North Shore Stripers Turn On

 Usually, the spring back bay flats striped bass fishing on the north shore is peaking now. This year is different. It has been a cold spring. The usual early spring Long Island Sound striper pattern is about three weeks behind schedule. As recently as ten days ago, the water was 43 degrees at the warmest point of the day.

Every year, this early season striper pattern is triggered by high pressure systems reinforced by a few days of stable warm weather. In short, anglers are looking for a warming trend with offshore winds. The best case occurs after an abrupt period of extremely warm weather after a normal spring warming trend. I finally got such a pattern this week and decided to take the day off.

Well, my hunch was correct and the early season striper bite was on. I caught 19 stripers to 28".

I fished with Gary Innes, a fellow member of KFA-NY. Gary is a long time surf fisherman, and one of the club's resident fluke sharpies, so I knew that if the fishing was poor, at least the conversation would be good. But, we both expected the fishing to be pretty good today based on conditions - hot day, incoming tide, and soft winds. The air temp was around 70 degrees with a modest northeast wind. I was pleasantly surprised to find the water temp to be 52 degrees.

The cable broke on my Mirage Drive as soon as I launched. Fortunately, I had a spare. Gary was nice enough to bring it out to the KFA meeting tonight, which was greatly appreciated, as it saved me a long drive to Captain Kayak.

So, I got my new drive and off we went. With a light wind at our backs, we were on the backbay flats by 11:30 am and got into stripers immediately. The fishing was localized, and the stripers were holding tight in shallow water around 4'. They were a little spooky today, as the stripers were all around us, but not under the boat, except for one brief moment when I ran over a school.

For the next hour, I was either catching a striper or getting a hit on every cast. I had the most action plugging a  slow dummy retrieve, others were working their lures differently, but slow and steady worked for me today. Only dapped the 8 wt fly rod briefly.

I caught 12 stripers by high tide slack at 12:30 pm. . . . at which point, the proverbial light switch was turned off in an instant.

At slack, the fish spread out, and I picked away at 6 more schoolies over the next hour. The fish dispersed at the beginning of the ebb, and the bite stopped as the water fell. I called it a day at 2:30 pm as the northeast wind picked up pace. Although it was predicted that the wind would turn southeast, it never happened.

My biggest fish was a thin 28" bass whose lip was torn by my plug, so when I went to get my camera after measuring, the lipped ripped totally and she got off my grappler, so I got no pics.

This is the first wave of stripers in the Long Island Sound. As usual, it is fast action with mostly schoolie-sized bass. If the weather stays stable and warm, the menhaden will move inshore to spawn. This will trigger the second wave of bigger striped bass. For kayakers, if the weather doesn't work, we don't always get a shot at these fish at Little Neck Bay before it is closed. Lets hope that the warm trends continues and that the air temps stabilize for a while so we can get a shot at some big stripers there by the end of the month.