Good news, fishermen: Rockfish had a banner 2011 for, well, making other rockfish.

That's according to annual surveys conducted in Maryland and Virginia. Both found above-average numbers of baby rockfish - also called striped bass - squirming in seine nets dragged by biologists at dozens of sites around the Chesapeake Bay.

That means that in three or four years, there should be plenty of large rockfish to catch.

"We've hit the bay trifecta. We had increased blue crab reproduction two years ago, then oysters last year and now striped bass," said Tom O'Connell, director of fisheries for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Maryland biologists drag a seine net a total of 132 times at dozens of spots around the bay. They look for young-of-year rockfish, fish that are less than 1 year old.

They found, on average, 34.6 young-of-year rockfish during each sweep this year.

That represents a better count than last year's 5.9 and the long-term average of 11.9. It's the fourth-highest count in the survey's 58-year history.

In Virginia, where the survey is conducted by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the average was 27, better than the long-term average of 7.5.

This year's numbers are cause for a bit of a sigh of relief for biologists, fishermen and environmentalists who watch the survey closely.

Rockfish reproduction rates can vary greatly from year to year, but the recent low counts have been concerning.

"We haven't had a strong striped bass recruitment event for a number of years. Several recent years have been below average," O'Connell said. "There's been an increasing level of anxiety among Atlantic Coast managers and fishermen."

Rockfish, with their silver bodies and distinctive horizontal stripes, are among the most recognized and most eaten fish in the Chesapeake Bay. They're the state fish.

But overharvesting lead to a near-collapse of the rockfish population in the 1980s.

Ultimately, the harvest had to be shut down in order to allow the population to rebuild.

Government regulators keep a sharp eye on the rockfish population, often making adjustments to fishing rules to keep the stock healthy. About 75 percent of the East Coast's rockfish population was born in the Chesapeake and return here each spring to spawn.

More recently, rockfish have suffered from a disease called mycobacterium that causes unsightly lesions and damages the fish's spleen.

There also are concerns there aren't enough menhaden - small, oily fish that rockfish eat - in the Chesapeake Bay. An interstate panel that oversees the menhaden harvest is considering setting new, lower harvest limits.

In addition to rockfish, biologists count all of the other juvenile fish they catch in the seine nets during the survey.

White perch and blueback herring also had strong years.