Fall Striper Bonanza?

Fall time brings on a whole new fishing and exciting time for being on the water, fish are feeding for the winter months and moving towards their winter locations. The Stripers on the East coast are leaving their Maine locations and heading down the coast towards their wintering grounds.

We have been trying a bit more striper fishing this summer and have heard that the fish had been using the canal in southern MA preparing for their fall migration. The canal is setup very fisher friendly meaning, there are bike paths on both sides and you can fish the whole length of the canal that is about 7 miles long.

Never being there before, we decided to start heading east towards the ocean and the current was flowing in that direction as well as the tide was coming in. The goal was to cover as much water as possible and we were finding out quickly that different parts of the canal had different currents flowing through.

Typical baits that are used are topwater, shallow diving stickbaits and also large jigs for fishing towards the bottom. As we started at daylight, working topwater plugs, we had a couple of blow ups but could see that they were smaller fish.

One location, we had a school of baitfish right in front of us and seen a flash of a fish working on the outer edge. Casting in a jig/plastic combination, the fish nailed it and wasn’t the biggest at 18 inches, but these fish put up a battle like they are of a much bigger size.

As we traveled near the mouth of the canal, this portion widened out quite a bit more and had more depth as well. Topwater never emerged, but we used an eel imitator casted as far out as possible and reeled slowly back. This bait had a paddle tail for the action and caught a bunch of schoolies which are always fun.

We were hoping for a much better day for sizes of fish, as we had a tropical storm moving in and over us with high winds and rain. We caught a number of fish but wanted to see some of those over the 30 inch mark, but wasn’t in the cards and that is what makes you wanting to come back again and again.