Striper Season....

[DEEP POCKETS]

When do stripers typically return to Raritan bay/Sandy Hook area early to mid-October?

Looking forward to an early start this year:)

[SaltLife1980]

Water temp plays a major role in when they return

[Gerry Zagorski]

They move south from their summering grounds in MA,ME,RI each fall and Raritna Bay is either home for them or a stop off.

Time of year depends on water temps. Mid October would be the earliest.

[Irish Jigger]

They are here now just have to get out there and find them!!!!!!

[nmc02]

Best guess would be November 1 is the beginning....

[CaptMarc]

From my log books, the end of October had been a good time to start. All dependson water temp like everyone said.

[tombanjo]

Hop on the Fishermen Monday night, you'll find them.

Which begs the question, if the Bklyn boats & the Fishermen have been hitting 'em pretty good all summer, just what do water temps have to do with it? At least in this case. Granted, I don't know what they are in the channels on the NY side but hard to believe much cooler than eslewhere. These "resident" fish sure look like they hang out all summer. Or never left once they arrived in the spring.

We need answers here.

[Blackfish Doug]

When I lived in NY we would drift eels night all over the place from Montauk to Lower NY Bay & over on the Jersey side. I usually do at least 1 night trip a year on the Fisherman & never had a bad trip. A lot of the times it wasn't always Stripers either in the mix either. I had caught everything from Porgy's,Croakers, & Vampire Fluke Lol. It's mostly a night bite unless your up for the first light then it's game on with the jigs until the sun is up then it usually shuts down.

[HighHook94]

Been catching stripers in the back of Raritan bay at night on jigs. Just caught a dozen last night. Nothing huge but fun on a light rod. Most of the fish come late October or early November depending on water temp though.

[SplitShot]

1st week of November last year was great for us snag/drop off Ocean County :D

[Capt Sal]

Best guess would be November 1 is the beginning....

Catch um way earlier than that in the Sandy Hook Raritan Bay area.

[Gerry Zagorski]

Last year a few people in the know were catching slobs on chunks all through the summer in one particular spot. I'm not talking schoolies either. These fish were 30 and 40 lbs tackle busters... However, once the sun came up it was over. I think a lot of it had to do with what I call the fish tank theory. If you go out and feed the fish every day in a certain spot they stick around and wait for you to show up and feed them.

There are resident fish in our area all summer long who don't seem to mind the temps but when the migration is on and the sand eels show up, it's game on all day long.

[Gerry Zagorski]

Some 411 on Striper Migration

All the focus lately on Stripers I thought it might be interesting to write about how they migrate and spawn.... It’s a very predicable cycle that has been taking place for hundreds of years. Understanding when and how spawning and migrations work can help you to be in the right place at the right time and help improve your catch...

There are 3 main bodies of Spawning Stripers along the East Coast...Hudson, Delaware and Chesapeake. These fish are known to migrate as far North as the St. Lawrence river in Canada and as far south as Northern Florida. The Chesapeake is said to have the most fish followed by the Hudson and then the Delaware. For the purposes of this article we will talk about the Hudson spawners.

In the late winter, usually Feb/March Stripers come out of the ocean and bays and take up residence in the rivers in which they were born to spawn. Like Salmon they are thought to have a very keen sense of smell and that's how they detect where to return. In the northern NJ area the Hudson spawn takes place in brackish and fresh water areas north of the Tappan Zee Bridge. This is what creates the great Hudson fishery in early Spring. They are usually caught in great numbers in the upper parts of the Hudson just after the spawn in March and April.

In mid April after the spawn most fish will move downstream to take up residence in the bays into which the river feeds. They usually hang out and fatten up on all the bait that is present before they continue their migration. This is why we have such a great fishery in mid April through June in places like lower NY bay, Sandy Hook bay and Raritan bay.

Once the water temps in the bay and ocean warms up to above 60 the fish tend to move out and start their northern migration. This is when the fishing will get better in areas north of us like Montauk, Block Island, Martha’s Vneyard, Nantucket, the Cape, Rhode Island and Maine. The fish feed as they make there way up the coast.

Around the beginning of September the fish will start their southern migration to return to their spawning grounds. They stop along the bays and shoreline along the way to feed on bait and fatten up for the journey. Knowing this you can predict that our fall fishery here in the Sandy Hook area will usually follow Montauk’s by a few weeks. When we slow down the Hudson spawners will go up the Hudson to start the cycle and over while others will move down the coast and places like Cape May will get hot. The Cape May fishery usually gets hot a few weeks after Sandy Hook. The beaches, inlets and bays between Sandy Hook and Cape May get hot in between.

So, we have 2 main fisheries in the Sandy Hook area. One takes place in the Spring (April - June) which is a result of Hudson River spawnwers returning to the oceans to migrate north. The other takes place in the fall (October - December) which is a result of the fish migrating south and stopping to feed along the way or go up the Hudson to spawn....

The reasons that Sandy Hook and Cape May tend to have a longer more consistent fishery then other areas in between is 2 fold... 1) They have large bays which are like highways used by local spawners to get upstream and back out to the ocean. 2) These bays hold massive schools of bait that the resident and migrating Stripers feed on to fatten up themselves up for their continued migration or spawn.

Some other fun facts :
- A spawning female Striper can lay 180,000 eggs
- Tagging surveys have shown that Stripers can migrate as far as 1000
miles ( I'll bet that was a male fish.. If I were responsible for
fertilizing 180,000 eggs you'd probably find me in Canada)
- Sexual maturity occurs around 4 years of age

[DEEP POCKETS]

Thanks for the information guys, hope this year is as good as the last few years.

What's your prediction, will the fish be on bunker like last 2 years or sand eels like they were a few years ago?

[Irish Jigger]

Gerry hit the nail on the head. Pre dawn or after dark is the time right now. The fish are there just need to search!!!!