Protect bunker, protect the food web
Menhaden feed striped bass, ospreys and other coastal predators. Food-stress research and missed ecosystem targets make a strong case for precautionary protection.
5 min read
Conservation
5 posts on conservation.
You might not know this fish. Stripers do.
Follow a little marsh fish through the tide, habitat loss and a New Jersey restoration. Mummichogs connect overlooked feeding grounds to striped bass, but their story is local, not a proven coastwide collapse.
6 min read
How old is a 40-inch striper? Length is a loose clock
About a decade, give or take several years. New Jersey's aged 40- to 43-inch fish were most often 10, the average Massachusetts striper reaches 40 inches at about 14, and 40-inch fish turn up at every age from 8 to 18. Past about 47 inches, scales can read a fish nine years young.
5 min read
Seven in ten. That is what a summer release costs in fresh water.
Above 25°C, striped bass released into fresh water died at 70.4 percent. The same fish released into mildly brackish water died at 1.8. The difference is not handling or hook placement — it is salinity, and it is one of the biggest levers any of us has over whether a released fish lives.
3 min read
The 75-degree myth — what the research actually says about stripers and warm water
Every August someone tells you the bass shut off above 75°F. Tagged fish say otherwise — routine occupancy past 77°F, and in Chesapeake Bay an avoidance threshold closer to 81°F. Here is what the primary literature shows, including the warm-water fact that should change how you handle a fish.
5 min read