Striped Bass

Type: Chesapeake
Region: Easterm
Location: Mid Bay

Fishing for stripers had been a little slow for me earlier this fall but Monday I got back out on the water after about a 3 week hiatus and it paid off. I headed out of West River around 9:00 and there were already a knot of boats just inside #1. Unfortunately either I had missed the bite or nothing was going on period. I could see scattered bait on the depth finder from top to bottom everywhere I went but several hours of trolling produced only one bluefish. At mid-day I went in to pick up my wife who had just finished work for the day. We decided to try fishing shallow since nothing much was happening out near the channel. A good ebb tide was moving down the beach and the first rip we cast to produced a strong hit and one small rock. We moved a little further down the shore and BAM Susie got a solid hit. This fish took so much line that she initially thought it could be a ray but the pulsing of the rod tip told a different story. After tightening the drag a little she finally worked the fish in and I slipped the net under a beautiful fat striper of about 26 inches. She caught nice size fish for the next 45 minutes or so. I tried a popper on my fly rod but with the chop and turbidity they weren�t finding it so I starting tossing a rattletrap and was catching fish immediately. Small bunches of fish were moving through the area quickly while others seemed to relate to the rips. And then it was over. We had our keepers so we decided to move back out to the channel edge to try for some of the big blues I had been hearing about. This time the bait was up over a large area and medium sized blues were slashing and cartwheeling through the schools. But only one here and one there and casting wasn�t doing the trick. I finally put out a couple of spoons and trolled the edges and started picking up nice stripers again. At one point they erupted right in front of the boat. I cut the engine and we grabbed the spinning rods. Both of us were into nice fish on the first cast. I turned around to see fish on both trolling lines as well. By the time we caught and released those four stripers and cleared up the tangles and mess, things had quieted down. We had had our fun anyhow and decided to head home.