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You want to find the big ones under working birds? Use these tactics.

Big On Birds

Sick and tired of catching shorts in a feeding frenzy? Try these tricks to get the big ones biting.

By Lenny Rudow

            There’s an acre of birds on the horizon and a major feeding frenzy taking place, yet you go home with an empty fish box? Every one of the dozens of fish you pulled in was a throw-back? Sound familiar? Chances are you’ve had this experience more than once, but don’t let it discourage you. There are some box-size fish to be caught from these frenzies—you just have to know how to target them.

Location, location, location.

            The first rule to bear in mind is that 90-percent of the time, fish breaking in water less than 20’ deep are going to be nothing but little guys. Sure, an oddball keeper or two might pop up if you work ‘em all season, but the vast majority of these fish are little guys. You see birds working in shallow water? If you want to catch keepers, ignore them completely. In fact, my own personal rule is that I won’t even check out a flock of birds that’s working in water under 20’.

And also consider location.

            Now that you’ve eliminated half of the fish found under flocks of birds you’ll see out there, let’s eliminate another large portion: those in the top 10’ of the water column. Yup, I can hear it already: “But I caught a dozen keepers right on the surface last year.” Okay, fine. But how many throw-backs did you have to cull to get that dozen? 100? 500? Maybe more? And, how big were the keepers? Barely legal, in most cases, is a fair bet. You want to catch bigger fish? Then go deeper. Fact: large stripers are lazy, and they’ll take a free meal over working for a living any day of the week. The largest fish of the frenzy will be holding deep down below the bulk of the school, slurping up injured bait that sinks from the fray. In 40’ or 50’ of water, don’t be afraid to drop your offering right down to the bottom to reach those big boys.

            Jigging spoons with slender profiles, which sink quickly, are usually best for this task. Pick one with a slow flutter, and there’s a good chance it’ll be picked up by a small fish before it can sink down to where the bigger fish prowl. Yo-Zuris, Braids, and Butterflies all work well at the job. Or, go to feather jigging. Try it with a three or four ounce weight, cast it as far as possible, and you’ll be able to work the jig just over the bottom.

Big bait = big fish.

            This rule is usually most important to bear in mind during the spring season, but it has merit in a summer or fall feeding frenzy, too. A 6” jigging spoon, for example, looks awful darn big. But a 9” striper won’t hesitate to attack it. That makes these situations an ideal time to try out that monster jigging spoon you have gathering dust in the back of the tackle box. Hint: stripers don’t mind eating other stripers. And remember, for much of the fall there will be blues mixed in with the bass. Occasionally the blues will chomp into a small striper, as they chase the baitfish. Said striper may then fall, quivering, into the depths. In other words, olive-green is a good color choice in this situation, to mimic the potential freebie meal of a big fish holding beneath the breakers.

            Another way to get bigger fish from the frenzy is to drop large live baits beneath it. This tactic is not a good idea when those bluefish are present, as they’ll eat the tail right off of anything they can wrap their teeth around. If it’s all line-siders, however, and you have live baits between 4” and 8” long in the livewell, put a hook through their nose and send ‘em down.

            One other way to keep your offering big: instead of jigging or baiting for these fish, troll. This will allow you to deploy large lures like parachutes and spoons (a #19 Tony is large enough to keep the small fish at bay) and offer them up fairly low in the water column. This is also a good move if you have kids or beginners onboard. Rig up four lines to run deep for the lunkers, and rig a couple small bucktails to run near the surface The surface lines make for bent rods and big smiles, keeping everyone onboard occupied while you wait for one of the deep rods to go off.

Peripheral Vision

            Whether you’re dropping jigs, tossing bait, or towing lines, it’s also important to remember to stay around the periphery of the school. Drive through it, and you’ll likely send them down. But beyond that problem, you’ll also likely catch smaller fish. Remember, birds of a feather do flock together—large fish patrolling around a surface blitz have no great desire to mix it up with the little guys. As a result, not only do they hang deeper than the larger school of smaller fish, they also tend to be located around the edges of the school. If you want to target those big fish you’re best off thinking of the massive schools of small fish as structure. Like a big rockpile, the lunkers will be holding off to the sides of the base of the “item”.

