A new, nasty trend is developing along the oceanfront. This week I saw quite a few people attempting to snag stripers. Some were using weighted snaggers like you'd use to snag pogies. Others has this hideous rig with a sinker at the terminal end and two large trebles connected to dropper loops further up. These guys were tossing their snagging rigs into large schools of fussy stripers that were on the surface. Sadly, I did see some fish caught.
With all the talk about circle hooks and conservation these days, you would think that snagging stripers would be illegal. I saw one conservation minded angler get in the face of one of the snagging fishermen and told him in no uncertain terms to cut this out or he would call the DEM.
But, is this practice legal or illegal? At the least, most of us would agree it is highly unethical. So, I called DEM enforcement. To my surprise, the answer was "we don't know, we'll have to look into it." Wow, not what I expected to hear.
In these days of striper decline and conservation and all kinds of laws directed at preserving the fish we have, you' d think banning the snagging of them would be no brainer. If it's not illegal, it should be!
