August 19, 2020 — When Virginia fishery managers virtually eliminated the striped bass trophy season one year ago, the came up with a plan that would still allow anglers to catch that “once in a lifetime” fish.
But in the interest of protecting the rockfish spawning stock, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) has announced it’s cutting the proposed Striped Bass Bonus Fish Program.
Finding that striped bass were being overfished, East Coast fisheries managers required Virginia, Maryland and the rest of the Atlantic states to reduce their rockfish removals by 18 percent. To achieve the reduction, VMRC took actions in August 2019 that included dropping the fall recreational fishing limit to one rockfish per angler per day and creating a maximum size limit of 36 inches for the fall.