Part of Gartside’s genius was developing deadly yet easy-to-tie flies. His Gurgler and Slider topwater patterns became saltwater standards. Jack’s book Striper Strategies was described by reviewer Steve Raymond as “one of the most remarkable striper-fishing manuals to see the light of day.”

Gartside, who died in 2009, was one of a kind. He appeared on the cover of Fly Fishing in Salt Waters, making a cast while riding his large inflatable giraffe “Gerald.” When Lefty Kreh was asked his opinion of Gartside, he said, “His paint don’t dry.”

I met Gartside while helping at Robinson’s booth at a fly fishing trade show in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Robinson’s friend Dale Linder was also attending the show. Gartside was holding court, joking and tying flies at a nearby table. He invited the three of us to try fly fishing for striped bass when the weather warmed up.

On a bright June afternoon, we waded onto a Newburyport striper flat. Gartside caught one small schoolie after another while the rest of us got skunked. Not one to mince words, Gartside told me my retrieve resembled a motion he associated with self-gratification.

I was more concerned with the waves filling my boots. When I realized I couldn’t walk, I yelled for help.

“Don’t worry!” Gartside replied. “When your waders are full, you’ll reach neutral buoyancy.”

Linder had more humanitarian instincts. Luckily, he was also strong. He waded over and hoisted me up. I leaned forward and dumped out the water. I headed to shore on wobbly legs, telling myself, I don’t belong here. But we weren’t done. Gartside had another spot for night fishing.

The evening sun was slipping from from view as the tide came in. We stumbled through the grassy hummocks and sucking muck of a tidal flat and arrived at a point. Gartside walked out onto a rock jetty and started casting. Robinson, Linder, and I spread out along the shore.

I was using a borrowed 8-weight outfit heavier than anything I’d ever used. The sink tip and bulky streamer added another degree of difficulty, and I was hesitant to wade out very far in the dark, unknown waters.

I’d make woefully short casts, sit down on the sand for a while, get up, and do it again. I sweated, cursed, and caught nothing. Around 1 a.m., the agreed time to depart, I heard Robinson and Linder talking as they walked back up the beach. Then I heard a splash.

There was enough moonlight to see surface swirls of what I suspected were feeding fish. I slapped out another cast, stripped twice, and got a jolting strike. Slack flew up through the guides, but before I got the fish on the reel, a loop of line was yanked tight around my right index finger.

The rod was straight out now. So was my finger. Unaware of my predicament, Robinson started yelling, “Let the fish run, Jack! Let him run!”

I grabbed the line below the first guide, pulled, and got enough slack to free my trapped digit. There was a momentary tug of war, then the hook pulled out, and the line went limp. Robinson and Linder made a few casts, but the fish had departed to deeper water. As we reeled up to leave, Robinson said, “Well, at least you had one on.” It wasn’t much consolation.

We found Gartside standing where we’d left him. He had a fish taking drag, but it turned out to be an unremarkable striper, foul hooked in the tail. The walk back to the car held another surprise.

Gartside inflated a small rubber raft. I was puzzled. It looked like a child’s pool toy. But it became apparent that we’d need the damn thing to get back to terra firma. A wide ditch that was ankle deep on the way in was now a flowing canal. Gartside assembled a plastic paddle, handed it to me, and said, “We’ll go one at a time.” A length of thin rope was attached to the raft for retrieval.

Some experiences enlighten us. Others just remind us of the fragility of our existence. I paddled anxiously across the outgoing current as Gartside yelled, “Row a little faster, Jack, unless you want to go out to Plum Island!”

Here We Go Again

Fast forward to 2017. I’ve lived in Lakeville, Maine for 18 years. Ed Roberts, who I frequently fish with, lives half the year near Grand Lake Stream, a premier landlocked salmon fishery, and half the year in Florida. Both of us have more than 60 years in the rear view mirror, and like me, Roberts is originally from Connecticut. He’s a stalwart friend with a good sense of humor.

Among other things, Roberts time-shared a Battenkill River fishing camp with Joan and Lee Wulff. He made his living as a mechanical engineer, and he’s also an expert rod builder who works with bamboo as well as graphite. It’s not a cliché to describe him as young for his age. Forget white hair as a marker of senescence. For arm exercise, he does hammer curls with dumbbells I strain to lift.