Abandon ship!

            We’ve all heard the old rule, never leave fish to find fish. There’s a lot of truth to this saying, and I often try to live by it. However, when looking for large fish under breaking schools of little guys, I try to force myself to forget this saying. In fact, if you work a school for half an hour or so and don’t find any large fish, it’s probably time to move on. Sometimes there’s nothing there but little guys, and you should be able to figure this out fairly quickly. It’ll be tough, but you’ll have to bite the bullet and force yourself to move on and leave those fish. This is especially true when there are several pods of breakers in the general area. Whip out those binoculars—I know you have a good pair of image-stabilized binocs, which make spotting birds at a distance easy, right?—and head off for another school. You never know, that one on the horizon might just hold your catch of the day!

            For more in-depth information on striper fishing, check out Lenny Rudow’s book, Rudow’s Guide to Rockfish, available at http://www.geareduppublications.com.

And if you’re vertically jigging over hard bottom, don’t guess at the depth your lure is at. Instead, keep dropping as you jig to ensure it’s always near the bottom.

3. Sandpaper Teeth – Grab a striper by the jaw, and you can feel those sandpaper-like teeth. Why not have sharpies like a bluefish? Or conical teeth, like a tuna? There are some biological advantages to sandpaper: it allows for sucking in pray of all different types from fish to clams to worms; it’s good for crushing baitfish instead of chopping them (thus not losing sections of the cut fish as they drift away, or are eaten by competitors); and they aren’t prone to injury. As an angler, what you should remember about those teeth is that the fish aren’t usually attempting to “bite” your lure or bait, they’re sucking it into their mouth. When taking live baits, rockfish will often suck the bait into their jaws, clamp down, and squeeze for a few seconds to stun or kill the baitfish before taking it deeper into their mouth. Savvy anglers will remind themselves to allow a five or possibly even a ten-count (depending on the water temperature and corresponding activity level of the fish), whenever fishing live baits for stripers. Give them time, before you set the hook or reel tight on a circle hook.

The down-side to those types of teeth? For one thing, since a striper can’t cut its pray down to size, it must eat nearly everything head-first. (Swallow a whole fish tail-first, and its fins will get caught on the way down.) This explains why short-shank leadhead jigs often out-fish those with the hooks placed far aft; why live-baiters often do best by running the hook through the bait’s nose (all other factors being equal, since there are specific situations in which back-hooking is superior); and why you’ll still catch fish on jigs with hooks rigged at the top, instead of the bottom.

4. Couch Potato – Stripers are lazy fish. I may not have any scientific data to back up that assertion, but any angler in the top ten percent can confirm it for you—a striped bass would rather scavenge a freebie any day, as opposed to chasing down a healthy, fleeing fish. Remember this when you spot breaking fish under working birds. Sure, there may be a zillion fish busting water, but the real cows in that crowd will be down deep, below the main school, waiting to slurp up injured baitfish sinking through the water column. Cast and retrieve up top if you want numbers, but sink a lure beneath the main school if you want to catch the biggest fish around. Maybe you’ll go live-lining, instead of looking for those breaking fish? Clip off a pectoral fin off of your bait, and when the stripers see it struggling to keep on an even keel, they’ll pound it even more quickly. You’re fishing live baits on bottom? Try fishing a cut bait, too, and often you’ll discover they eat it before they’ll bother to chase down a livie.

5. Scardey Cat – Look closely at the flanks of a striper, and you’ll clearly see its lateral line. All fish have one, and it’s what they use to sense vibrations in the water. Essentially, it’s the way a fish “hears,” and stripers hear a whole lot more than we imagine.

Anyone who’s been flats fishing with a guide in Florida can tell you, the guides down there are very cautious as they approach fish. They keep their voice low, and try not to make any noise. If a loud noise is made, they’ll see their prey zoom away with a swish of the tail. We may not be able to see the stripers we’re hunting most of the time, but if we could, we’d see them react the exact same way. While doing research for magazine articles I’ve recorded boat noises under water, and amazingly, one of the loudest sounds that carries through the water is the human voice. You let out a yell when you had a hook-up? Then you just scared every other fish within casting distance.

