This is a good conversation - one that will likely spur various opinions - and that's fine - discussion is good and we hopefully all learn. We also have new folks coming into the fishery every year that may not have been exposed to this topic - so we need to keep bringing it up. A number of us preach strongly Catch & Release of our larger fish. Perhaps so much so that the point you raise gets lost a bit or it gets muddled and confusing - and that is the fact that warm-water greatly increases the mortality of striped on release.
This is a glass house topic and I'm not going to be one to throw stones here - and ultimately you have to do what you determine if appropriate and ethical - but do so from a position of awareness of as many of the facts as possible
- mortality rates increase in water water temps (mid to upper 70's). The higher the water temp the higher the likelihood of mortality
- The longer the fight, the more lactic acid build-up and the more likely the fish will not be able to recover
- the bigger the fish the more problematic this is
- fish caught in deeper water - 40-50' or deeper - are very likely to suffer barotrama from the rapid ascent & associated pressure change - resulting in their not being able to get back down to cooler water. "Venting" a striper is NOT recommended and can do more harm than good
Catching 30 fish and throwing them all back likely means a large number of those did not make it. Again - glass house - I've been on that side of the discussion one time before.... each situation is a little different - one summer some years back we got on a pile of fish and three of us caught a bunch in a crazy flurry - hard to stop when its crazy action like that, no one will doubt - those pretty much all under 20" and in less than 15' of water and I still feel those fish likely mostly made it though I honestly don't know for sure - but it is something I would not do again.
We'll argue that "well, those studies are flawed" (which they do have some holes in them); we'll say "SML is different as we have cool water that is plenty cool and well oxygenated no more than 20' down" - that is somewhat true as well. However, we also don't have hard data and facts that say the mortality on SML is materially different. I've come to the feeling that the summer months are doing some serious damage on our #'s population - we ask where the big schools went... well, I feel part of that may be due to a change in forage and a lot of that forage being deeper, but there is no way that summer fishing isn't having a material impact on the numbers as well.
No one is saying not to fish in the summer for striper (well, at least I'm not) - it can be a great time to do so with friends, family & kids - however be aware of what you are doing - and what you may be doing that is "unseen". So what can you do?
- put the striper rods away till late Sept or so... or use them to target cats, switch to chase white perch, etc
- put the live bait away and focus on jigging - for a lot of us this means less fish in the boat
- catch your limit of striper and quit. Load the boat up with friends and family if you want not be in a position to spend the time and late/early hours catching bait and then be done in 15 minutes before the sun even gets above the horizon
- If do you release some, give consideration that likely at least 50% or more of those released will not survive 24-48 hours - consider that in your "indirect" daily limit.
- use the heaviest tackle possible to get the fish out of the water and back if you are going to release it. Keep it in the water as much as possible
- if you're trolling u-rigs or other, just plan to put those fish in the cooler - the fight of that fish mostly in the top 15' or so of the warm surface water will do them in - every notice how some of them are already bleaching out color before you even land them?
- if you're jigging, and targeting fish >40' - plan for those to go in the cooler
- if live-bait fishing, don't specifically target big fish - leave the mongos for the Fall - not that you might not get a big fish on a 4" ale, but you're going to somewhat reduce the # of larger fish by not presenting larger baits
Again - I'm not going to sit here and throw stones as I'm not perfect here either - but I definitely follow a lot different practices in the summer now than I did the first few years I fished - that does not mean I don't fish - still fished a lot last summer, but I did so with numerous friends or kids on the boat each time and anything over 20" came home and we were done when we had a limit.
I'll give Gator mad props that he has, on more than one occasion, loaded up the boat and drug it to SML, had the boat in the water less than 30 min and has his limit and putting the boat back on the trailer for the day. That is putting your money where your mouth is.
