This is re-posted from a couple of Aprils ago -
Here come the stripers. Not the strippers.
It's the end of April, the Bluefish are beginning to show up and the Spring Spawn stripers cannot be far behind.
East Coast stripers (called Rockfish on the Left Coast) are an anadromous fish meaning that they spawn in fresh water, but live their adult lives in salt. There are four breeding stocks on the East Coast - Chesapeake Bay, Delaware River, Hudson River and Cape Cod. These four main schools provide most of the striper population along the East coast.
Recently, there has been some investigation about the Thames River (New London and Norwich, CT) over winter school being an addition feeder school to the Cape Cod stock. It is not unknown for the Thames River school to reach tremendous populations over winter and spawning up the Thames into the Yantic and Shetucket Rivers in the Spring.
Striper fishing is one of my passions - fresh water impounds down south or inshore in New England, stripers provide me with the best and the most honest type of fishing. I say honest because striper fishing isn't a case of chasing down a fierce predator like any of the bill fish or tuna. Stripers are basically lazy and thus require patience and knowledge of the bottom structure to obtain the best size.
A few of my favorite spots and techniques are below the fold -
Bunker (Menhaden) is by far the best choice for bait when fishing for these critters inshore along the coast. Live bait is the best, but that can be difficult to obtain, so "chunking" bunker is the second best choice. Chunking is basically using large pieces of bunker on a hook - pretty simple. Securing the chunks can require some skill, but I'll cover rigging bait in another follow up post.
Live American River Eels are also a good choice, but they are coming close to being an endangered species and can be expensive. Eels are also a favorite of blue fish and where there are stripers, there are usually blues - you can lose a lot of expensive bait to blues. The easiest bait rig to use in these situations is the Carolina rig which we'll cover in another post.
Being a conservationist and a little bit of an enviro-nut when it comes to fishing, I prefer to use artificial baits for fishing. My main choice is tube and worm - basically a length of surgical tubing with a weight on one end, hook on the other rigged with either a sand worm (live) or an artificial worm such as a Powerbait or Gulp. Other plastics such as green eels rigged on a jig/bucktail combo or the RonZ artificial eel in various weights are the second choice.
Fishing for stripers does not have to be expensive nor require heavy gear. My basic set-up for stripers is a 6'6" Medium Heavy Ugly Stick rod, Penn 460G graphite spinning reel rigged with 12 lb mono and 20lb Florocarbon shock leader.
The great thing about stripers is that they are catchable all along the East Coast both from shore and inshore on boats. You can use the same rig mentioned above for shore fishing if you have some sort of structure, like rocks or irregular bottom, within reach of the cast.
From small boats, the same rule applies, but there, with the assistance of a good small boat sonar (fish finder), you can add such structure as steep depth breaks, weed lines and wrecks.
My personal favorite method is to slow drift along these bits of structure - often at very slow speed from .5 to 2 mph or troll at the same speed. Stripers will, much like trout, hang behind structure in calmer water and wait for something to swim past before making a strike.
From shore, Watch Hill Light in RI is always a good choice - plenty of rocks and cover to cast into a short way from shore and the bottom is variable along the entire stretch from the road to the light. There is a sheltered cove on the SW side of the access causeway that will also produce on a SW wind. Along the beach, right opposite the Pink House (about half way up the beach from it's access point) is a great place to start working your way up to Watch Hill.
The Charlestown Breachway and salt pond produce schoolies regularly with the occasional keeper, but it's fun. The West Wall at Point Judith, RI on incoming tides and if the weather is good enough to chance it, a short walk along the breakwater to the green day marker will produce good fishing on any tide.
If you are planning a trip with your boat, my usual haunts will always produce something decent. Narragansett Bay's East Passage and the T-wharf at the SE end of Prudence Island are good places to start. South Beach along Newport along with Brenton Reef provide good cover all the way up to the Sakonnet River Passage. Westerly, RI at Watch Hill Light is a great place to get in close to the rocks for stripers along with trolling the length of Watch Hill Reef. I would not recommend using Lord's Passage about half way down the stretch of Watch Hill Reef to Fisher's Island unless you have somebody very experienced with you - it's tricky. Same with the Charleston Breachway in RI - very tricky, but also very productive. The point at Montauk, NY is considered by many to be the best striper fishing on the East Coast. I beg
to differ - it is good, but the Indian Grounds off Fisher's Island (near Kamen's little island compound) is better. Opposite the Indian Grounds near Long Island is the Plum Gut and it's associated islands which also produce good sized stripers.
Next post, we'll discuss rigging choices and describe/build some different types of terminal gear and lines along with different presentation techniques to use from both shore and boat.
Tracked: Aug 02, 15:40