When he captained an offshore sport boat on the Connecticut coast, Roberts and his clients fished for everything from sharks to yellowfin tuna. Now he fishes the flats when he winters in Vero Beach, Florida. He also spends a week in Rhode Island every summer, fly fishing for striped bass at night. He invited me to try it.

Wading the ocean after sundown? Fishing a channel coming out of a tidal marsh? I had my doubts. Roberts described a spot where he rarely encounters other fishermen. To get down to the water, he hangs onto a rope tied to the base of a tree. He says it’s easier than it sounds.

I was still hesitant, so he had me try the fly rod he uses; the action fit me to a T. He offered to build me an identical 9-weight. Okay, Ed, I’m in.

Into the Night

It’s June 2019—my third trip now. The long day’s drive from Maine includes the usual stop in New Hampshire for tax-free liquor. We arrive in Rhode Island late in the afternoon.

The house we rent, like our arrival routine, has become pleasantly familiar. Boxes and coolers are emptied into cabinets, drawers, refrigerator. The portable grill goes on the table out back. Tackle goes in the front room.

We sit at a small table on the front porch overlooking Narragansett Bay, decompressing from eight hours on the road. Roberts lights a cigar while I poke through fly boxes. We decide when to eat. After supper, we assemble rods, check tippets. Tackle goes back into Roberts’ SUV.

Fishing at night, we don’t attract unwanted attention to where we fish. It’s silly to think of other fishermen as interlopers, but our sense of ownership is reinforced by the solitude we have come to expect once the sun goes down. Half an hour before dark, we turn onto the familiar grass-crowned two-track. No one else is parked at the sandy dead end.

We suit up and walk in. Crossing the elevated field, we can see the incoming tide filling the back reaches of the marsh. Two herons stand motionless on a distant mud flat. The air still has the low-tide tang of salt and clean decay.

The coiled rope is where we left it hidden last year, tied to the base of a small cedar. The slope I once imagined as daunting is neither long nor steep. The rope is a convenience, not a necessity. Roberts gives it a test yank before we go down….

Subscribe to Tail Fly Fishing Magazine to continue reading.  Your print subscription to TFFM includes the digital version and years of back issues with hundreds more features all centered on saltwater fly fishing.

Jack Gagnon was a monthly contributor and part-time editor for the Northwoods Sporting Journal (sportingjournal.com) in West Enfield, Maine for 15 years. His work has appeared in Trout, Fly Fisherman, Virginia Sportsman, Gray’s Sporting Journal, The Upland Almanac, and Sporting Classics.

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The post Striper Redux – Jack Gagnon first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Striper Redux – Jack Gagnon appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

One of the redeemable qualities about striped bass is that, when they are plentiful, these fish are incredibly accessible.  We fish for them on foot in downtown Boston, from quiet beaches in Rhode Island, in the brackish water of the Chesapeake Bay, and by boat all the way from North Carolina to Maine.  In fact, data from 2017 shows that almost 18 million angler fishing trips were taken in pursuit of stripers.  That impressive number represents 9% of the total angler fishing trips taken across the entire country (NOAA – Source).  

If you’re a striped bass angler, you likely know that the population is in trouble.  Striper populations are currently at a 25 year low and the age structure is out of whack.  If our fisheries managers at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) don’t correct the trajectory, we all stand to lose this iconic resource.  ASMFC is in the midst of trying to adjust their own mismanagement of the striped bass stock and rebuild the population through a new plan.  Anglers aren’t particularly confident in ASMFC, and with good reason, the commission’s track record is less than stellar.  I share this context to simply set the stage.  I’ll halt right there and shift gears.  This is not an article of doom and gloom but rather, one of hope, and a reminder that: 

STRIPED BASS ARE IN OUR HANDS

This year, the angling community will have millions and millions of chances to care for this species.  Anglers pursue striped bass in myriad ways with a number of goals in mind:  some hope to feed their families, some go fishing to simply catch-and-release, and some to make money in the commercial fishery.  Regardless of how you access and utilize the fishery, it is your right to legally operate within the regulations that your state defines.  