            Another sound that carries through the water is fiberglass banging fiberglass. If you wanted to spook every striper around, slamming a deck hatch is a great way to do it. Same goes for dragging a heavy tacklebox across the deck, stomping on the deck, or sliding a heavy cooler. Finally, remember that two stroke engines make a ton of racket below the waterline, when in neutral. While in gear the sound levels are far lower, and are close to those of a four-stroke. But in neutral, the clanging and banging of metal parts causes a huge ruckus.

            These biological factors—along with many others—and how they effect the behavior of stripers are explained in more detail in my latest book Rudow’s Guide to Rockfish, available at www.getfishingbooks.com. Now: are you ready to join that top ten percent? Then keep these traits of the stripers in mind, every time you go fishing. Learn to think like a fish, and a full cooler will follow.

--Lenny Rudow

Chumming may seem like a simple tactic: just put some ground fish over the side, and the stripers will come ‘a swimming, right? Sort of; basic chumming works but you can make this tactic work better, by using these chumming tricks.

During the fall season most schoolie stripers will be up near the surface, and that’s where you’ll want your chum. If you want to try for larger fish, however, or if you’re chumming for spring trophies, you’re going to have to use a few tricks to get chum down deep where the larger fish are lurking. Note—it is true that the majority of spring trophies caught trolling are hooked in the upper water column, nowhere near the bottom. Yet every spring trophy I know of caught on chum came from a bait set dead on the bottom. I have no reasonable explanation for this strange contradiction, but have tried fishing chum baits at mid-depth and the surface during the spring trophy season time and time again, without ever getting a strike. I can’t tell you why it is, but the fact remains: spring trophies caught on baits while chumming come from the bottom, period.

There are several ways to get your chum deep. Weighting a regular chum bucket is not one of them. The frozen chum possesses quite a bit of buoyancy, and you’d need a pound of lead to start it sinking. If there’s any kind of current, that will pick it right back up and pull it behind the boat, higher and higher as the current increases. Luckily, many tackle shops carry small mesh cages with weighted bottoms. You’ll have to chop your frozen chum into small pieces to fit it into these cages but the effort is worthwhile; they sink much better than a bucket and by adding six to 10 ounces of lead you can get one to stay on bottom in a two knot current, in 50’ of water. Unfortunately these bait cages deteriorate quickly and are only good for a season or two, but they only cost six or seven dollars, and a new one can be purchased each spring without breaking the bank.

Sand balls are another way to sink chum, but they are a bit more work-intensive. You’ll need the chum thawed ahead of time to use sand balls, and you’ll need to carry a bucket of sand on the boat. When you’re ready to fish, put some sand in one hand, place a golf ball sized lump of chum on top, get some more sand, and mold it into a ball around the chum. Pack it firmly, then drop it over the side. The sand will weight it down enough to fall quite deep before it all disburses.

The third method of sinking chum is to place a handful into a brown paper bag, put your hook through the bag a couple of times, and lower your rig to the bottom. When it hits, a few strong tugs will rip the bag free of the hook, allowing it to open and the chum to drift out. As with sand balls, this is labor intensive and messy.

The fourth and least-often seen method of sinking chum is to attach a tiny chum pot or a film canister with holes poked in it to your rig, usually where it attaches to the main line. The pot or canister is, of course, stuffed with chum, and releases it close to your bait. This method is effective and isn’t as messy or as much work as sand balls or the bag method. On the down-side, the tiny chum container will usually run out pretty quickly. To keep it actively disbursing chum you’ll be forced to reel up your line and re-fill the canister every 15 minutes or so.

I strongly recommend using the weighted chum cage method when you want to keep your chum deep. It’s simpler, easier, and less messy than the other options. However, there’s one caution: when you hook into a large, uncontrollable fish, make sure someone pulls the chum pot immediately. Otherwise, you risk tangling your fishing line around the chum cage line—and that spells disaster.

