Wednesday, August 13, 2014

All Stripers

I just knew this was going to happen.  Loads of bait around  attracted blues and fluke two nights ago.  Well, last night it was all stripers as I was treated to a spectacular display for August.
I got down to the oceanfront a little after 6 o'clock.  As I walked toward the water immediately I could see splashes of fish in close tearing through the masses of tiny bay anchovies.  First cast with a swimmer and I was onto a good fish.  For sure it was either a keeper bass or a big blue as it was tearing off line and drag. Unfortunately I lost that fish.  But, that set the pace for the evening with fish breaking continuously for the schools of bait and good numbers of schoolies caught on small swimmers. In fact, it was my best night of striper fishing in months.  Oh, I did land one bluefish at dark also.
There was so much bait that it was impossible to even fish a plug at times.  There were times that I would bring the swimmer through the bait only to hook baitfish on every hook on the trebles, thus disabling the plug. I've NEVER seen this much bait in August along the oceanfront.
The hot plugs for the night were either a jointed Red Fin (blue back) or a 4-inch Rapala X-Rap.  While both caught good numbers of stripers, there were hundreds of fish that didn't even give those plugs a look. They were fussy, but many were still hitting.