State of the State Fish: What Marylanders Should Know About Striped Bass in 2025
Maryland Department of Natural Resources biologists conduct the annual spring spawning survey. Striped bass are measured, sexed, tagged and released. Maryland DNR photo.
Maryland’s recreational and commercial striped bass fisheries is set for the 2025 season. While there remains uncertainty around future spawning potential for the species given recent population declines documented in juvenile surveys, Maryland is maintaining the recreational seasons, limits, and the commercial quota instituted last year based on the overall 2024 coastwide Atlantic striped bass stock assessment.
The following is what Maryland anglers and visitors should know about the status of this emblematic species in the Chesapeake Bay and beyond.
Fishing Rules Remain the Same in 2025
The current DNR closure map shows where striped bass fishing is off limits during the spawning period.
Anglers who fished for striped bass, also known as rockfish, in 2024 won’t need to break out their Maryland Guide to Fishing and Crabbing to learn the rules. Striped bass regulations are the same going into the 2025 fishing season.
In 2024, Maryland enacted emergency regulations extending two periods already closed to targeting striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay and on the Susquehanna Flats. These rules were made permanent after a period of examining data, receiving public comment, and seeking regulatory approval. The early season closures intend to protect striped bass as they migrate through the Bay and its tributaries to spawn.
For the 2025 season, targeting of striped bass will be prohibited from April 1 to May 15 and July 16 to July 31. Specific tributaries used for spawning will also be closed in March and through the end of May. Closure maps, including a new interactive map, can be viewed on the DNR website. For the Chesapeake Bay recreational fishery, which includes charter boat fishing, the slot size limit is 19 inches to 24 inches, and the bag limit is one fish per person daily. For the ocean recreational fishery, the slot limit remains 28 inches to 31 inches with a coastwide daily bag limit of one fish.
DNR Uses Science to Understand the Status of The Striped Bass Population
For Marylanders who enjoy this fishery, the news coming from the department’s study of striped bass the past few years has been sobering. While there remain enough adult striped bass for spawning and harvesting, weak spawning success is evident in surveys. Biologists in other states have observed similar trends.
Fisheries scientists don’t need to count every young or adult striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay to know how the population is faring. Equipped with robust and well-tested survey methods that have remained consistent for decades to ensure comparability over time, biologists sample striped bass at different life stages throughout the year in the entire Chesapeake Bay.
Juvenile striped bass are collected for the annual Young of the Year Survey. Maryland DNR photo.
Scientists and fishery managers conduct two primary sampling surveys for striped bass in Maryland’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay. The annual Young of the Year survey investigates whether the number of fish that hatched in the estuary that year was above or below average using the juvenile index. This survey samples 96% of the known areas of the Bay in which they spawn.
The 2011 young-of-year juvenile index indicated a very successful spawn. Four years later, more than 50% of the striped bass sampled in commercial pound nets were four-year-old fish, verifying the juvenile index findings.
Additional fish community health surveys collect samples in Bay tributaries not included in the Young of Year survey to ensure that there are no overlooked areas.
The adult spawning stock survey is used to characterize the age, size, sex structure, and other attributes of mature striped bass.
Biologists also gather and examine data about fish caught recreationally and commercially each year. This information serves as a test of whether measures of specific year class strength were correct (they typically are) and estimates how many fish are removed from the population each year through fishing.
Each input into this matrix of fishery data allows scientists to corroborate trends they identify in any given survey. Armed with this double and triple-checked information, fisheries managers make recommendations for the long-term sustainability of striped bass.
Environmental Factors Affect the Striped Bass Population, Especially Spawning Success
Temperature, dissolved oxygen, water flow, and available food are some of the factors that can determine life or death for fish. These environmental conditions can heavily impact striped bass, especially in the fragile early stages of life.
Warm conditions in winter and low water flow continue to negatively impact the reproductive success of striped bass. Striped bass spawning is triggered by water temperature as spring arrives. For larval striped bass to survive the first several weeks after hatching, temperatures must remain tolerable, and the zooplankton they eat must be readily available.
According to the mismatch hypothesis, the misalignment of plankton blooms with the first meal of larval striped bass could be causing a decline in juvenile numbers. Graphic by Shannon Moorhead, Maryland DNR.
The “goldilocks” challenge for hatched striped bass to find conditions that are just right to survive is well documented. In the past few years, DNR scientists published two studies in academic journals examining historic egg survival and changes in spawning season timing and duration.
Since fisheries managers cannot control weather or water conditions, they focus on protecting breeding-age striped bass to maximize spawning success during favorable conditions.
The Chesapeake Bay is a Striped Bass Super Nursery
Striped bass are anadromous fish and have a complicated life history. After hatching in the freshwater regions of the Bay’s tributaries, young striped bass take up residency in the Bay for 5 to 7 years before they reach maturity and move out to the Atlantic Ocean, where they become part of the adult migratory portion of the population. Striped Bass have a natal homing instinct that leads them back to the site of their hatching when they are sexually mature and return to the Bay to spawn through the end of May.
Each year, 70% to 90% of mature Atlantic striped bass migrate to the Chesapeake Bay tributaries to spawn, which makes it America’s largest striped bass nursery and a driver of the coastal striped bass population.
Other anadromous fish, such as white perch and yellow perch, also spawn in the Chesapeake and have seen similar trends in spawning success in the Young of Year survey, further pointing to environmental factors in the region as a prevailing challenge for population growth.
Striped Bass Are Managed Collectively
Maryland is a member of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which brings states up and down the East Coast together to sustainably and cooperatively manage Atlantic Coastal fisheries, including striped bass.
The commission makes rules for striped bass in the ocean and the Chesapeake Bay. Like other states from North Carolina to Maine, Maryland has three representatives and one vote on the Atlantic striped bass management board, which initiates these decisions. Under the Interstate Fishery Management Plan, the board is obligated to implement management to rebuild the striped bass stock by 2029.
In December 2024, the board responded to the results of the 2024 Stock Assessment Update, which indicates the resource remains overfished but is not experiencing overfishing, by voting to develop a full suite of management options based on up-to-date fishing data and public input. Final action by the commission will be voted on no later than October 2025, with implementation in early 2026.
The 1980s Are Not Calling
Many Maryland anglers remember the striped bass population collapse of the 1970s and 1980s, leading to a moratorium on striped bass fishing until 1990.
Concern about low recruitment over the last several years can lead to comparisons to this dire period in the history of striped bass fishing, but the reality is not that stark.
The female spawning stock biomass for coastwide populations of Atlantic striped bass was 191 million pounds in 2023, which is below coastal management goals but more than three times higher than the biomass recorded in the mid-1980s and at a similar level to 1993 and 2015, years when very large year-classes were produced.
There Are Ways to Get Involved in Regulation
Recreational anglers, charter boat captains, and commercial watermen have important roles to play in striped bass management. The public can contribute to the department’s measurement and management of striped bass by providing data on fishing trips and catches to the striped bass angler survey. All interested parties can also submit public comments when changes to fishing regulations are being considered.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission also accepts public comments before and during meetings of the striped bass management board. These meetings are broadcast online via webinar.
The Maryland DNR striped bass homepage is a hub for the most recent information and news about striped bass science and management.