These linesiders were on the hunt in 25 – 30 feet of water. Anyone care to guess where they were. Hint: they were swimming around a pretty famous spot.

http://fisheye.striped-bass.com/images/march/bassattitude.jpg

Can you learn anything from this photo?

Mike

I learned that I need to follow you around. That is a nice sight. It mut give you thrills every time you go for a dive.

I learned that sometimes you should fish in water 25 to 30 feet deep. :p

I learned that stripahs on a mission look very skinny and hungry!!!!!!!!!

They are looking up ?

Great Picture!!
They do look hungry. Do you have any pictures of baitfish?
The eyes stuck out the most to me. I like big eyes on lures and flys. Thanks for the post.

I learned that the bunker are definitely being overfished when big healthy looking bass like that have concave stomachs.
Excellent picture Mike.

Jenn and Chris,

They are indeed lean "racers" that are the predominant type of fish we find in RI and MA waters. These fish should weigh in at 35 - 40 pounds, but they are more likely to be 20 to 30 pounds.
Note the square tales, big heads (now you know where there nickname "Old Green Head" comes from) and shoulders that don't fill out very much...and no big bellies.

Here is an excerpt from a Discovery article:

Bryan Taplin, an environmental scientist in the Atlantic Ecology Division of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has witnessed the destruction of all the large schools of menhaden by purse seiners in Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. During the last two decades he has also studied changes in the diet of striped bass in the bay by analyzing the carbon isotope signature of their scales. What he has discovered is a steady shift away from fat-rich menhaden to invertebrates that provide considerably lower nutritional value. That has been accompanied by a loss of muscle and a decrease in the weight-to-length ratio of striped bass. The bass that remain in Narragansett Bay, says Taplin, are "long skinny stripers" that have been forced to shift their diet because "the menhaden population has crashed to an all-time low."

For the full article, check out http://www.discover.com/sept_01/featfish.html

Anyone care to guess where these fish were filmed? It's a famous spot...can't you tell ;)

:( :( :( :( :mad: :mad: :mad: we need more filter feeders and less purse seiners :(

Ya Mike , we can tell it's the Atlantic ocean. I can guess that it's Block Island but that would be a guess.

The water looks dirty enough to be the entrance to Menemsha but I don't know if it is 30' deep there.

Hey Fish_Eye. Yes that is a must read article for everyone. The implications are very scary. Everything we are doing to bring back the striped bass fishery will amount to a hill of beans if there is no food to sustain the population.

Mike - I remember reading that article well, as it does confirm what many of us have been saying for a long time: that the overharvesting of bunker has altered the physical characteristics of the striper in general. The lack of bunker in the Chesapeake (due to overfishing) has driven stripers to subsist more on baits like the crab, which in turn causes commercial crabbers to blame the "rebound" in stripers on the decreased numbers of crabs. Round and round we go......

Those racers are always easy to distinguish, with a very distinct looking long, lean body. Anyone remember Bassdozer's article about the school of fish that sit off the corner of Block, and could be seen staging for a tide, as the racers (scouts) went ahead to hunt. Good story....

Mike,

My friend Kadir and I chunked up what initially looked like nice bass on South Beach (MV) last Fall.

What might have passed for 35+ lbs. just eyeballing the length weighed in at say 27 lbs. I noticed that these "lean" racers were very very different from that bass I would catch in prior years (same area) and even vs. those I would land in other waters (e.g., Long Island).

Very very sad.

-FWW

FWW - I had the same thing, big bull head & big shoulders 45 inch fish but only weighed 28 pounds... Should have been a bigger fish. And this was in November after some serious gorging SHOULD have taken place....

I had two in one day.:(

That's easy. I can tell from the background :) Its in the 25 - 30 foot hole about 75 yards northwest of the red can at Watch Hill.

We won't know how many other species were dependant on the bunker until further down the road either. Commercial fishing mentality; fish until they force us to stop, then fish for something else and repeat.

GaryK,

That's not a bad guess, it is about the same kind of situation as exists at the Hill.

These fish were swimming along the edge of the legendary "Sow and Pigs" reef off Cuttyhunk. Earlier that day I did manage to get some fish in the 40 and 50 pound range on video tape. The key to finding big bass is finding promontories...Watch Hill, Point Judith, Brentons Point, Montauk Point...almost anywhere there is a lighthouse there is apt to be big fish near the drop offs. It just so happens that this spot has given up fish in the 70 pound range!

Mike