I was off the jetty off of the harbor. Their were hundreds of schoolies and even some keepers. Stripers were jumping everywere. I caught 3 off the bat. I even caught a 20 inch American shad. But then they stopped biting. I tried everything. They would not bite a thing. I would cast it right into the face of the striper and they just would not bite. Have any suggestions???

I've had this problem before. I'm not saying this is the case but perhaps there was a worm hatch. I've tried to fish for bass in the middle of one and they won't touch anything. The fish were breaking all over the damn place. You could only get them with a small fly that would resemble the worm.

Live line the shad, or chunk it up and drift some behind the boat,

Wait {ONE} hour ........switch to swimmers

3 inch bubble gum sluggos, swim it as a teaser in front of a smaller bomber or bubble gum mambo if plugging.

The worms are spawning, if you watch their action its almost a suspending action as they rise/emerge, then they track pretty straight dead on top of the water, and change direction like that old sci-fi movie TRON. try to mimic this retreive with your offering, steady retreive stop, *twitch* go...

If you fly fish at all, I like an RLS-Orange Ruthless in a worm Hatch. Youngsalt on this msg board posted a few other worm flies recently on this board in the fly fishing section. If you tie, you can search for cinder worm or clam worm patterns, theres tons see which works for you. Fish them tandem if you do, trying dif. flies until you see which one is drawing the most strikes for you. Also you absolutely CANNOT go wrong with an General Practitioner.

If you dont have the right sized artificial in a worm hatch/spawn you can bounce bombers of fish's heads and they wont take them. It will drive you nuts...

Its going to be a case of match the hatch, like clammer mentioned wait for the feed to slow down a bit and try swimmers, or try live lining one of the shad :kewl:

Worm hatches/Spawn rather are definitely a good example of elephants eating peanuts. If you figure some of the larger fishes size compared to what they are eating its like huh? But hey elephants LOVE peanuts :hee:

are you sure it was bass and not just shad maybe a few bass mixed in to f#$@ with you?

Most likely a worm spawn but it could have been shrimp too. You should allways reserve some room for a box of small flys to fish as droppers.
Slinger

dynamite