Sometimes They Surprise You - Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

Got Stripers · 08-26-2000, 06:47 PM

On the water at 4:30 this morning in a flat calm. It was a slow bite and the conditions didn't change to get anything going, so I decided to try for some cod, since my inlaws are due in for a short visit tomorrow and they love cod. Went out about 4 miles east of the north river and picked up a bunch of smaller cod, but 6 nice eating size about 25 inches. We started to bake in the sun with no breeze, so we decided to head into the harbor around noon.

Just for yuks I put the trolling motor down to work the shoreline from the first rocky point north back to the harbor jetty. It's a short 300 yard stretch with some bolders, but a pretty clean bottom, nothing unusual about it. Bright sun, hot, crystal clear water, almost dead low tide and I'm casting into 6 feet of water, while holding the boat in about 9 feet. After about a dozen casts I almost had the rod stripped from my hands when a nice one slammed my plastic jerkbait. I thought bluefish at first because of the first couple hard fast runs, but then noticed it was a striper about 25 lbs. What a nice fight in that skinny water. The fish that followed her to the boat would make you drool. There were at least 2-3 fish that size or bigger, along with at least 15-20 other nice size fish. Landed another one around 15 lbs and then one smaller schoolie before calling it a day. Sometimes it amazes me where and when some nice stripers show up. Those conditions certainly didn't have keeper bass written all over them, but I've caught them like that before and usually end my day on that rocky point.

It was a good day to go running for some bluefish, but I'm so out of touch with the bluefish scene in this area, I wouldn't know where to start. Anyone hitting any decent blues on the south shore, love to get into some before the season winds down. I don't normally run into them where I chase stripers and I think it's been 2 years since I even hooked one. I know I could probably hit them at the Plymouth power plant, but I hate launching there, because the ramp is always such a zoo.

Hope everyone had a productive day, tight lines.

Got Stripers · 08-26-2000, 07:35 PM

Forgot I had a pic of the smaller one, of course in my excitement after the first one, I forgot I even had the digital camera with me. Hope I have the code figured out for this, but here goes.<img src="http://www.rgsiroisco.com/harborbass.jpg" border="0">

Hope it works.

Patrick · 08-26-2000, 10:28 PM

Who thinks Got Stripers brags too much? <img src="/Images/TooHappy.gif"> <img src="/Images/TooHappy.gif"> <img src="/Images/TooHappy.gif">
Good job.

Canalratt1 · 08-27-2000, 01:51 PM

hi Bob That stretch from the harbor jetty south to the North River was one of my best spots. We fished it similar to the way you do almost like fresh water bass fishing. There was a ton of blues and bass at the East end of the canal Saturday afternoon breaking all over the place on small bait. We could only get them on smaller plastics (shads) but I know your ugly jerkbait will work. For blues up north try offshore near the Scituite Bell or the first can outside the North River farther south Pollock Shoals is good.

Got Stripers · 08-27-2000, 02:52 PM

Thanks for the tips on looking for some blues. Maybe next weekend I'll drag some deep divers around to see if I can get lucky, although I'm not a big trolling fan. I agree with you on that stretch south of the harbor, but I got them just north on that first rocky point, which is very similar. Just surprised to find that many nice fish crusing the shallows in those conditions, but like I said in my initial post, sometimes ignoring the rule book works.

Tight lines.

Got Stripers · 08-27-2000, 02:52 PM

Thanks for the tips on looking for some blues. Maybe next weekend I'll drag some deep divers around to see if I can get lucky, although I'm not a big trolling fan. I agree with you on that stretch south of the harbor, but I got them just north on that first rocky point, which is very similar. Just surprised to find that many nice fish crusing the shallows in those conditions, but like I said in my initial post, sometimes ignoring the rule book works.

Tight lines.

Canalratt1 · 08-28-2000, 09:45 AM

Yea that area your talking about being close to the harbor is lightly fished. It does once in a while have fish of good size. The next reef going towards Minots about a 1/4 mile away holds some big fish mostly during the spring, right after it is a rock that is exposed at half tide with good depth around it that I've had luck with. Then comes Minots where it could take all summer to fish every reef and rock. Good Luck Did you catch the cod jigging or with bait? I'm trying to plan a combo trip of bass and cod soon myself.

Got Stripers · 08-28-2000, 11:48 AM

We caught the Cod on smiling bills white bucktails, only because I hadn't planned on any Cod fishing and that was all I had on the boat. They worked great thou and we tipped them with small strips of mackeral skin with some meat on it, only because a had a couple frozen mackeral on board. We were fishing around 70 foot of water and basically just idling around with my depthfinder on high sensitivity. I was looking for bigger cod right on the bottom and each time I spotted one, I would flip around or hit reverse to hold close. Almost every time we did this we ended up with a bigger cod. If we fished blind drifts we caught smaller cod, but motoring around using the depth finder was definately the better approach for the bigger fish.

We fished them on 7 foot medium Lamiglass custom rods, which are on the light side for typical Cod jigging, but the 30# spiderwire really transmitted the hits nicely. Anyone watching us wouldn't even know we were jigging for Cod, because we were not using the typical hard rip/fall jigging approach. I doubt I jigged more than 6-12 inches off the bottom and did so with just a slow lift fall, no hard jerks. Worked like a charm, so I'd recommend that if you want to target some bigger Cod.

Good luck and tight lines.

JohnR · 08-28-2000, 12:19 PM

Nice fishies... A little reminder to try something new or different when the traditional methods are not living up to expectation <img src="/Images/biggrin.gif">. I will have to check out your hand-poured plastic jerk baits some time soon.

It seems that the South Shore from Plymouth to Hull has really started to heat up along the shore (Great News)...

Later