I know exactly what you mean. There's always a pack of loudmouths out there who aren't smart or educated enough to pull their heads out of each others' a$$es long enough to see what's really going on. (I shouldn't even get started on this topic - I can feel a rant coming on.......here it comes.......AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH) Lots of people saw this coming even when the species was rebounding back in the late 90's. Despite all the self-congratulatory crowing by “fisheries management” types, neither the bass population nor the forage biomass had been restored to historic levels, and going right back to business as usual was a surefire recipe for another collapse. And here we are again. It may or may not be possible to reverse the trend, but the minute you start talking about instituting another striper moratorium, eliminating commercial exploitation, and shutting down the menhaden reduction industry, the whiners come out in droves.
It usually goes something like this:
1) "There ain't really no problem - hell, there’s just as many fish as there ever was. Why, just look at that 81-pounder over in Connecticut. My cousin Bubba gets a couple keepers every time he goes out, sometimes two or three times a day. (wink wink) You guys just don’t know how to fish."
2) "OK, maybe there is a problem, but don’t blame the fishermen - it's bein’ caused by fertilizer runoff, 200-year-old dams, cold winters, warm winters, hurricanes, drought, rain, high salinity levels, low salinity levels, seals, cormorants, piping plovers, daily limits, size limits, tree-huggin’ liberals, rap music, and everybody else but me.”
3) “Awright, awright, there ain’t any bunker left, but if we shut down the fishery, 250 people in Reedville, Virginia are gonna lose their jobs. We gotta think about the economic impact.” (no mention is ever made of the thousands of folks who depend on a healthy fishery for their livelihood, including our host here)
4) “It’s all those damn regulations. If the guvmint would just stay out of peoples’ lives, everything would work out just fine. Hell, when there wasn’t no limits, we used to bring home 100 fish a week apiece, and since they stuck us with all these friggin’ limits, there ain’t no fish around at all. Regulations is what’s killin’ the fishin’.”
5) “The fishin’ around here ain’t worth a $hit any more, so I got myself a trailer down in Florida. See you suckers in the next life.”
Like I said, don’t get me started. One of these days, I’m gonna tell you what I REALLY think.
