The first schoolie stripers of the season arrived within the last week — like clockwork, with May — with a handful caught and released back into the Little River by casters including Al Williams, the venerable local dean of striper anglers.
But this year, the fishes' return is surrounded by peals of joy and a larger backpack of worries for the long-term stability of a stock that, within memory of long-in-the-tooth fishermen, has both crashed and bounced back — proving the striped bass to be a dynamic species that can be taken by worm, and metal, plug and clam, but should not be taken for granted.
"The stock's biomass remains very high," Mike Armstrong, the assistant state director of marine fisheries, said in a telephone interview Friday.
Responsible for striper science, Armstrong also said that "recruitment," the count of newborn fish in a year, has been down and declining for five or six years.
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