Whether you catch-and-release or catch-and-keep, commercially or recreationally, releasing fish is something that all anglers do.  We are all united by the perfect moments of getting a striped bass to hand, regardless of our ambition and regardless if that fish goes to the cooler or back to the ocean.  

According to the most recent Striped Bass Stock Assessment released in 2019, the number of stripers that unintentionally die from catch-and-release angling actually exceeds the number of bass that are recreationally harvested.  To simply break that down, recreational anglers kill more fish by catching and releasing them than by actually intentionally killing them for food.  That fact might come as a surprise to many but ASMFC estimates that 9% of the fish that are caught-and-released throughout the striped bass season die.  These stripers that die from catch-and-release might be a fish gill hooked in Maine’s cold june water, or a gut hooked striper in New Jersey during the fall migration, or a Maryland bass that just couldn’t survive a summer release in a low oxygen environment, or even a bass that was simply held out of water longer than it could handle after a strenuous fight.   

When we slow down and think about each encounter during the season, it becomes clear that careful handling during every single interaction is not only vital to that individual fish’s survival but to the entire future of the striped bass population.  An encounter with a 14” schoolie and it’s safe release potentially solidifies a future 40” warrior bass that crushes menhaden, eats surface plugs, lives for live mackerel, slurps chunk baits and inhales a well placed fly. ASMFC’s most recent stock assessment, estimated that approximately 3.4 million striped bass died from the practice of catch-and-release, the direct result of our handling and angling practices. That’s an enormous number and one that we have control of through our individual behaviors. Yes, we are individual anglers but together we are the users and stewards of this resource and have an enormous impact.  

Keep Fish Wet is an organization focused on helping recreational anglers improve the outcome for each fish they release.  They do this by taking the best available science on how fish respond to capture and handling, and translate the research into simple techniques that anglers can use to ensure that released fish survive and are healthy.  When doing the math, Sascha Clark Danylchuk, Executive Director of Keep Fish Wet, reminds us that if we decrease release mortality by just one percent (something that is very doable using best practices), then over 250,000 more stripers would remain in the fishery.  Those fish that have been given the best chance at survival will live on to support recovering stocks and be caught again another day.  Whether you fish from a center console, the beach, a rocky shoreline, a skiff, or a downtown piece of city concrete, these principles will help to make sure that your catch is released safely.  

• Minimize Air Exposure.  10 seconds or less is best.
• Eliminate Contact with Dry Surfaces.  Wet your hands before touching fish and avoid bringing them into boats.   
• Reduce Handling Time.  Release fish quickly and only revive fish that cannot swim on their own.

We have high hopes that ASMFC sets the management plan for striped bass on a course to rapid recovery, but in the meantime let’s take this fishery in our own hands and safeguard that each fish we release swims off strong and healthy because:

STRIPED BASS ARE IN OUR HANDS  

Expanded Best Practices for Catch-and-Release: 

Below are the best practices you can use to create better outcomes for each striped bass you release.  

Best Practice Principles: 

The actions that will make the most difference to the survival and health of the striped bass you put back – whether because of regulations or voluntarily.  Regardless, we all catch-and-release.

1. Minimize Air Exposure.  10 seconds or less is best.
2. Eliminate Contact with Dry Surfaces.  Wet your hands before touching fish and avoid bringing them into boats.   
3. Reduce Handling Time.  Release fish quickly and only revive fish that cannot swim on their own.

Best Practice Tips:  

Actions that help you employ the Principles

• Use barbless hooks
• Limit your use of lip grippers, and when doing so keep the fish in the water
• Always hold fish with two hands and never hang fish vertically in the air
• Photograph fish in or just over the water  
• If you are fishing from a boat with high gunnels, reach down to meet the fish or use a long handled net.  If you have to bring the fish into the boat, be prepared to make it quick.  Have a hook removal tool at the ready, and get that fish back into the water quickly and gently. 

Written By: Kyle Schaefer in collaboration with Sascha Clark Danylchuk, Andy Danylchuk, and Bri Dostie

Atlantic Striped Bass: Pisces in Peril | Mark White

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The post Stripers In Our Hands first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Stripers In Our Hands appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Increased fishing pressure and degradation and loss of habitat in the 1970s resulted in a collapse of striped bass stock in the 1980s, but a moratorium on striper fishing, new legislation, and a new management program all contributed to an apparent striper rebound by the late 1990s.

