“Striper Fishing is Incredible!” Says Menhaden Advocates…

Header Photo Credit: Sean Cobelli Media

Spend enough time on social media during the 2026 striped bass migration and you’ll inevitably consume a dominant narrative: the striped bass fishing is better than it’s ever been! Massive trophy fish are being landed from New Jersey to Maine. Anglers are touting their once-in-a-lifetime trophy bass – and rightfully they should. Big fish are a big part of why we enjoy going fishing, especially with a majority-release fishery like stripers. We spend countless days and endless resources pursuing those few and far between fish that never leave our memory. Photos of those specimens adorn our mantle pieces, inspire release mounts and prompt a profile photo change. How could they not?

This blog is no way intends to tell people they are not having those experiences. Furthermore, it does not aim to discourage or talk down upon everyone enjoying and promoting those experiences. Recreational anglers: follow best angling practices, keep catching big fish and take good care of them on the release. Enjoy every moment. Striper guides: we hold you to a higher stand but encourage the same. Show your anglers how to take good care of released fish. Get photos with good angles. Recruit customers to come set a new PB. Share the experience of striped bass with new voices and encourage them to advocate for their conservation.

That being said, it’s time for a difficult conversation about striped bass fishing. More specifically, we need to talk about the weaponization of these big fish moments by other advocacy groups. The fish are photogenic and their pursuit is an appealing story, but it’s also an incomplete one.

The health of a fishery cannot be measured by a handful of memorable catches or a few weeks of exceptional fishing. Fisheries are built on age structure, recruitment, spawning success, and management decisions that often take years to reveal their consequences. A fishery like Atlantic striped bass relies on abundance and opportunity throughout the entire length of the coastwide migration spanning from the tributaries of Chesapeake Bay to northern Maine. Looking only at the largest fish while ignoring what “lies beneath the surface” risks mistaking the final chapters of a successful generation for the beginning of a healthy future. These big fish experiences very much align with the current age and stock structure of the ocean fishery. The last few productive spawns we’ve had are grown up now. They miraculously survived the gauntlet of slot sizes and still to this day dodge commercial harvest at their old and wise age. As currently constructed, the coastwide stock has very few small fish. Many of our followers may recall that this has been a big point of contention for our Association for years. Striped bass have had seven (7) consecutive poor spawns. This spawning failure can be due to a variety of factors, but those factors don’t matter within the bounds of this conversation. The fact of the matter is we have no new fish and that’s really bad news for the future. Fisheries are like a conveyor belt and if we never pile on any new fish at the front, eventually the belt will run its course, and soon it will be empty.

These distinctions formed the foundation of a recent conversation hosted on “The Guide Post Podcast“, where ASGA brought together striped bass guide Ray Jarvis, fly designer and guide Blane Chocklett, Hogy Lures Founder Mike Hogan, surfcaster Jake Hardy, and ASGA President Tony Friedrich. Collectively, the panel represents well over a century of experience chasing striped bass along their entire migratory range. While each contributor has developed a unique understanding of the fishery in their home waters, every one of them arrived at the same conclusion: today’s striped bass fishing should not be mistaken for a healthy striped bass population. You can tune into Episode 213 on all major podcast platforms.

One of the most important observations of the discussion came from surfcaster Jake Hardy, who succinctly summarized the issue by saying, “There is a big difference between the quality of the fishing and the quality of the fishery.” While these two ideas are often treated as interchangeable, they are not. A healthy fishery produces consistent recruitment, diverse year classes, and enough fish across all sizes to sustain the population amidst recreational and commercial angling pressures. Exceptional fishing, on the other hand, can occur when large numbers of mature fish become concentrated in predictable areas during migration. Those events make for unforgettable days on the water and spectacular photographs, but they reveal very little about the long-term outlook of the coastwise fishery at scale.

For anglers who have spent decades on the water chasing striped bass, that change has been impossible to ignore.

“If you think this is an incredible fishery, obviously you weren’t around in the early 2000s.”

This observation was echoed repeatedly throughout the podcast. Veteran anglers remember a fishery where catching schoolie striped bass wasn’t an occasional occurrence, but rather the foundation of the entire experience. Hundreds of undersized fish could be caught over the course of a season. Anglers learned migration timing, tides, structure, and feeding behavior by interacting with abundant young fish before eventually graduating to larger bass. The next generation of anglers were hooked by the accessibility of the fishery: grab a rod, a popper or some cut bait and head to the location jetty. You were going to pull on a schoolie. Today’s fishery looks dramatically different. Rather than relying on consistent action, many anglers now describe long periods of searching punctuated by brief encounters with schools composed almost entirely of mature fish. Those moments can be extraordinary, but they should not be confused with evidence that the population is thriving. So when campaigns spread through the interwebs promoting that “striped bass is back to being incredible because of the presence of menhaden!”, it’s time for the record to scratch.

