You have until December 31 to catch, no more than two at a time, the top recreational sport fish in the Chesapeake Bay, the striped bass. This popular fish is more often called rockfish in Tidewater Virginia, and will be in this story. Once heavily overfished, rockfish are now at sustainable population levels thanks in part to implementation of a fishing moratorium (in Virginia from 1989-90) and science-based management controls since.

The rockfish has been a prized catch in this area of the bay since colonial days. In 1607, Captain John Smith found the Chesapeake Bay waters clean and clear, free of the phytoplankton clouds that followed in later years. He wrote in 1614 that fish seemed so plentiful that one might walk "dryshod" across their backs over the river. It is recorded that in 1634 the "New England Project" captured thousands of rockfish using seine nets. They were salted and used for winter meals and as fertilizer for agriculture purposes. But in 1649 the colony of Massac...