Commercial Trawlers destroy Striped Bass Schools

News of commercial trawlers leaving a slick of dead striped bass bycatch, just off the Outer Banks popped up on fishing sites over the weekend. The reports say that commercial trawlers are scooping up massive schools of fish and culling fish in order to stay under the state's 50 fish daily creel limit. Evidence of the waste surfaced on the web via this youtube video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X51MKCrn9RE .

Tom we were out last weekend and saw what happened. Pretty sick and the laws need to change. They can spend tens of thousands of dollars flying C130s around giving a few tickets out to Rec guys but let crap like this continue...Really sad

It appears that even after the new face of politics that have taken seat in Raleigh, that it is business as usual for the DMF. In their announcement, describing the indecent they played it off as simply a net that overloaded (by 3000 -4000 fish) and that when investigators arrived they only found about 250 dead fish, which were picked up by other fishermen. Seems to me that the DMF has simply taken additional steps to protect these wasteful practices.

Backlash wrote:It appears that even after the new face of politics that have taken seat in Raleigh, that it is business as usual for the DMF. In their announcement, describing the indecent they played it off as simply a net that overloaded (by 3000 -4000 fish) and that when investigators arrived they only found about 250 dead fish, which were picked up by other fishermen. Seems to me that the DMF has simply taken additional steps to protect these wasteful practices.

I can guarantee there was over a thousand fish floating around where we were. they are just trying to cover their tails..Mark