I cannot, without diminishing the profession, call myself a commercial fisherman. After all, I have a full-time office job in the city. I don't even live near the water.

Still, every summer I spend one or two weeks on Cape Cod fishing commercially for striped bass. During those weeks I fish early and I fish late, spending most of each day on my little boat. I fish in rain and I fish in fog, near shore and offshore, smooth water and rough.

But instead of eating my catch, I sell it to local fish markets. Others eat it, in restaurants and at dinner parties. I take home only a paycheck. The income offsets the costs and the financial incentive changes the game.

Recreational fishermen might be surprised that Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina allow the commercial harvest of striped bass – called rock fish in the mid-Atlantic – in state waters, which extend three miles offshore. In 2008, some 3,200 metric tons of stripers were landed for commercial sale, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a group that coordinates state fishery management plans.