Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:


They have an interesting behavior that was new to me. I was watching
the fish finder and ran into a rather broad school of blue back
herring. I sat on top of the school and just kind of watched it
drift. After a few minutes you could see fish markers coming in from
the sides and the school start to ball up - eventually starting to
rise from around 100'.

Next thing you know, the herring are on the surface and the stripers
were busting them from below.

Never seen that before - stripers, at least salt water stripers, are
lazy and generally ambush predators.
Maybe on the Wrong coast they are lazy. But out here they will heard the
anchovies into the beach and go on a feeding frenzy.

Oh, the schoolies will do the same here, but they have to compete with
bluefish which are highly aggressive. Generally, when you see birds
working the surface, it's because bluefish chased them up.

Stripers will hang below the bluefish and then they are pretty much
finished, that's prime time for the more aggressive schoolie stripers.

Larger stripers, say over 20 lbs, tend to be opportunistic feeders
hanging along and around structure and break points.

Next time I go down to Watch Hill Light, I'll take some pictures of
prime East Coast striper territory.

While at San
Francisco State University, I spend many an afternoon a few blocks west
fishing the beaches for stripers. You waited until you saw the birds going
crazy and raced down the beach to start throwing jigs for the stripers.
Lots of times they would be at your feet.

Up here, it's blue fish city when that happens.


I'd rather catch 5-10 pound bluefish on light tackle than 30 pound
stripers.