USA: Following worrying rockfish population data, Maryland looks to cancel spring trophy season for 2024

After five straight years of troubling data on the population of young rockfish in the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland officials plan to enact emergency regulations canceling this spring's trophy season for recreational anglers. The rules would eliminate the once exciting two weeks each spring when anglers targeted large fish swimming up the bay to spawn. But this period had been delayed from April into May in recent years in an effort to protect the spawning fish, which diminished its allure. "That's the time when Maryland fishermen have access to what is essentially a large, oceanic fish," said Lynn Fegley, director of fishing and boating services at Maryland's Department of Natural Resources. "But given the very low recruitment—baby striped bass numbers—we've had successively over the last few years, we are moving to just give the fish a break." The emergency rules were spurred by a troubling so-called ...