I hope this is not the start of something bad. A lot of us have been saying that the striped bass population was not as healthy as some has said. All it takes is a poor young of the year like this and things start to go downhill fast.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Service recently finalized the 2008 striped bass (rockfish) juvenile index, a measure of striped bass spawning success in Chesapeake Bay. The 2008 index is 3.2, below the long-term average of 11.7. During the survey DNR biologists collected 422 young-of-year (YOY) striped bass.

“Healthy striped bass populations are known for such highly variable spawning success,” said Eric Durell, DNR Fisheries Biologist. “This is just the third time in the past decade that striped bass reproduction in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay has been below average.”

Two of the most successful spawning years ever documented (2001 and 2003) also occurred....read more here

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