3 Good Sized Stripers

Type: Tidal
Region: Central
Location: Upper Bay - West of the Triangle Buoys

We left Sandy Point around 7 a.m. in my fishing partner's 22' walkaround. We checked and jigged the sewer pipe. Found a few fish, released a 12" striper caught on a hotrodded 7" yellow Hogy Bait on a 1-1/2 oz hotrodded jighead. We proceeded up to Love Point where there was a big chumming fleet. It was very bumpy, so rather than anchor up and set up a chum line, we decided to troll. We went northwest of the fleet and marked fish all over the place on flat bottom centered 6.5 NM due north of the bridge and 3/4 NM due west of the Triangle Buoys. We worked an area about a mile east and west and half mile north and south. We caught a slow but fairly steady bite from about 12:30 to 3:30 until an approaching thunderstorm chased us back to Sandy Point.

We caught 12 stripers between 10 and 25 inches. We ended up releasing 9, and keeping 3 (23", 24", and 25") stripers. Also there were two that broke off. All but two were caught on either a small 6" chartreuse bucktail style lure with chartreuse trailer down about 25 feet (7 hookups) or 6" chartreuse soft shad-like freshwater swimbait. I was testing back 4 colors about 20 feet deep behind a small umbrella on one of my leadline rigs (5 hookups). Two were caught on a small white bucktail style lure with white trailer down about 25 feet. The fish were mostly between 18-25 feet in about 28 feet of water, except for one breaking fish, which we headed for and ending up catching the 25" striper on the swimbait. We had the area to ourselves except for one boat anchored up boat about a mile away. It was nice not having to dodge a couple of boat dragging planers.