Yes part of me wanted to eat it but i also know how just about everyone keeps them, the illegals rape the undersized fish too, it is not an endless bounty of fish, mostly because bait gets gobbled up by netters to make fish meal for stocked freshwater trout. So there is still a decent amount of big stripers caught in the ocean because of the sea bait like porgies, menhaden and ocean herring but the river runs of shad, alewives and blueback herring are very modest to scarce compared to how it used to be, tidal river stripers are not like they used to be in the 1990's and early 2000's. I used to catch HUNDREDS of them but they rarely exceeded 28 inches, most were between 22 to 27 inches which are great fights at that size but this one I caught was 32 inches LOL and everything was against me as my spot had added more docks and put a fence up to the right of me so i had a postage stamp opening to fish from the seawall and I fished for 3 and a half hours of Nothing, finally this fish of a lifetime-for me anyway, hit with about 20 minutes of tide left before it went slack, the fish had 5 or 6 strong drag peeling runs, AWAY FROM THE DOCKS, if it ran under the docks i am sure it would of broke off, and because the tide was so high my friend Pat had an easy time netting it. Truly was a miracle, and that is my best striper, i am sure i lost a few bigger in the past but that one wasn't camera shy thankfully.