Striped bass thrived for nearly a decade–but once again, the population is in serious decline. Eager to offset the decline, East Coast states have stepped in with various proposals aimed at reducing striper mortality–particularly the mortality of the “spawning stock biomass”: the weight of females ages four years and older in the striper population. Despite these efforts, the Atlantic striped bass population appears to be in continued decline.

How did we get here? What can we do to save the beloved striper?

America’s Saltwater Sweetheart

For better or worse, the humble striper remains a favorite of the hook-and-line recreational angler. According to an article in the February 2019 issue of On the Water magazine, reporting on a meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Striped Bass Management Board, recreational anglers were responsible for 90 percent of the coastal removal of striped bass in 2017: In real numbers, “recreational fishermen are estimated to have caught 41.2 million striped bass in 2017. They kept 2.9 million and released 38.2 million. Of those 38.2 million released, it is estimated that 3.4 million did not survive.” Yes, you read that correctly: The ASMFC estimates that in 2017, the number of fish that died after being handled by recreational anglers and then returned to the water exceeded the number that anglers took home with them.

Could training enable recreational anglers to reduce catch-and-release mortality? Yes, says Captain Dave Cornell, who guides along Massachusetts’ South Coast: “Landing a fish quickly, with a minimum of handling at the boat, is very important.” Pinch down those barbs, says Cornell, and have pliers at the ready. “Fish that have hooks in their gills and may be bleeding are best unhooked by opening the gill and going in from behind, where the hook is often easier to access. Many anglers don’t know this. Cutting off the fly after freeing it from the gill plates can minimize damage to the gill.”

Dr. Gary Nelson of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (MDMF) offers a qualified agreement that changing recreational anglers’ behavior could greatly affect rates of fish mortality: “Yes and no. I think many recreational anglers are aware that circle hooks are a good alternative to J hooks for decreasing hooking mortality.” But many anglers Nelson knows don’t like fishing with circle hooks, which don’t have to be set like J hooks. Anglers enjoy “the thrill of setting a hook,” Nelson continues. The MDMF “has been promoting the use of circle hooks to reduce hooking mortality since I started back in 2001. As of 2020, use of in-line circle hooks when fishing for striped bass using natural baits is a requirement.”

What one thing should recreational anglers know about fish mortality? Although Nelson’s views do not represent those of the MDMF, he himself insists, “Playing time after hooking a fish contributes significantly to hooking mortality.” Lactic acid, a byproduct of vigorous exercise, builds to toxic levels in the exhausted fish. To improve your quarry’s chances of survival, Nelson continues, “reel in the fish as quickly as possible.”

Commercial Fishing

Striped bass are also caught commercially with gill nets, pound nets, haul seines, and hook and line. In 2017 the commercial fishing industry harvested nearly five million pounds of striped bass; more than 60 percent of that haul came out of the Chesapeake Bay. Already this is a heavily regulated fishery; nevertheless, at an October 2019 meeting the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board approved an 18 percent cut in commercial and recreational striper harvests for 2020.

Environmental Change

Striped bass spend most of their adult lives in coastal estuaries or the ocean, migrating south in the winter and returning to rivers to spawn in the spring. Although the Hudson and Delaware Rivers remain important spawning grounds, the truth is that most of the striper spawning stock comes out of the venerable Chesapeake Bay. And striper stakeholders fear that the Bay is seriously threatened: Both urban development and farming endanger the seagrasses that act as striper nurseries; the forage fish (like anchovies and menhaden) that striped bass depend upon for sustenance appear themselves to be in decline; and poor water quality and warmer water (with lower oxygen levels) have led to a higher incidence of hypoxia and diseases like mycobacteriosis, which is currently leaving external lesions on Chesapeake Bay striped bass.