There are several methods savvy bay anglers use to “thicken” their chum slicks, and draw in more fish. One common way to enhance a surface slick is to add a menhaden oil drip bag into the mix. The drip bag, similar to the common IV bag seen in hospitals, will allow tiny drops of menhaden oil to dribble out at a slow, constant rate. During the summer and fall seasons when stripers and blues are schooled and feeding in the upper water column, this gives your chum slick an effective boost. In the spring season, and when putting your baits down deep in search of a lunker, the drip bag will have little or no effect because the oil it releases floats and disburses on the surface, only.

Dropping chunks is another way to turn your chum slick into a super slick. Chunks are commonly thumbnail-sized bits of sliced menhaden, a handful of which are tossed overboard every few minutes. Since these chunks are larger than the ground bits in your chum slick, they sink and drift at a different rate and will expand the influence of your chum slick. Tossing chunks is particularly effective when the current is very strong, and your chum doesn’t have time to sink much before it’s whisked away. To get the best effect out of chunks, be sure to vary the part of the boat you toss them from. Put one handful over the port side; the next over the starboard side; toss the next batch up near the bow, and so on.

Make your chum slick a super-slick, and you will catch more fish. So try out these chumming tricks, and boost your catch rate the very next time you leave the dock.

--Lenny Rudow

Bottom Bouncing, 101

Give an old tactic new life.

Bottom bouncing may not be new, it may not be trendy, and it may not be “hot,” but it is one thing that all anglers can appreciate: it’s effective. It’s also fairly straightforward and once mastered, can be applied to any drop-off, ledge, or channel edge holding stripers up and down the coast.

Active Measures

Bottom-bouncing is the only form of trolling that requires an angler to constantly work the rod, and it’s usually used to target specific fish in a very specific spot. It requires some pretty stout gear, with reels of the same type spooled up with monel line. (Steel and superbraid lines will both work, but not as effectively; monel cuts the water well and makes it easier to keep your line on bottom, it doesn’t rust, and it won’t cut into the spool if you hook bottom, as some superbraids will.) Rods should be 6’ to 6’6” and fiberglass—in other words, more or less unbreakable, like a Penn Mariner—in the 50-lb. class, with a slow-action tip. Unlike other forms of trolling you’ll need to feel the weight hitting bottom for the tactic to work, and the slow-action rod will make this easier. Levelwind reels are your best bet and while Senators will work, it’s easier to get kinks and bends in the line if you don’t have the levelwind feature. Get a kink in monel and it’ll break off on the next strike, so this is an important feature.

Rods should be stout enough to take the several ounces of lead you’ll need to keep in touch with the bottom, and should have stainless-steel guides. Many other types of guides will get grooves worn through them, by the monel (and sometimes by braid as well.) Penn Senator rods are the old stand-by.

Lures used for bottom-bouncing are very specific: bucktails in the three to six inch range, usually white, chartreuse, or yellow. They should have light heads, usually an ounce or a fraction of an ounce. And they get tipped with live bull minnow (the bigger the better,) twister tails, squid strips, or (for traditionalists) pork rinds.

Bottom bouncing rigs start off with a triple swivel tied to the end of the main line. One of the two remaining eyes of the swivel needs a three-foot dropper line, which should be of relatively light mono; 20 pound test works well. (If you use heavier line for the dropper and if the weight snags bottom, you’ll lose the entire rig. But the 20 pound test will break off before your main line does, saving your lures and swivels.) Tie a six to 10 ounce dipsy or bank sinker to the end of the dropper line, with the exact size depending on the depth you’re fishing. In 20’ to 25’ six will usually do the trick; in 25’ to 30’ you’ll need to go to eight ounces, and deeper means even more lead is necessary. The third eye of the dropper is for your leader, which is commonly 40 or 50 pound test. In this case it should be a long one, no less than 15’. Many old-timers use 20’ or even 25’ leaders before tying on the bucktail.

Anglers will have to hold and “work” the rods at all times. Rods left in holders will not catch half the fish of worked rods, literally. In order to properly work a rod the angler must pay constant attention to both his gear and the captain, and the captain must pay constant attention to the depth finder. This can not be stressed enough—bottom bouncing is not a lazy man’s way of fishing, and if you treat it as such, you simply won’t be successful. Working the rods properly is truly the key with this tactic.

