Long Island Kayak Angler: Housatonic River - First Stripers of the Year

"Tin Can" hatch on the Housatonic River
near Shelton, CT.

With the prediction of 50 degree weather, I decided to take a morning on the Housatonic River in Connecticut. I wasn't expecting too much more than exercise, and was pleasantly surprised with the striper fishing.

Morning drift ice on Housatonic River.

Soft plastics were the order of the day, and I caught most of my stripers on a 4" sluggo. In total, I caught 20+ stripers.

Got a late start, so I was only able to fish for two and a half hours after an hour and fifteen minute drive. When I got to the lot, I took one of the last parking spaces - the lot was packed with cars from everywhere from New Jersey to New Hampshire. Winter fishing on the Housy is an event. I got on the water by 11:30 am and joined the fleet of boats that was upstream of Sunnyside School. I was greeted by a substantial amount of drift ice, which I tried to keep away from my mirage drive, and made the launch difficult.

As soon as I launched, I started to mark thick clouds of stripers in the channel. Where the water dropped from 9' to 30', my fishfinder was almost blacked out - striped bass were on the screen thick for the bottom 20' of the water column. This was a huge school of stripers that spanned no less than the width of the channel, and was at least 100 yards long. The biomass was thick, and it appeared like an ominous storm cloud on the fishfinder.

The stripers blanketed the bottom 15' of the water column

Of course, if the water was 55 degrees, the stripers would have been impossible to avoid catching, but in 35 degree water . . . . the fish were lethargic and the percentage of feeding stripers was low.

In any event, I caught my first striper of 2013 less than 5 minutes into my trip - a fiesty little schoolie.

A winter striper.

Well, even in the low water temps, the fish bit well yesterday. I caught another half dozen in short order, and then the bite changed a bit as the tide dropped.

High tide was at high noon, and slack tide was short, since it was the morning of the new moon. As the tide changed, the big school of fish moved slowly downstream and we followed them with the "tin can hatch." Oftentimes of the Housy, boats will congregate closely together as they fish a school - this is referred to as the "tin can" hatch.

Beat up sluggo.

Over the next hour we harassed this big body of stripers, and everyone was catching fish. The stripers were almost corralled, and a bunch of us were picking off stripers from the sschool.

The retrieve was the key to success. At the beginning, I was using a slow weak retrienve, as would be expected for fishing extremely cold water - this did not work. There were two gentlemen in a bass boat that were bailing schoolies on every cast - so I modified my retrieve to match. . . . . and it worked.

I started to let the jig sink to the bottom, which was about a 40 second count, and then jerk the bait hard once, let it sink for a couple of seconds, and jig it hard two more times, and repeat as the lure rose through the water column. Soon, I was catching stripers on every cast . . . . even as the battery on my fishfinder ran out. I was moving my jig quickly - and I was surprised that they striper were so aggressive in cold water.

The wind was negligible, gusting from the northwest at about 5 knots. As such, it was easy to fish plastics.

I followed the Tin Can hatch to the bottom of Wooster Island, where the massive school was still moving downstream. But with my late start, I stopped fishing at 2 pm and made the mile and a half trip back upstream against a moon tide and snow runoff, all the while avoiding ice drifts. By 2 pm, the fog started to roll in hard, and it was quite thick by the time I got to the launch.

At least I left them biting . . . . thats winter fishing in New England. There are very few 50 degree days in January in the northeast.

It was good meeting fishing with Sean from NEKF, who also caught some fish. Sorry to have missed the other NEKF guys that were making the long drive from Massachusetts that night to look for bigger stripers. Kayakers were out in full force, and there were at least 7 kayakers fishing the river.