I never thought about this until this moment while I am sitting on LIRR and typing this on my net book. I’ve spent three nights around Memorial Day weekend chasing after fish that were not there. Like a sucker, I took my son at dusk the 4th day reasoning that the tide was perfect. What we go was about 30 bites ……mosquito bites. He got one, I got the other 29. Then my friends went out the night after that, most of the tide, three good spots on outgoing tide, on downside of the new moon and got skunked. Which got me thinking…
What would you do if striped bass got so scarce that you have better chance of running into Christie Brinkley alone on the beach then catching one? Highly unlikely you say? Maybe, but that is what I thought about weakfish just a few years ago .Now I believe that I have a better chance of being Arnold Schwarzenegger love child than catching one. Bass don’t have to disappear to be scarce. They can just stay offshore with bait and never come in. Or you have to travel to out of the way to catch one like I do? Becouse they sure are not in my usual spots…
What would you do? Stop fishing all together? Buy a boat? Turn your efforts into making a sea robin a game fish?
LI Oudoorsman finally received their shipment from Korkers that was supposed to be here in late March.They are now a direct dealer and have in stock the new boots that all the wetsuiters have been wanting.The Metalhead boot and the Redside boot.They also have the new Rocktrax cleats and replacement studs and removal tools. Visit Rob and crew at Rockvile Centre and check it out…
here is a picture of our Art Director Yo Dude from the weekend
Yea Z, good bass have been hard to come by for me this year but those big blues are filling the void. I went back and looked at my old logs and found that I used to catch a lot more blue fish, now they just seem to be a whole lot bigger.
↓A road trip might cure the bigger bass blues.
Give up or Sea Robbins, no thanks!
I would continue chasing bass but from a kayak!
↓Its the lack of big bait in my neck of the woods,there just isn’t any right now.I too have been fishing great tides and wind direction with very little to show,feels like august and its not even july yet.
↓Just when you think you know the Striped bass it goes and changes all the rules !
When I first started fishing i thought stripers didnt exist because i couldnt catch one lol – Fast forward last season and this spring I am finding bass with out even trying that hard not huge fish but fish !
God has been good too me 🙂
↓For me the fish are there this this season just everything is opposite. Last year it was the last two hours of the dropping tide and the first two of the incoming, now its the last two hours of the high tide and the first two of the drop.
Next year custom wood plugs, this year soft plastics on jig heads.
Change tactics and adapt, we tend to stuck in a rut, in our daily lives and fishing. Think its easy to follow what has worked in the past, thats how I started my season, but when it wasnt producing I looked at from another angle, change my approach and things have picked up.
Wish the bait would push in from offshore too. 🙁
Be safe in surf.
↓“Next year custom wood plugs, this year soft plastics on jig heads.”
meant to say Last Year!!
↓Zeno-
So far this year I have cancelled all of my night bass charters in Boston Harbor and refused to schedule any in the past couple of weeks because there are no decent fish in the harbor at all. The few I can catch are well outside (3-5 miles out) chasing herring and mackerel. It is not feesible to target them with eels when its like that so it is trolling or live bait in the daytime or you are fishing for the exercise alone.
↓As for Cuttyhunk the end of May; well the fish had the “all you can eat bunker buffet” off Jersey and Long Island at that time and the macks were in Cape Cod Bay and “The Canal”. If I were a bass I wouldn’t be at Cutty……..JC
I don’t know Jason, someone must have forgot to tell a fish at cutty becouse it was probably the best trip ever
↓Go figure
It is sad to know we are going through this twice in the span of my short life. When the stock assessments come out and the regs are changed wait until the finger pointing gets really ugly.
Recs already point their fingers at the commercials. Commercials point the finger at the recs head boats say I am just trying to make a living. Meanwhile No one group is willing to look in the mirror and assess how they approach the fishery and the managers hands are tied to outdated science and management triggers and pressure from all use groups. Just another case of humans screwing up nature through greed and ego.
No one group is willing to compromise and god forbid we all work together. It is pretty telling when one year they are proposing an increase in quota and the next we are look at a 40% reduction potentially across the boards.
↓Captain Jason 3-5 miles out? Just saying
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