Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating - View Single Post

choggieman · 11-08-2005, 01:49 PM

This has been a very odd year for me. I fish the boat and the surf and in neither fashion am I seeing bait like I hope to. Fishing is spotty at best and the only concentration of fish I found were on mullett back in september. I never saw the massive schools of blues I usually see in narragansett bay, nor anywhere else. I am buying into the theory that lots of bait has been pushed off shore and the fish are following, or so I keep telling myself.
I fished in the boat Saturday and we never marked a bit of bait in an area that always has fish and bait. Two trips on 2 consecutive weekends to this spot have come up empty handed, which is outrageous considering the history of this area over my fishing career. Frustrating to say the least. But this seems to be a trend, as the falls are seemingly worse and worse the last few years. No consistency at all in the fishing from the boat or beach.
In the summer I spent some time in back bays and saw incredible amounts of mullet and peanut bunker, numbers like I have never seen. The mullet came through, but where are the peanuts? They are not in those bays, thats for sure. I am guessing that they dumped just in time to get washed out with all that wind and all those storms.
I have had more skunks in the surf this year than I ever have so I am hoping it is due to the lack of bait where I fish, and not my ineptitude. I can relate to that theory that there are less fish, but is that due to less bait? As a kid I remeber huge shoals of adult bunker every fall, so many we took it for granted they'd be there. Now the word of a few menhaden is very few and far between.
Nothing is like it used to be, but with all the conservation and research shouldn't things be getting better not worse? I think some of the methods used and ideas in place that are behind the research that tell us the condition of a fishery are beyond archaic.
If this is a trend that many of us are noticing, aren't we the people who should bring it to light that something is wrong? All around us fisheries are collapsing, cod, herring, eels etc...are stripers on their way out too?

11-08-2005, 01:49 PM	#58
choggieman Registered User iTrader: (1) Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 313	This has been a very odd year for me. I fish the boat and the surf and in neither fashion am I seeing bait like I hope to. Fishing is spotty at best and the only concentration of fish I found were on mullett back in september. I never saw the massive schools of blues I usually see in narragansett bay, nor anywhere else. I am buying into the theory that lots of bait has been pushed off shore and the fish are following, or so I keep telling myself. I fished in the boat Saturday and we never marked a bit of bait in an area that always has fish and bait. Two trips on 2 consecutive weekends to this spot have come up empty handed, which is outrageous considering the history of this area over my fishing career. Frustrating to say the least. But this seems to be a trend, as the falls are seemingly worse and worse the last few years. No consistency at all in the fishing from the boat or beach. In the summer I spent some time in back bays and saw incredible amounts of mullet and peanut bunker, numbers like I have never seen. The mullet came through, but where are the peanuts? They are not in those bays, thats for sure. I am guessing that they dumped just in time to get washed out with all that wind and all those storms. I have had more skunks in the surf this year than I ever have so I am hoping it is due to the lack of bait where I fish, and not my ineptitude. I can relate to that theory that there are less fish, but is that due to less bait? As a kid I remeber huge shoals of adult bunker every fall, so many we took it for granted they'd be there. Now the word of a few menhaden is very few and far between. Nothing is like it used to be, but with all the conservation and research shouldn't things be getting better not worse? I think some of the methods used and ideas in place that are behind the research that tell us the condition of a fishery are beyond archaic. If this is a trend that many of us are noticing, aren't we the people who should bring it to light that something is wrong? All around us fisheries are collapsing, cod, herring, eels etc...are stripers on their way out too?