Stripers Forever has long contended that the legal market in states that still allow commercial striped bass fishing facilitates the illegal or black market. The ASMFC management plan attributes zero harvest to this illegal fishery. This is clearly a glaring and perhaps deliberate fault in the striped bass management plan, and one that that makes the recreational catch appear to be a larger component of the current fishing mortality than it is.
The attached document reports on a small case, but it is one of many of all sizes that show up annually up and down the striper coast. Ending all commercial fishing for striped bass would go a long way to also ending this ilegal fishery.
