When the striper season begins, at some point in May for most of us in Massachusetts, catching a striped bass of any size is good enough to scratch the itch of striper fever. However, it probably wasn’t a schoolie or even the first keeper that was your lifeline this winter —- I’m betting your dreams were filled with images of catching your biggest striper ever. So, as we head into the month of June and the heart of the striper season, let’s get to the business of catching your personal best bass.
The buzz along the Striper Coast is that although the total abundance of linesiders has shrunk in recent years, there are more big bass around—including some awfully large ones. It’s tough to deny the uptick, with more surf monsters and boat behemoths taken within the last few years, and you don’t have to be an accountant to appreciate the recent numbers: there’s Greg Myerson’s eel-eating Connecticut-caught world record 81.88-pounder taken in August of 2011. And who can forget Peter Vican’s 77.4-pound Rhode Island beast, which also fell for a serpent, just two months earlier. I would also be remiss if I didn’t list Connecticut Captain Blaine Anderson’s monstrous 74-pounder, which inhaled a scup for dinner in May 2012.
You might notice that all three of these big bass came from Block Island Sound and Long Island Sound waters. There’s no denying that, in recent years, there seem to be more “supersize” bass available to anglers south of Cape Cod, but striper fishermen who fish from Cape Cod Bay to the New Hampshire Seacoast should, by no means, feel left out. There are many big bass that migrate north to our waters, and every season there are fish north of 50 pounds caught by fishermen and no doubt many even larger that get away.
Could you be next to bag the striper of your dreams and join the 50-pounder club? Even if you don’t care to breathe this rarefied air, why not plan right now to raise the bar on your angling accomplishments? To help me in this endeavor, I decided to consult three pals of mine who are card-carrying members of the 50-pound striped bass club and were kind enough to lend their considerable knowledge and expertise.: Quincy-based captains Jason Colby of Little Sister Charters and Russ Burgess of Jerry’s Toy Charter Fishing, and North Shore surfcaster Steve Pappows.
When and Where?
Above all, if you want to catch the fish of your dreams, you’ll have little time to be dreaming because you’ll be fishing at night. The exception to this, and most every other rule in fishing, is related to bait. When there are pogies or large mackerel around, especially in the fall, everything else becomes moot–the bass will be with the prey. That situation aside, striped bass have a more sophisticated set of senses than their prey, and nightfall gives them an even bigger edge. And it’s the bigger bass that are most likely put this maxim to their advantage.
Moving water and structure are also important and not mutually exclusive. Captain Colby often extols the need for a nice drift line when he’s three-waying eels over lumps, clumps and bumps where striped bass will lie in ambush. He is one of those exalted anglers who have scored exceptionally large linesiders from the coast and by boat. When he’s in his shore duds, Jason will gravitate to bridges. Bridges often span rivers, marshes and estuaries, which are rolling buffets for all kinds of forage. And they feature flow and current, which make them ideal fishing platforms.
Give Captain Russ Burgess a nice rip line in 20 feet of water or less but in close proximity to deeper water, and he will more often than not accomplish what no one else does – annually catch 50-pound stripers from Boston Harbor! I did not see this coming, but Russ admitted that he is also a fan of bridges. In fact, he told me of an angling friend of his who used to stand on an impossibly high bridge in the Boston area at night, spot big bass, and point them out to friends in boats who would then inevitably catch those fish.
Steve Pappows prefers his moving water in two dimensions that are polar opposites. One favorite is marshy inlets, especially in the evenings as “warm pots” drain into the surf, bringing along bait into the path of hungry bass. His other stomping ground, the ankle-taxing craggy shoreline of the North Shore, would give Sir Edmund Hillary pause. What makes the sudsy shoreline up north so special is that it is usually only a long cast away from the security of deeper water that big bass prefer. When bait is balled up in ledge-filled coves, it often has no escape route. And the shoreline is home to two favorite delicacies of big striped bass–crab and lobster. Steve also appreciates bridges, especially those that are well-lit. He’s also not above volunteering to change light bulbs for residents whose homes abut prime fishing spots. That has to be the ultimate win-win.
Moon Phases and Current
Captain Colby has caught large on every phase of the moon but believes the bite for big fish is tougher when the current is really cooking during the peak phases of the new and full moons. When drifting an eel using a three-way rig, a raging full or new moon tide makes it difficult to keep the eel in a staging striper’s strike zone long enough for it to react. An eel that appears to be turbo-powered and zooms by will appear unnatural to a battle-tested big bass. An experienced striper is more inclined to weather a wicked current, remain neutral and conserve its energy for when conditions are more favorable. Conversely, activity is diminished when the torrent becomes a trickle as bass are less inclined to bunch up behind structure and may roam.
Russ Burgess is not a fan of the first two hours of an ebbing full or new moon tide simply because the out-sized tides pull debris from estuaries and marshes, causing a buildup of weed. And when your weapon of choice is a big wooden swimmer, you want to avoid plug-tangling debris as much as possible. However, if you learn intimately how your plug “feels” in the water, you can detect when it has picked up weed. Fortunately, the big metal-lip deep divers like Gibb’s Deep Diving Danny or the Big Water Lures Troller have prominent action. To ensure that the lure tracks properly, Russ maintains constant contact with the line using his hand and, through experience, has developed a “feel” for the lure’s cadence.