Is the decline in fish habitat a reflection of climate change or of pollution of local waterways? Very probably both, argues Nelson. In the all-important Chesapeake Bay, he says, low-oxygen (anoxic) conditions develop during the summer as a result of high water temperatures and “agricultural runoff that promotes growth of bacteria that use oxygen.” Striped bass do what they can to avoid low-oxygen habitats. They are therefore “squeezed into habitats that are sub-optimal for their survival.” From 2004 to 2010, the Chesapeake Bay produced fewer young striped bass–likely, says Nelson, as a result of climate change: “Good survival occurs when spring weather is wet and cool. We are now observing northward shifts in fish distribution along the Atlantic Coast as water temperatures increase. In the Gulf of Maine, water temperature is rising faster than any water body in the world, and it is believed that the collapse of Gulf of Maine northern shrimp is due to increasing temperatures.” And again, where prey species go, predator species soon follow.

Striper to Seal to Shark

When Cape Cod’s striped bass fans look for the culprits responsible for the striper decline, their eyes turn in an unexpected direction: “Along with climate change, overfishing, and habitat loss,” says guide Dave Cornell, “seals are a huge factor in striper mortality. Buzzards Bay isn’t as affected as Cape Cod, but we have a growing seal population near Penikese Island.” And many residents fear that right behind seals come sharks. 

The seal question “can only be answered by amending the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” says Dean Clark of the nonprofit conservation group Stripers Forever Massachusetts. “Without ecosystem-based management and the studies to support the same,” it is difficult to determine the full effect of the seal population on the wild striped bass population. Fisheries biologist Nelson concurs: Yes, striped bass are “found occasionally in seals’ stomachs, but there is no estimate of numbers consumed,” and “the impact of seal predation is likely not as great” as many assume. 

How significant a factor is striper predation by white and thresher sharks? Nelson does not dismiss the possibility, noting that juvenile sharks are indeed fish-eaters. Guide, fly angler, and marine researcher Zachary Whitener says, “I’m sure that seals eat a large amount of striped bass. But I’m also sure that humans kill many, many more fish and have had–and are having–a much greater effect on the Atlantic ecosystem as a whole than seals. We have more control over how we manage fish than how seals manage fish.” In the final analysis, Dean Clark reminds us, an emotional reaction to striper decline “serves no one well.”

Poaching

Just how big a role does poaching play in striper decline? The reality is that, despite uniformed and plainclothes policing by environmental officers, striped bass poaching is, in Nelson’s words, “ubiquitous.” In Massachusetts, he says, poaching “occurs frequently near urban areas like Lynn and Lawrence on the Merrimack River.” Recently the Cape Cod Canal has seen an uptick in poaching, which is unfortunately as difficult to curb as it is to quantify.

Poaching, says Stripers Forever’s Clark, “has more of a sociological effect than a species population effect. The poachers’ disrespect for the welfare of the species and their disregard for the rules creates an ethos that makes it difficult for the general public to understand and support regulations designed to protect the integrity of striped bass.” Dave Cornell insists that publicized poaching arrests may be common but unfortunately represent just “the tip of the iceberg.” 

Aquaculture

So do we throw in the towel and accept the inevitable decline of the Atlantic striped bass? Not so fast, say stakeholders. Consider, for example, aquaculture: In 2005, almost 60 percent of all striped bass sold in the United States were grown in an aquaculture operation. In the Chesapeake Bay region, aquaculture supplies readily available seafood at the same time that it reduces pressure on wild striped bass stock and the species on which they prey.

Should aquaculture be the sole source of commercially sold bass? Dean Clark answers, “Yes–but not for the reasons that you might think. Historically striped bass were sought only as a commercial food fish. Their value to society was initially established on a dollars-per-pound-at-market basis. Only recently have stripers become a significant player in the recreational market economy, and this has created a conflict between opposing sectors.” Commercial interests maximize the value of striped bass when they maximize the harvest. For recreational anglers, the opposite is true: “The more and higher quality fish that are alive and thus potentially catchable, the more valuable the striper fishery is,” explains Clark. Fisheries management plans have so far striven to satisfy both constituent groups–although “a voting majority of the regulators are commercially biased. It is a lot like having the foxes in charge of the welfare of the chickens.”

Designating striped bass as a recreation-only species “like trout, deer, and waterfowl” would alleviate the pressure that fisheries management officials get from commercial harvesting interests, says Clark, enabling regulators to “put the welfare of the stripers ahead of those wishing to exploit them. Conservation will replace exploitation, so yes–wild striped bass should not be harvested for commercial purposes.”

