ANNAPOLIS — Maryland’s young striped bass had their best year since 2018, and it still was not close to good enough.
The state’s 2026 juvenile striped bass index came in at 5.5 young-of-year fish per sample, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources reported Oct. 19. That is up from 4.0 in 2025 and 2.0 in 2024, but well below the long-term average of 10.8. It marks the eighth consecutive year of below-average spawning success in Maryland waters.
The number matters well beyond the bay. Maryland’s tributaries are where roughly 80% of the Atlantic coast’s striped bass spawn, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, so the survey is an early forecast of how many adult rockfish anglers from Southern Maryland to New England can expect in coming years. For Southern Maryland, where rockfish anchor the fall charter and tackle business, weak year classes have already brought tighter limits and a new August closure.
How the survey works
DNR has run the survey in Maryland’s part of the Chesapeake Bay since 1954, making it one of the longest continuous fish surveys in the country. Crews sample 22 sites in four major spawning areas: the Choptank, Nanticoke and Potomac rivers and the upper bay. Each site is visited three times each summer, with two sweeps of a 100-foot beach seine per visit. The index is the average number of juvenile striped bass, 3 inches or smaller, across those 132 sweeps.
This year’s crews counted 723 juvenile striped bass. The upper bay and the Choptank River produced the best results, DNR said, and the young fish were more widely spread than in recent years, a sign that suitable nursery habitat exists across the bay.
DNR said spawning success depends on river flow, water temperature and food. A long regional drought and low river flows may have hurt eggs and larvae this year, and a shortened spawning season may also have played a role.
Michael Luisi, director of DNR’s Fishing and Boating Services, called the improvement encouraging but short of where the state wants to be. He said continued low recruitment will slow the coastwide population’s recovery and that the juvenile data will feed into a new coastwide stock assessment.
Virginia’s numbers look better
Virginia’s survey, run by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, told a different story. The Virginia index was 9.52, up from 5.12 last year and above that state’s historical average of 7.77, after three straight below-average years. VIMS called the 2026 class average.
The two surveys use different methods and baselines, so the numbers are not directly comparable.
Advocates push for coastwide limits
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation said the results show too few young fish are surviving to adulthood, pointing to warmer water from climate change, habitat loss, food availability and invasive predators such as blue catfish.
“Eight consecutive years of poor survey results paints a bleak picture,” Allison Colden, the foundation’s Maryland executive director, said in a statement. She said the group is encouraged by DNR’s recent seasonal changes, but that striped bass need a coastwide commitment from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages the species from Maine to North Carolina.
Chris Moore, the foundation’s Virginia executive director, said many striped bass caught in Virginia start life in Maryland. “An average year here doesn’t mean it’s time to become complacent,” he said, calling for coastwide action from the commission.
The foundation faulted the commission for rejecting a proposal for tighter regulations last year, after the commission’s own technical staff concluded in a 2024 assessment update that striped bass are overfished and unlikely to rebuild to target levels by 2029 without more action. The commission instead formed a striped bass working group to identify topics for future management.
What has already changed
Maryland has already cut back. Earlier this year the state adopted a new Chesapeake Bay season that closes striped bass fishing for all of August, when water is warmest and released fish are most likely to die. Harvest is open Sept. 1 through Dec. 5 with a one-fish limit between 19 and 24 inches, followed by catch-and-release only through year’s end. Virginia allows anglers to target striped bass only from fall through spring.
More decisions are coming. The commission’s striped bass board is scheduled to meet at the commission’s annual meeting Nov. 11, though the foundation said the board will not take up new regulations then. A benchmark coastwide stock assessment is underway and is expected to go to peer review in spring 2027, DNR said, and its findings will shape the next round of limits.
The survey also tracked other species. Crews caught nearly 72,000 fish from 61 species. Young Atlantic menhaden were abundant, Atlantic silversides hit their highest numbers in more than a decade, and American shad reproduced above average in the Potomac and upper bay.
