Last Licks on Holdover Stripers

Fished the upper Housatonic River again today for holdover stripers. 

I met up with Hogy Pro Eric Harrisson and Gary Innes of KFA-NY. We launched around 8 am and fished until approximately 11 am. 

It was a much warmer day with very fast action on the stripers. We found a big school slightly upstream of the launch and stayed over them for the entire tide. We fished the last three hours of incoming until about slack tide. The school only moved slightly upstream over the three hours. 

The water temperature was 35 degrees. There were plenty of boats on the water but they were all heading downstream to fish the motherload heading towards the Long Island Sound. Some of the boats stopped  to look at the mark we were fishing and would quickly head down stream. 

We were fishing over a huge pile of stripers so you can only imagine the size of the school downstream. 

Tagged several stripers during this

trip.

Most of the fish were cookie-cutter schoolies in the 17" - 22" class. With the cold weather, this was great action. All fish caught on plastics. I tagged about 20 stripers on this trip for ALS.

It seems like the stripers are transitioning despite the cold weather. It appears that they are being pushed more by calendar than water temp. Other than the school we found, the remainder of the area we were fishing was barren. At the peak, there are almost always several big schools moving around there.With ice-out in NJ, this will be my last trip to the Housy.

Alas, I still believe it will be about three weeks until striped bass start to show around Long Island in good numbers. 

So, for at least the next two weeks, I plan on targeting lake trout and salmon in some lakes within driving range in New Jersey.