August 18, 2025 — Amid signs that a hoped-for recovery of Atlantic striped bass may be faltering, East Coast fisheries managers are moving to further tighten already restricted catch limits on the popular but beleaguered migratory fish.
At a meeting on Aug. 6 in Arlington, VA, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s striped bass management board voted to proceed with a plan to impose a 12% reduction in 2026 on both recreational and commercial catch of the prized species.
The plan, if adopted later this year, would trim the commercial harvest quota by that amount, while it would require East Coast states to curb the recreational catch by shortening the fishing season or adjusting the size limits for legally catchable fish.
Striped bass are found in the Atlantic from Maine to the Carolinas, but the Chesapeake Bay, where they’re also called rockfish, is the primary spawning and nursery ground for 70% to 90% of the entire stock.
The coastwide striped bass population is currently struggling to recover from years of being overfished, a problem exacerbated by poor reproduction in the Bay — for six straight years in Maryland waters and for the past two years in Virginia. Striped bass spawning tends to vary year to year, but it has never been this low for this long, and scientists aren’t sure why.
The fisheries commission ordered catch restrictions in the Bay and along the coast in 2020 and again in 2024 to halt overfishing and rebuild the stock. But higher-than-expected recreational fishing in 2024, mainly along the Mid-Atlantic coast, cast a shadow over the projected recovery, lowering the odds the stock could reach a healthy level by 2029, as federal law requires.