Given the strength of the commercial fishing lobby in many East Coast states, regulators are unlikely to outlaw traditional rod-and-reel commercial striper fishing. Aquaculture may be able to put a striper/white bass hybrid on the market, but the public will still demand wild fish. Many stakeholders agree with Dave Cornell that commercial fishing interests and recreational anglers can and should co-exist–and that fishery regulations need to strive for a balance between competing interests.

Whither Go Bass

Regulators have put in place an Atlantic striped bass management plan that reduces harvest quotas and establishes size limits for both commercial and recreational interests. Is this the best way to turn around striper population decline? Should the Eastern Seaboard set a one-size-fits-all limit to promote public awareness and avoid confusion?

Dean Clark suggests that size limits obscure the real issue, which should be “management philosophy and which interest group is driving the bus. Under the guidance of the commercially biased ASMFC,” Clark argues, “the quality and size of the fishery has continued to shrink over the past ten-plus years. We should be asking why. We shouldn’t be debating how big a striper should be to keep. We should be asking why the ASMFC has allowed commercial by-catch to go unreported, not prioritized the welfare of the fish, and catered to a relatively small group of commercial fishermen while ignoring the conservation demands of the many millions of recreational fishermen. Getting answers to these questions is far more important than arguing over harvesting equivalencies.”

Nelson believes that standardizing regulations across all concerned states would help the Atlantic striper fishery. “Once spawning adults leave the Chesapeake Bay in the spring,” he explains, “the only fish remaining are small fish–smaller than 25 inches and mostly male. If Maryland and Virginia set the same minimum size requirement as Massachusetts, recreational anglers could keep very few fish.” He suggests that perhaps states with reciprocity agreements–that is, states in which anglers with valid saltwater fishing licenses may cross state lines while fishing, as in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire–should consider coordinating their regulations to avoid angler confusion.

Slot limits protect larger bass because most striped bass over 30 pounds are breeding females. (According to the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, a 12-pound female can produce about 850,000 eggs, and a 55-pound female can produce more than 4,000,000 eggs.) In addition to slot limits, current regulations target recreational discard behavior: how to properly catch, handle, and release striped bass. So circle hooks and non-lethal handling devices like BogaGrips and landing nets are in–and gaffing is essentially out.

Setting aside “who is most to blame,” the expert stakeholders appear to agree that the threats to the Eastern Seaboard’s striped bass fishery are real and many–and resuscitating the fishery therefore requires a multifaceted approach. For example, climate change is one serious threat, resulting in significant loss of habitat and adversely affecting fish distribution. But “thanks to the Clean Water Act and other national legislation as well as a decline in industry,” remarks Zachary Whitener, “our local waters in Maine are many times cleaner than they were 50 years ago.” So we can indeed have a positive and lasting impact on the environment. But Clean Water Act gains in Maine and across the country are threatened every four years, when conservation becomes a political football. 

“I think that there are many, many ways that climate change can manifest itself regarding habitat and striped bass,” says Whitener, “but as a species stripers exhibit a wide variety of life history and behaviors, inhabiting a wide variety of habitats, hedging the species as a whole from losing its ecological niches.” That’s the good news. But unfortunately, “we don’t know how prey relationships or migrations will change,” and those unknowns are “the most unsettling aspect of climate change.”

We have examined recreational discard mortality rates for Atlantic striped bass; the saltwater fly angler quite naturally wonders what these rates might mean for tarpon, marlin, bonefish, and steelhead. Is the gamefish dragged over the gunwale for a selfie being faithfully released back into the water only to die a couple of days later?

The truth is that we have more questions than answers. But all those who care about saltwater gamefish–and in particular the Atlantic striped bass–should be engaged in finding longterm solutions that result in healthy, sustainable fisheries for the next generation of commercial and recreational anglers.

Bio: A lifelong fly angler, Mark White lives on the South Coast of Massachusetts, where he works as a physician assistant in the field of neurosurgery. You can visit his website at southcoastflyfisher.com.

READ MORE ABOUT STRIPED BASS:

Stripers: Past & Present

Fly fishing for striped bass

THE DECLINE OF THE STRIPED BASS

Running the Coast for striped bass

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The post Atlantic Striped Bass: Pisces in Peril | Mark White first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Atlantic Striped Bass: Pisces in Peril | Mark White appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The Scene

The greatest migrations on Earth do not occur on African savannas, Old World steppes, or North American flyways, but along the neck of the eastern funnel where Long Island juts into the North Atlantic. Here tide and wind clash over inshore and offshore bars, and sea creatures—most unseen save by anglers—stage, feed, and stream south and north.

