Earning your Stripes

 

    It's hard to pick favorites, but if I had to choose one species to fish for the rest of my days, my vote would be heavily drawn towards ol' Seven Lines. I do stupid things for stripers. Swimming/wading out to rocks in the middle of a river boulder field, cutting significant chunks of time reserved for sleep in the fall to striper fish, dropping way too much money on plugs, etc. etc. etc. I have an entire collection of books whose topic is the sole pursuit of this one fish. I've seen fights break out between grown men over striper spots. And I wouldn't change a thing. 

    The river was unfishably high for almost two weeks, giving time for fish to push into new slots and seams for when it finally drops down to peak flow. That first day, I waded out to a partially submerged boulder and climbed up, beginning to whip several large plugs through a current seam. I've got what I call a top-> down approach to striper fishing, where I'll start off trying to draw a strike with a pencil popper or adjacent large surface plug, then begin to work my way down. I popped that current seam for a while, worked through the white water, then switched to a minnow plug again without so much as a scratch. I figured going deeper was probably then going to be a necessity, and so into my plug bag I reached and out came the 3/4 oz bucktail, no trailer necessary. 

    Launching the bucktail past the current break and letting the current swing it through, I gave two bounces and came tight on the first cast. This fish pulled drag and I had to muscle it around a big boulder before she showed herself in all striped and glistening glory, ending up as the largest river bass to ever chew up my right thumb. 

    I snapped a few shots of her before placing her back into the water, where she clamped down on my hand and then let go to give a big kick of her broomtail and going off. That morning, I picked another smaller fish on a jig before I had to head out. 

    Striped bass are built for power, not speed. One look at that wide broomtail without a deep forkage can tell an experienced angler that these fish can hold in some extremely fast water, with powerful bursts of energy to snatch prey out of that shallow water. My river bass game has a lot to do with finding fast whitewater with lots of rocks, where fish will be sitting to ambush prey. 

    I've also been enjoying the positive pressures of putting others on fish. After a good morning where I had a steady pick of fish on swimbaits and minnow plugs, I've been taking Slavik out to a few spots where I've helped him get on some stripers, the first ones he's caught in a long time. As an aspiring outdoor guide and as a human being who tries to put experiences on a higher pedestal than materials, watching my friend catch fish in places that I love has been very rewarding and I encourage any other experienced angler or outdoor enthusiast to do the same. 

    Striper fishing can be challenging, frustrating, and incredibly rewarding. There are two primary times of year when my mind becomes completely and utterly occupied with seven stripes. The first is in the spring, right now, when the fish begins to run up the rivers down the street from my house, a time where tree frogs sing and current breaks over rocks try to whisper and roar over them. The second is the fall when they start going back down the open, by then desolate sand beaches of New Jersey in sprays of bait and silver and blood-red sunrises over the ocean. My fishing logs these times of year sound more like the ravings of a man possessed. But I'll keep fishing for them and keep writing, as long as I'm haunted by moving water.