Start out with your boat over level ground, moving at three to five mph (slower is usually better) far enough from the bump you’re working to get all of your lines set near the bottom depth and ready to catch fish before you cross over it. At this point, the angler must drop the line back until he feels the weight bump bottom. Then he locks up the reel, and maintains tension so the rig is pulled back off the bottom by the forward motion of the boat for at least 10 seconds. Then he drop back line a second time, until it bounces bottom again. Finally, the process should be repeated a third time. Now the angler should hold his rod forward so the tip is pointed towards the bow of the boat. Then he quickly drops the tip back while maintaining minimum tension on the line. He should (must) feel the weight bump bottom as the rod tip nears the stern. If not, some additional line needs to be dropped out before trying again or he’s dropping back too quickly (net allowing the weight to hit bottom) or too slowly (not feeling it hit because of slack in the line). When the line’s set properly he should be able to sweep the rod tip forward, then drop it back and feel the weight contact with the bottom just as the rod is pointed aft, almost at the very end of the back-sweep. If the weight bumps when the rod is only half way aft, there’s too much line out or it’s being dropped back too quickly and needs to be adjusted accordingly.

Now, it’s time for you--the captain--to go to work. When the boat moves over the edge of a bump you should call it out to the anglers, and let them know exactly what kind of change is coming so they know whether to take up or let out line. An example: you’re approaching a bump with the lines set, then you see it starting to rise on the bottom. You’ll tell your anglers “The bottom’s coming up from 30’. Now it’s 25’. Now 22’.” And so on. This way the anglers will be prepared for the rises and drops. This is important, because as soon as the depth changes they will need to adjust that line to keep bouncing that weight along. Otherwise, they’ll either hook bottom (going up the bump) or lose contact with it (going down the bump). In fact, while crossing over the depth change, on each and every sweep of the rod tip the angler should be adjusting the amount of line out to keep the weight bouncing bottom properly, without dragging. If he does so, the stripers will smack that bucktail right when it reaches the edge of the bump.

Quite often, fish will strike the bucktail as you’re dropping the tip back. In this case the forward sweep of the rod becomes the de-facto hook-set. If you feel added resistance as you start the forward sweep you should increase the speed and strength of that sweep, to get a solid hook-set. At other times, you may feel a twang on the line during the back-sweep or at the very end of the forward sweep. In either of these cases get as much tension on the line as quickly as you can and get a bend in that rod, before the fish has a chance to shake the lure free.

When applied properly, bottom-bouncing is one of the most effective methods of taking stripers around structure, period. There are a couple other factors to bear in mind, however. First off, if the structure is abrupt and snaggy, such as a wreck, bottom-bouncing will be nearly impossible because you’ll snag it on nearly every pass. In this case, however, you’ll still catch the fish if you mark the spot and troll right next to it. Secondly, give this method extra consideration when you’re fishing in an area with multiple humps and bumps, but the fish have been on the move. While other forms of fishing might force you to try spot after spot until you finally find the one the fish are at, by bottom-bouncing you can troll from hump to hump and cover a lot of them in a short period of time. Then, when you find one hump or shoal that’s productive you can stick to it.

It may be more work than other forms of trolling, but some anglers would also say it’s more fun since you get to play a role in attracting and hooking the fish, beyond simply setting some lines out and driving around. And when you get down to brass tacks there’s no argument: bottom bouncing is one of the most effective ways ever invented to fill the fishbox.

--Lenny Rudow

You can learn more about this technique and others in the book Rudow’s Guide to Rockfish, ($20, available at www.getfishingbooks.com,) which details many specific tactics that are effective on stripers.

Midnight Bite

When water temps rise and the bite becomes lethargic, it’s time to go night fishing.

Green bioluminescent glowing from the prop wash, dead winds and little to no competition are a few of the fringe benefits of night fishing. Oh yes, did I forget to mention awesome catches? In fact, when water temps soar and the fish fall into dog-day doldrums, night is often the only decent time to fish—including striped bass.

