catches of stripers were reported north of Boston for 30 years after 1897. Populations had recovered somewhat by 1921, and an unusually successful year of reproduction in 1934 was followed by 6 years of markedly increased abundance. Great numbers of juvenile fish were recorded in Massachusetts waters in the mid-1940s, and high numbers of increasingly larger individuals followed for a period of years. Such information suggests that striped bass populations are dominated for extended periods by fish hatched during occasional years of unusually successful reproduction. Also, a year of successful reproduction is often followed by a series of years when spawning fails or is so limited in success that relatively few new fish enter the population. During the 1970s, the last peak year of reproductive success in the Chesapeake Bay was 1970 (note figure). Levels of reproduction were consistently low in the 1980s except in 1982 when modest numbers of juveniles were produced . Thus, most of the bass harvested in the during the 1970s and 1980s had come from the spawning effort of 1970. The recent extremely prolonged period of reproductive failure had caused a steady decline in striped bass abundance. The decline was reflected in decreasing success by anglers. For example, the estimated catch by anglers from the Gulf of Maine to the mid-Atlantic region fell from 6,600,000 pounds in 1979 to 1,700,000 pounds in 1985.

The decline in abundance of stripers coming from the Chesapeake Bay was felt to be caused by a combination of factors, including the presence of a variety of pollutants in spawning grounds, fishing pressure, and feeding and nutritional problems of larvae.

Maryland Juvenile Index; 1954-2001

A rapidly changing management plan was developed in response to the severely depleted status of the striped bass. Prior to the mid-1970s, management of striped bass was carried out more or less independently by each coastal state. In 1979, Congress amended the Anadromous Fish Act to create the Emergency Striped Bass Study Program. In 1981, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) adopted a coastwide management plan, to be acted upon by each coastal state. This plan recommended minimum size limits for fish caught in nursery rivers and in coastal areas, and restricted fishing on spawning grounds during the spawning season. In response to constantly dwindling numbers of stripers on the East Coast, this plan was amended (Amendment 3) in 1985 to protect females hatched in 1982 until they have spawned at least once. In 1985, several states imposed mortaria or began a progressive increase in minimum size limits scheduled to reach 38 inches in total length by 1990. Amendment 3 of the ASMFC's plan also stipulated that regulations protecting the 1982 year class would remain in place until the 3-year average of the Maryland's juvenile index (a measure of year class strength) exceeded the long-term average of 8.0.

The Maryland juvenile index value exceeded 8.0 in 1989 and initiated a new management regime. In late 1989, Amendment 4 to the ASMFC's plan was adopted. The basic premise of this amendment was that striped bass must be managed first to restore the spawning stock biomass and secondarily to support fishery yield. Under Amendement 4, the states were allowed to relax regulations and prosecute tightly controlled fisheries starting in 1990. Daily bag limits of one or two fish were imposed on the recreational fishery of all states and the commerical fishery was greatly reduced compared to historical levels. In addition, each state was required to monitor recreational catches and participate in fishery-independent monitoring or tagging studies used to estimate mortality.

Atlantic Coast Striped Bass Abundance

During 1992-1994, improvement in the spawning stock and successive high Maryland indices and other favorable indicators of stock status prompted the ASMFC to declared in 1995 that the Atlantic coast striped bass population had recovered as estimated stock abundance had increased from 5 million in 1982 to around 41 million. Amendment 5 was then adopted to address management of recovered stocks. The amendment has allowed slight increases in fishing mortality and has broadened states' options for meeting management goals while retaining the objectives of preventing overfishing and maintaining self-sustaining spawning stocks.

Description Source: Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries