When Bluefish blitz, birds don't sit on the water, they hover over the carnage and pick what they can without landing. Small Bass usually don't run with the Blues either. Sometimes larger ones will hug the bottom, to catch what drops down, but a more frequent scenario has the Bass coming into the area AFTER the blitz, to get an easy meal off the bottom. The oddball Bass that thinks he can run with the Bluefish usually doesn't survive to breeding age. In nature, that's called "survival of the fittest".... The leading cause of mortality in Bluefish is BIGGER Bluefish. Snappers make great bait for many species. I'm not convinced that anglers are the leading cause of death in Striped Bass. I just don't have information in that area.
Usually, when you get a feeding school of Bluefish, they are all about the same size. In Bass, that is not the case, you get smaller ones high in the water column, with larger ones deeper. The REALLY big Bass are solitary. This is because the smaller ones are more aggressive, and faster to chow down. A BIG Bass wants to think about it before she eats. She may mouth the food and drop it several times before she eats it. If there were smaller fish around, one of them would steal it.
Do you advocate keeping short Bass to save them from the Bluefish?
No? Just what ARE you trying to say then? Spit it out!
Flounder