Steve Pappows does pay attention to phases of the moon for a number of reasons. He appreciates a plus high tide because higher water volume means that the inner sanctums of marshes and estuaries are breached and become fair game for prowling stripers. Prey species cannot hide as easily when their sanctity of skinny water is suddenly flooded. Steve recalls an exceptional night he had years ago when a building moon tide shoved schools of smelt far back into a Cape Ann marsh. Before a single cast was made, Steve stood on a bridge-walk and listened to the echoes of feeding fish. He knew it was going to be a special night.
Some anglers loathe the full moon with all the angst of Lon Chaney Jr. and feel it is to be avoided at all cost. But Steve views this lunar phase as an ally when light from “fire in the water,” created by bioluminescent plankton, stagnates the bite. He feels that the negative effects of the light are mitigated by the bright moon. In fact, he uses the glow to his advantage, playing off its luminosity with offerings that reflect or feature luminescence, which cause the lures to stick out and get noticed.
Offerings that “Get Noticed”
That “get noticed” thing is one commonality that my striper sharpie friends all believe is of utmost importance. Captain Colby cherry-picks 16- to 18-inch “serpents” if his outing calls for three-waying eels for big bass. If Jason isn’t fishing eels, he is most confident with a white or yellow bucktail jig. Jason tells a riveting tale of an obsession he had with what was surely the world-record striper he spotted under a bridge, back in the day when he was a New York homer. Despite his best attempts at that fish, including swimming eels and live bunker, the only whiff he got was when the great fish made a swipe at his jig.
Most bridges have some sort of light source that casts the all-important shadow line. It is in the dark of that shadow where bass, especially big bass, will lurk. Anglers talk in terms of fishing the down-tide section of structure, but a shadow line that is cast on the up-tide section of a bridge can be very deadly. While it’s not structure in the conventional sense, the shadow of a bridge is every bit as much structure to a striped bass as a reef, and they will lie just behind the edge waiting to pounce.
Those light-colored jigs that Jason prefers have less to do with what the fish sees as it does with what the angler sees. Beholden to the philosophy that big fish will generally not move far for forage, Captain Colby prefers white and yellow jigs with a strip of Uncle Josh Sea Rind so that he can see where it is in relation to the fish. While a nighttime shadow may look black, the back of a big bass is darker still and can be seen with a trained eye. Jason’s goal is to retrieve the jig so that it will approach the bass from approximately a 45-degree angle and pass about 6 inches in front of the fish’s maw. Those numbers may seem like algebra, but they add up.
Russ Burgess gravitates toward big wooden plugs because he believes it takes an offering that pushes a lot of water and gives off enough vibration to get noticed. Smaller offerings are doomed to fail in a maelstrom of moving water. From experience, Russ knows the Gibbs Deep Diving Danny and the Big Water Lures Troller scratch the bottom at about 14 feet, alerting any nearby stripers of their presence.
A year ago last fall, Russ was anchored up at the edge of a wall of churning white water and ledge. He had one blue and one white Danny in the wash, and all was quiet save the roaring rip. As if a switch was flipped, big bass began tail-slapping and pounding some unforeseen prey. After a few minutes of not even a whiff, Russ spotted a bobbing, dead mackerel astern. Off went one of the Danny plugs, and in place he snapped on a mackerel-hued Big Water Lures Troller – all of 10 inches and 7 ½ ounces! While one can’t say for sure whether it was the color, size or both that made the difference, this change resulted in twin 50-pound striped bass!
Steve Pappows will often gravitate to bright colors in order to get the attention of feeding fish in dim light and along foam-filled shorelines. One favorite is an orange-bellied lure, which catches the eye of groveling stripers that nose around bubble weed and kelp plants in search of green crabs, the bellies of which often look orange when they are ripe with eggs. Chartreuse, yellow and other colors that pop are also favorites of Steve’s. A perennial pick of his has been the halfbeak-colored Rebel Jumpin’ Minnow, but unfortunately that color has been discontinued. While the action of this little 4 ½-inch lure is enticing, Steve believes that the brilliant blue top and glow-yellow belly has been a big reason for his success with it. Two of Steve’s recent favorites, especially in the fall, have been “chicken scratch” Tsunami round-nose swimmers and yellow-and-olive Backshore Plugs pencils that he picks up at Fin and Feather in Essex.
It was on just such a pencil that Steve took a 55-pounder a few falls ago. However, if you hear Steve tell the tale, it might sound bittersweet—he’s still haunted by the far bigger fish that didn’t take his plug!
Three Top Tactics for Big Bass
Who: Steve Papows
What: Pencil Poppers
Where: Rocky Ledges and Coves of Cape Ann
When: First Light
One exception to the “big bass at night” rule for surfcasters occurs when striped bass corral big baitfish, particularly mackerel or pogies. A big pencil popper launched out over deep water and worked across the surface will get the attention of a big bass focused on big bait.
Who: Capt. Jason Colby
What: Live Eels
Where: Guts, Reefs, and Humps of Boston Harbor
When: Nighttime, Non-Peak Tides
Live eels are a proven big-bass bait, responsible for the current 81.88-pound world record, the 77.4-pound Rhode Island record, and countless other “cows.” Captain Colby picks the biggest eels he can fish and drifts them over structure on three-way rigs to tempt big bass into biting.
Who: Capt. Russ Burgess
What: Big Wooden Plugs
Where: Shallow-Water Current Rips
When: Nighttime
Capt. Russ Burgess has mastered the art of anchoring ahead of the churning white water of a tidal current rip and feeding metal-lip plugs back into the maelstrom where big bass feed at night. It’s a tricky tactic to learn and by no means an easy way to target stripers, but the rewards can be huge.