One of the most common narratives circulating today suggests that striped bass declines can solely be explained by the availability—or lack thereof—of Atlantic menhaden. There is no question that menhaden are one of the most important forage species in the Atlantic ecosystem. ASGA has consistently advocated for management that recognizes their importance, demands accountability for the massive industrial fleets and significant reductions to rebuild the fishery utilizing best available data. You can find recent campaigns for such actions in the Gulf and the Atlantic by clicking here.

We’re well aware many menhaden advocates will begin writing off this blog from the last paragraph onward. We repeatedly affirm our continued commitment to menhaden advocacy, yet we hold the line that while stripers and bunkers are ecologically connected, their advocacy demands nuance and mutually exclusive campaigns. Striped bass biology is not so simple as “more menhaden = more stripers.” Any advocacy group trying to tell you that their menhaden campaigns are the reason you’re catching giant striped bass this year is preying on anglers inability to understand difficult topics and a major disservice to striped bass advocates.

Throughout the Guide Post Podcast discussion, anglers from every region described striped bass feeding on squid, sand eels, river herring, hickory shad, mackerel, crabs, glass minnows, eels, and countless other forage species depending on season, geography, and water conditions. As Capt. Ray Jarvis bluntly stated, “Striped bass eat everything.” He continued by cautioning against simplistic explanations, “I think it makes people believe there’s a simple solution to this problem… but it’s not that simple.”

Reducing striped bass conservation to a single cause may create an easier message, but it does little to address the complexity of rebuilding one of the Atlantic coast’s most iconic fisheries. Furthermore, it gives a bigger hall pass to contributing parties looking for any way out of angler accountability. We’ve heard it all. It’s the menhaden… climate change… seals and sharks… Bigfoot and UFOs… But it’s never that ” as a collective angling body we are killing more fish than are being born.” Why? Because being accountable sucks.

Perhaps the most dangerous consequence of the current conversation is not misinformation itself. It is the gradual lowering of expectations.Every generation inherits a different version of the striped bass fishery. Younger anglers entering the sport today may never experience what many veterans still remember: acres of feeding fish, schools of diving gannets stretching to the horizon, productive waters in every major state along the migration, and enough schoolies that learning the fishery happened naturally through repetition. Those experiences are not embellished memories. They are reminders of what abundance once looked like.

Here’s a topic many striper-distracting menhaden advocates would prefer you ignore:

Stripers are one of the brightest success stories for saltwater fisheries rebuilding. The coastwide stock collapse became undeniable in the early 80s. Managers responded with profound action that led to a harvest moratorium in the mid 80s, aiming to protect the strong 1982 year class. Stripers rebounded in a big way. The story is quite rudimentary. We stopped killing them. They stayed in the water. Eventually they produced solid spawns. Even more fish in the water. Boom. Striped bass were back. And while some may not want to hear it, this entire historic rebuild happened while the age-1+ biomass of Atlantic Menhaden were at some of their lowest levels in recorded history. What’s even more compelling is that for this same age-1+ runs, the biomass estimates of menhaden actually boomed back after striped bass rebuilt! Don’t believe us? Reference the 2025 Atlantic Menhaden Stock Assessment Update. We’ll share the chart from Page 22 below.

Well, that doesn’t paint the same picture you’re being sold on social media, does it?

Striper conservation has never been about denying that memorable fishing still exists or keeping any one sector, state or angling group away from the resource. For years, our Association focused on recreational advocacy and “cleaning up our own house”. The recreational community has continued to do so by taking harvest reductions and improving angling practices year after year. Quite frankly, the biggest sacrifice has been enduring a declining fishery in the face of poor or completely absent management actions. Each year we did so, we received disparaging claims, some as bold as labeling ASGA “eco-terrorists who want to take away fishing!” The moment we started calling for significant commercial reform, we were deemed anti-commercial: “you don’t respect the working man who feeds our communities!”. And now as we put our foot down for the state of striped bass being blown out of proportion to feed menhaden agendas, we welcome claims that we’re anti-menhaden activism. We accept this treatment as a side effect for fostering difficult conversations that need to occur. Fun fact: any time we post about menhaden on social media, we usually receive messages or comments claiming we’re paid off by OMEGA Protein. Sometimes during the same weeks we submit formal letters and bolster campaigns to call for massive reductions to the industrial fleet harvest on both coasts. All we can do is laugh. And each year while we continue to advocate on behalf of the resource for its long-term sustainability, other parties solely focus on preserving their own needs. The fish have yet to spawn productively in this same window and the state of striped bass gets more bleak.

Striped bass deserve better narratives around their conservation. They deserve management informed by science, led by decision makers with courage, foresight and selfless intent. The world is not so utopian, and that’s okay. We will continue to advocate as such.

We welcome you to join us in longer form dialogue. Listen to the full conversation on Episode 212 of The Guide Post podcast to hear these perspectives in their entirety and join the ongoing conversation about the future of striped bass conservation. Send us a message via email, Instagram or Facebook. Ask questions. Challenge us on topics that may not make sense, or that you don’t agree with. But please, please we beg of you: don’t hijack striped bass conservation for other agendas. The thousands of striper advocates who spend countless hours of their free time trying to understand a complex situation and responsibility participate in this process deserve better.