Gear Up

To try night fishing, you’ll need some special equipment. Flashlights, obviously. But don’t just get the hand-held variety. Much of the time you’ll need your hands for tying knots and baiting hooks, so the lights that clips to your hat brim or headlamps that you wear like a hat are the way to go. You’ll also need night lights for your boat—the more light you can put on the water the more bait you’ll attract, and the more bait you attract the more big fish you’ll catch. White halogens work well; for years I used a set attached to a broomstick, which I dropped into a rodholder and aimed at the water. But in recent years green fluorescent lights like the Hydro Glow have been developed, and they are truly amazing. The tube of light will throw a halo of green light 30’ around the boat, and menhaden are attracted to it like moths to a porch light. In fact, I’ve watched schools of menhaden numbering in the thousands circle around the Hydro Glow in a swarm so thick, they blocked the light until the green glow was a mere sliver. At times like these, one throw of the cast net provides a livewell full of prime baits. Whenever you put one of these lights over the side also keep a dip net handy, because the light attracts crabs, too. Note to offshore guys: these lights are just as effective at attracting squid in blue water.

Some anglers also use small lights that attach directly to their lines, usually at the line-to-leader swivel, or clip a cylume light stick on as you would when swordfishing in the Atlantic canyons. I’m not convinced that helps much, although this may be because their effect is dampened by the overwhelming light of a unit like the Hydro Glow. It should also be mentioned that there are knock-offs on the market at this point. Bass Pro Shops has their own version of green night lights, as do a couple of other companies. However, you get what you pay for when it comes to both the amount of light they produce, and longevity—the Hydro Glow is definitely the way to go!

Another tool all night anglers need is a good handheld spotlight. You shouldn’t cruise with it on, since it will destroy your night vision. But a strong spotlight is invaluable when you’re trying to find channel markers and other landmarks.

Okay—you’ve got the gear you need, the sun’s getting low on the horizon, and you’re psyched to hook into some serious scale. What next? That depends on whether you’ll be chasing croaker, stripers, or trout, so we’ll address each in turn.

Dog Day Darkness

During the dog days of summer, stripers sometimes seem to suffer from extreme lockjaw. You can spot schools of them on your fishfinder, right where you caught them a few weeks ago—and where you’ll catch them a month later—but they won’t take a bait or lure no matter how you wiggle it in front of them. There’s one way to catch these fish: go night fishing.

Points at river mouths and points with sharp drops and shell bottoms, channel edges, and bridges with lightlines are all good places to look for fish. As usual, location is key—you’ll do best if you find a well-lighted bridge with relatively deep water in the channel (at least 12’ or 15’) and a decent current. Boat positioning is key when hunting stripers at a bridges’ light-line. You’ll want to anchor up-current (or up-wind, if there is little or no current) within easy casting distance of the light line where it crosses over the deepest part of the channel under the bridge. If you’re at a bridge over very deep water, instead of looking for the intersection with the channel, find the area where the depth transitions from about 20’ to 12’. Essentially what you’re looking for is close access to water over 10’ with a lightline that crosses into a shallower zone, because stripers will frequent these intersections during both cycles of the tide. If you set up in a spot surrounded only by shallow water you’re not likely to have much success on a low tide, and if you set up in a spot surrounded only by deep water you’re not likely to have much success during a flood tide—so try to find a light-line that has the best of both worlds.

Once you’ve pinpointed this intersection and you know where you want to place your bait, motor away and drop anchor just within casting distance. Set out your lights so the light-line you create intersects with the one made by the bridge. Rig up a direct line to leader connection, without any swivels or weights. Cast live peanut bunker just beyond the light-line intersections (stripers will usually feed a few feet over on the dark side) and leave your reels in freespool, so the stripers can run with the bait without feeling any tension.

Just think of it: no blazing sun, no crowds to contend with, and fish in the cooler. There’s no doubt about it—during the summer, night time is the right time to go fishing, and it’ll take care of those summer doldrums in no time.

--Lenny Rudow
 

For a more detailed look at night fishing for stripers, check out the author’s book Rudow’s Guide to Rockfish, available at www.getfishingbooks.com.

Get Jiggly With It

Want to take up light tackle jigging for striped bass? Here’s how!

