Early Spring Stripers on the Housatonic - March 10, 2013

The biomass of striped bass encompassed the last 15' of the bottom.

I haven't caught a decent fish in a couple of months, so I wanted to fish somewhere where I had a chance at catching something that would give me a good tug, so I thought I would try the Housatonic River for stripers.  I had a decent pick of little schoolies, but didn't get the quality fish I was looking to catch.

 I launched at the beginning of the ebb at 11:15 am and fished until 2:15 pm. 

I wanted to travel a little, but the stripers were stacked up slightly upstream of the launch and didn't move for the entire outing. 

Many boats and kayaks were working this huge
school of stripers. 

The reading on the fishfinder was unmistakeable - a thick cloud of stripers stretching about 25 yards wide and 50 yards long in the bottom 15' - 20' of the water column. This school would move a little upstream, and turn around and go in the other direction, and quickly reverse itself again after a short distance. This swimming pattern repeated itself constantly as the day progressed. Myself, a few other kayakers, and several boats worked this school hard. 

Easy pickings, right? 

Not so much . . . . 

Even though there were thousands of stripers under my kayak, the surface temp was 38 degrees and the fish had lockjaw. Further, the snow runoff created a super high tide, where high water was 5' higher than normal. 

I fished a 4" Powerbait shad, a sluggo, and a forked-tail plastic. I caught fish on everything but had my best success using the forked tail. 

Snow runoff made the water cold.

The cold water made the fish really lazy. I was a decent number of hits on the shad, but they were all soft, short strikes. So, I decided to try a different tactic and looked for a reaction strike. 

When exposed to cold water for long periods, the stripers' metabolism slows drastically. Stripers still feed, but don't want to expend much energy in pursuing food and don't need to eat much after the heavy feeding that occurs during the fall. I've found that the best way to hook up with a striper in these conditions is a reaction strike. As such, I switched to a forked tail plastic and jerked it through the water column. It worked. Sometimes I would catch a fish working it from the bottom. Other times, I would catch stripers vertically jigging if the school was under my boat. I even caught some fishing jigging as the lure dropped into the zone, or working the middle of the water column. 

For this technique, your jig and fishfinder go hand in hand. Try to estimate the optimal depth where your jig should be by your readings on the fishfinder. Once you are in the zone, jig the plastic hard, reel in the slack, and repeat until your jig is near the boat. I reel fast when I feel my jig is out of the zone, which is the last 10' of water before the surface. However, I got several hard hits when I reeled my jig fast to the surface, so you never know. 

Typical bass for the day. 

In total, I caught 10 stripers to 23". 

Some nice fish were caught today. A 41" and a 36" were both caught far downstream from where I was fishing . . . . out of kayak range unless you take a day trip. 

As I drove downstream, I saw an another tin can hatch working a school of stripers. So, there are a few big schools of fish around the river. 

I thought that this would be my last Housy trip until the fall. But, since there are still so many stripers in the river, I may have one more trip this month. 

This little bass was around 10" and may provide
evidence that there is successful spawning in the
Housatonic.