Go Fishing Forum

New to this forum, so Hi. I've have been surf fishing for stripers for 35 years. While I don't consider myself an expert on the subject of Stripers, I have a love for the fish. Last May I had an odd thing happen. I was in a 'Gansett' bay in a cottage 50 yards from what I knew to be a hot spot to myself and a few others. On my second cast I had a 17 lb 'keeper' on, as I went to remove the hook, I looked the Striper over and noticed the a lot of scales had fallen off and random red spots where the missing scales were. I had not seen not anything like that before. My nephew was with me, so I said nothing and let the fish go, saying 'I wanted his bigger brother'. Ten minutes later 'big brother' was on and my drag was screaming. I beached the fish in the 30 lb range and again saw the same loss of scale (but 90% fewer lost scales) and again redness beneath the lost scales, but this fish was much healthier, so I kept him. Over the winter I did some research on my observations and came up with disturbing information about the health of the Striper population. I used your forum search engine and did not come up with any hits. I suggest any Striper fisherman interested the subject Google the above subject line. I apologize in advance if I missed the any old threads on the subject.
Cheers,
R+R187

Thank you for this post, R&R. After reading this, I did a little searching and came across the following link which helps break down the specifics regarding this disease.

http://web.vims.edu/myco/FAQ.html

Welcome to the forum!

I have caught 10,000 stripers & know of the problem- however I have maybe caught 3 in my life that I threw back because of the red spots.....I release 80 % of my catch anyway as you know

jamie