Essentially, jigging is lowering a lure to the approximate depth of the fish, then raising and lowering your rod tip to impart a life-like action to your lure. It’s most effective when fish are schooled up and also works quite well for catching larger than average fish when the average fish are on top, busting water. Since you’ll be more or less vertically positioned over the fish, it’s important for the captain to be able to locate them and either position and hold the boat over the school, or position the boat for a drift over the school.

There are no hard and fast rules as to the where’s and when’s of jigging. You can try this tactic any time fish are schooled up, either in open water or along an edge, break, or other form of underwater structure. It does require a decent fishfinder and an operator who knows how to read it, although there are some old-timers out there who can position a boat over some form of structure they’re intimately familiar with by simply looking at distant landmarks.

Since the fish need to be schooled to effectively jig them up, this tactic is not usually applied early in the season. Migrating fish will be nearly impossible to catch by jigging, and the technique usually becomes more and more effective as the season progresses and fish pack tighter and tighter together. Once fish start breaking water, jigging becomes much easier. Throughout the fall months birds often mark the spot for you, and boat position becomes a matter of parking where you see them. Why not just cast to the breaking fish? That would certainly get you a bent rod. But the larger stripers usually patrol just below the school of breaking fish, waiting for an easy meal to drift down to them. Since you can drop below the smaller guys and jig your lure at the depth the larger fish are hanging at, you have a much better chance of catching lunkers from a school of stripers busting water if you drop a jig down instead of casting.

One important note: You don’t want to drive those fish down from the surface, because they make it easy to spot the school with your eyes. So never drive directly into the fish. Instead, approach them from up-wind (or up-current, whichever is strongest,) and once you’re within 50 or 60 yards cut back to idle speed. Once you’re within 30’ or 40’ of the fish shut down the motor, and allow the wind to push your dead boat over them.

Mobile Advantage

Jigging is probably the most effective method you can possibly use when fish are in medium to small size schools which are moving around a lot. You may find this situation on a long, uninterrupted channel edge, or in open water when there are fast-moving pockets of bait scattered around. Often this occurs shortly after the spawn, in late spring and/or early summer. In these situations jigging is the best way to get a lure presented to the fish the moment you locate them on the fishfinder, without getting bogged down with bait, anchors, setting spreads, and the like. As soon as the fish move on you can, too, without any break-down time. In these situations don’t just drift around and jig—you’ve got to hunt those fish. Maintain your mobility, and keep a close eye on the meter at all times. When you see the fish be ready (and have all your anglers be ready) to drop immediately, and jig for all they’re worth until the boat drifts off the fish or they leave. As soon as the fish disappear, keep the lines up until you relocate them. Yes, you’ll spend a lot of time searching if you fish this way. But at the end of the day, you’ll have more stripers in the cooler than the guy who drifted around and jigged the whole time, hoping to luck into the fish.

Tools of the Trade

Some people choose metal spoons for jigging, others prefer leadheads with plastic bodies, and some anglers like to jig with bucktails. All will work, so long as you remember a few key factors when it comes to choosing jigging gear: First off, use a reel spooled with braid. Monofilament simply can not compare when used for jigging, because the braid won’t stretch and will cut the water better. You’ll be better able to maintain contact with the bottom and when a fish strikes, hook-sets will be immediate. Choose a rod that has a fast-action tip, which will also help you give the fish a firm hook-set. And consider rigging up with tandem rigs—with a large heavy lure on the bottom and a light lure run from a second line, via a triple-swivel—when fish like perch and sea trout are in the area. This rig, with its large and small offerings, will allow you to catch multiple species at the same time. More fish on your line, and more fish in the cooler; that’s why we want to jig in the first place, right?!

Reading the Meter

How will you know when to continue hunting for fish and when to stop and drop? Unless working birds make it obvious, you’ll need to become proficient at reading your fishfinder. You don’t need an expensive, high-tech unit for this purpose; color screens help but aren’t 100-percent necessary, and so long as the water is less than 100 feet even the lowest-power units should do the job just fine.

The most important aspect to reading the fishfinder when jigging is to be able to differentiate between schools of bait and large predator fish. Obviously it’s the predators we want to stop and drop on.

