The 2018 Striperthon has commenced and the results are showing , in my humble opinion, exactly here our fishery is today.
You really could not blame it on weather , as we had near perfect conditions in many places. Plenty of smaller fish were available in a lot of places but not many that would have made a 34 inch STRIPERTHON cutoff. And lets be fair, 34 inch is not a humongus hurdle to overcome, or at least, it did not used to be.
All of top fish came from Cape Cod Canal, again, no surprises here. It seems like what’s left of bigger fish population is either o bunker schools in deeper water or at the Canal. Which will make the upcoming moon bloodbath even harder to take for those of us that care about the fisheries.
I do want to congratulate our winners on their effort and for supporting catch & release . We also had a fish that would have placed second disqualified due to the fact that angler had no active SJ subscription. And another that would have placed very high if his tag did not flew out of window when lighting up a cigarette on the way to canal. I tell you, quitting is best thing I ever did, lol. He had some nice pics but without a tag, again, we could not enter them into the contest.
I want to thank all our supporters, those who made 2018 STRIPERTHON possible, Van Staal, Lamiglas Rods, Super Strike Lures ,ODM Rods, Guppy Lure, Tsunami Lures, Costa Del Mar, Trailhead Deflators and Surfcaster’s Journal Magazine.
Since we did not fill all spots, I am thinking about doing it again in few weeks. Tommy and I’ll will have to put the head together and come up with something.
Again, congrats to all our winners, you will be contacted shortly by SJ for your shipping info
1st place Shawn Lynch 44″
2nd place Brian DiMento 39″
3rd place Brian Killen 39″
4th place Matt Kraniak 34″
If you do another Striperthon with left over gear maybe do a junior’s event.
↓Thanks Zeno, it is a shame the way things are going and the way that so many people don’t care about trying to sustain the fishery. I guess you have to enjoy the mediocre fishing before that’s gone too.
↓I had Sandy Hook all to myself on Saturday afternoon but, the best I could do was a 26.5″ striper and another smaller one plus four short fluke, and a skate. Bunker heads got the stripers and sand worms took the fluke.
↓Did what I could north of Boston and just struggled for anything bigger than 27” I’ll be in if you do another
↓Congrats to all the winners
↓Hope all the fish were released healthy
↓This certainly has been a weird year. This was my first Striperthon and I had a blast, despite not sleeping for a few days. I’d definitely be interested in another one this year. One in the fall would be interesting!
↓Couldn’t do local nite trips this past weekend, daughter graduated H.S. 2 morning trips produced only non legal bass and blues. Had a contender early this week but that’s how these contest go for me.
↓Congrats to the winners! Can’t believe where this fishery is at even if I suck!
Congrats to the winners! and thanks SJ and sponsors for doing these tournaments. I fished the mouth of the Merrimack for 7 hours saturday night and got skunked, out of everyone i spoke to- only a single 17″ schoolie was caught. Maybe all the fish were at a secret meeting. If I’m not mistaken, I think this is not the first time that there weren’t enough entered fish to fill all the prize slots. Part of me likes the weekend format of the tournaments, but I have missed some due to other obligations or super crappy conditions, and as dave stated above, its graduation weekend for most schools- woud you consider doing one of these as a week long tournament in the future? Perhaps a friday to the following sunday?
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