The wily striped bass – admired by New England fishermen for centuries – nearly disappeared from East Coast waters in the early 1980s. A series of fishing moratoriums restored the stocks, and today a Cape Cod scene is not complete without surfcasters trying their hand against the powerful fish.
But the number of young stripers in Chesapeake Bay, where many of New England’s fish come from, is mysteriously beginning to slip again, a warning sign that the population could be in trouble.
As scientists try to figure out why, a group of recreational fishermen is lobbying the Massachusetts Legislature to ban commercial fishing of stripers, exposing long-simmering animosities between some bass fishermen who cast for fun and those who do it for a living. Each group blames the other for the declining numbers – though research does not seem to implicate overfishing.