In the case of stripers, you’ll see inverted “V” shapes on the fishfinder screen. Some people describe them as boomerangs or arches. On color machines they will show up bright red. They will usually be at least five feet off the bottom, and may be at any depth up to the surface. Usually, they will be at or near mid-depth. If you see a single arch at a time, the chances are that you’re looking at scattered fish, and jigging them will be tough—keep looking. If you see a couple right next to each other or one right over another, you may be looking at a pod of fish and it’s worth attempting a drift or two. If the drifts don’t produce don’t hesitate to move on, though. And when the fishfinder screen shows you many multiple arches at one, pull back on the throttles and get those lines over the side!

You see big, puffy clouds at mid-depth? In most cases, these are going to be schools of bait. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you should move on just yet. Remember that old saying: find the bait, and you’ll find the fish. Just continue to use you main jigging advantage as much as possible: maintain mobility, and move around until you find the fish—you’ll see ‘em, plain as day, on that fishfinder screen.

--Lenny Rudow

Stripers like structure - don't overlook the most obvious of all!

Light Up My Life

What’s the most obvious structure that is most often overlooked by anglers? Cargo ships and tankers. No matter where you fish you’ve probably seen those monstrous ships anchored up, waiting to enter ports and deliver or pick up their cargo. When these ships sit at anchor, they create massive structures that attract fish every bit as effectively as rockpiles, drop-offs, and channels. Added bonus: On windy days you can often fish the leeward side of a ship and catch a break from the seas.

Just by virtue of sitting in one place for an extended period of time, the hulls of these ships will attract fish. Don’t forget, they may extend 30’ or even 40’ below the surface. The bulbous bows protrude beyond the visible waterline, adding some structure that’s completely covered over the top with water. And of course, a propeller or two the size of your sportfishing boat is just below the surface astern. So there’s a lot of physical matter here that fish can orient to. But the obvious is only half the story.

By law, these ships are required to maintain floodlights illuminating the deck through all hours of darkness. These are some potent lights, and are visible from many miles away. Plenty of that deck illumination spills over the sides of the ships and creates a large area of illumination around it. This is what really sucks in the fish. Find a ship that anchored in the morning, and fish around it in the evening. You’ll probably get a few hits. Return to that ship the next morning—after it’s been blasting light around it all night—and you’ll encounter ten times as many fish. Some of the fish a ship attracts in the dark may well move on once the sun comes up. But a large percentage stick around in the area to enjoy the physical structure. The longer a ship remains anchored in the same spot, the more fish it will suck in night after night and the more fish that will remain in the area through daylight.

Stripers will usually be located at mid-depth, usually along the sides of the ship with the best action usually coming in the forward half of the hull. Weakfish, another common ship-side catch, are more likely to be found at or near the bottom, and may appear on the meter anywhere around the ship, 360-degrees. For some reason, the stern of the ship tends to hold fewer fish than the forward sections.

Jigging is usually the best method for catching fish around the ships. Metal jigging spoons that will sink quickly and deeply, such as three to five ounce Braid, Yo-Zuri, and Hopkins spoons are all good choices. When it’s calm out leadhead jigs with plastic bodies in chartreuse, white, yellow, and chartreuse/pumpkinseed combinations are all killers. Occasionally pink is the color of choice and when it is, few other colors will work as well.

So the next time you see one of those big ships at anchor, don’t motor on past quite so fast. Pull back the throttles, and slide up alongside. Because while that ship sits there at anchor waiting on his cargo, you might just fill the cooler with the type of cargo that you’re looking for.

Note: Since 911, you have to be a little more careful about which ships you pull up to. Commercial freighters, tankers and the like won’t have a problem with your presence but naval vessels certainly will. Steer clear of military ships, and as you approach any ship, it’s always a good idea to tune your radio to 16 in case the captain hails you. Also be aware of abrupt engine starts, which may signal the eminent departure of a ship and give you your cue to back off. And remember that any time a ship gives five blasts of the horn it means danger, stay away.

More tactics for fishing the Mid Atlantic waters for striped bass and other fish can be found in the author’s book, Rudow’s Guide to Fishing the Mid Atlantic, www.getgup.com.