Another stellar Cape Cod day

Still no signs of Fat Albert but we lit up the stripers again today.

On the Watah's Stripah Cup

On the Water's Striper Cup is a New England based 5-month, season-long tournament designed to bring the entire Northeast fishing community together to celebrate the most beloved sport fish in the region, the striped bass.

The coveted cup will be awarded at the post tournament Striper Fest party which drew nearly 4,000 people last year.

LINK

Passage would allow unlimited, indiscriminate harvest of striped bass

Updated below

California Assemblywoman Jean Fuller (R-Bakersfield) has introduced legislation, AB 1253, to remove gamefish status for striped bass. The bill will be heard in the Water, Parks & Recreation Committee of the California State Assembly in Meeting Room 437, on Tuesday, April 28, at 9 a.m.

The bill is opposed by an unprecedented coalition of recreational fishing, commercial fishing and environmental restoration groups and businesses.

(Via: YubaNet)  LINK

Voice your opposition to this legislation here.

Update on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 11:22PM by El Guapo

Dan Bacher reports that massive opposition to AB 1253, a bill attacking Bay-Delta fish populations, resulted in the gutting of the bill in the State Assembly yesterday. LINK

Fishing for Solace

You owe it to yourself to read this excerpt from David Kinney's The Big One.

Wendy Jenkinson always let her husband, Patrick, join the Vineyard's big fishing derby. But then she got sick. Could it ever be the same for him? LINK (Via:The Boston Globe)

For those of you not familiar with Kinney's book, it is a behind the scenes look at the annual Martha's Vineyard Stiriper and Bluefish Derby. The book's cover shot is Patagonia Fly Fishing Ambassador Dave Skok's. who is a two time winner and the only fly fisheman in the sixty year history to win the grand prize.

Grown men have cried over the derby. They have ignored their wives for week after week, sleepwalked through work day after day, stayed up all night long, skipped out on their jobs altogether, drawn unemployment, burned through every last day of their vacation time, downed NoDoz and Red Bull and God knows what else. They have spied on their rivals and lied to their friends. They have told off strangers and cheated like lowlife bums. If you believe the conspiracy theorists, they have prosecuted bogus charges of rules breaking to get their adversaries tossed from the competition. People have died fishing the thing.

Martha’s Vineyard is renowned for its exclusive shoreline and celebrity inhabitants, but each September, after the tourists clear out, thousands of fishermen take back the beaches to compete in the island’s annual striped bass and bluefish derby, a madcap contest that pits plumbers against investment bankers, schoolkids against senior citizens, and natives against newcomers in a round-the-clock hunt for a great fish.

Island immortality is at stake, and history has proven that anyone can win it: teenage girls, dozing fishermen, complete amateurs.

LINK

Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios has picked up the film rights to The Big One, and is working with producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (the duo behind Transformers) to bring it to the screen.

LINK