In autumn, gannets fold their wings and pierce the waves as if shot by medieval archers. Peregrine falcons trade between south-side cliffs and north-side beaches. Ospreys and eagles hover and dive. Sea ducks swirl around the horizon like coal smoke.

Whales, dolphins, and seals graze on mile-long shoals of menhaden. Sea turtles—leatherbacks, loggerheads, and Kemp’s ridleys—cleave quieter water. Mola mola flop and wag.

Farther out, sharks, tunas, mahi, marlins, longfin albacore, king mackerel, and wahoo crash through schools of halfbeaks and frigate mackerel.

Starting in Indian summer, my friends and I are on hand to watch and participate. Bobbing in little boats, we jockey around rust-colored clouds of bay anchovies harried from above by screaming gulls and terns, harried from below by ravenous predator fish that send the inch-long bait spraying into the air like welding sparks.

The striped bass move slower and are packed tighter than the bluefish or false albacore. These “bass boils” can cover acres. They sound like washing machines, and they happen nowhere else.

My boat, a 21-foot green Contender, is named Assignment, so when my creditors and editors demand to speak to me, my wife can tell them, “He’s on Assignment.”

There’s only one occupation at which you can make less money than as a freelance nature writer, and that’s as a light-tackle fishing guide. It’s a calling I aspire to. The guiding I do now isn’t real. It’s philanthropy—pro-bono service for friends staffing and funding the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Trout Unlimited, and American Rivers.

The Fish

These days, virtually all the topwater bass are shorts, so I target only false albacore (aka albies), especially the big, raging pods. All that competition increases hookup chances exponentially.

Albies are mini tunas. They attain immense speeds via hard, sickle tails equipped with horizontal stabilizers, fins that fold into grooves and a ramjet-like oxygenating system whereby water is pushed, rather than pumped, through massive, blood-rich gills. The average 7-pounder will rip off 30 yards of backing before you can palm your reel.

Stripers and bluefish roll and splash. Albies erupt, flashing silver flanks. When they get excited they light up like billfish. Twice this past September I found them 100 feet off the Montauk Light, crisscrossing wildly around and under the Assignment, backs glowing neon green in the high sun. They were so beautiful I almost forgot to cast.

Fortunately, albies are the worst-eating fish in the sea. A commercial market does exist, however — in New York City’s Chinatown, where they’re sold as green bonito (among the best-eating fish in the sea). My friend Captain David Blinken, one of Long Island’s most popular and experienced light-tackle guides (northflats.com), was recently ejected from a Chinatown fish market for telling the owner a fact he didn’t want to know: that albies aren’t bonitos.

I can’t think that anyone eats albies. Forty years ago I broiled one, and it literally stank me out of the kitchen. My theory is this: Chinatown residents buy an albie because it’s beautiful. They take one bite, trash it, and never buy another. It’s just that there are so many Chinatown residents they maintain the market.

The threat to albies isn’t human consumption but a possible reduction fishery, perhaps for animal feed and similar to that which depleted menhaden. The false albacore’s tight schooling behavior and predictable migration routes make it vulnerable to industrial-scale purse-seining. Yet the National Marine Fisheries Service declines to regulate the species because it’s abundant. Such is the traditional mindset of fish managers: Don’t manage a stock until it’s depleted. And then manage it not for abundance but maximum sustainable yield: i.e., dead-on-the-dock poundage.

We don’t like to think of albies as baitfish, but that’s what they are. Blinken offers this: “False Albacore need to be protected now; we can’t afford to wait until it’s too late. They sustain marine ecosystems. Larger predators can’t make it just on forage like sand eels, anchovies, herring, and spearing. They need more protein. And albies give us guides a shot at diversity. Since the demise of the striped bass fishery we rely on them.”

From what I saw at Montauk in the fall of 2019, I wouldn’t say a striper demise has happened, but it sure seems to be on the way. It was nice to once again encounter massive bass boils extending from Shagwong Reef around the point and several miles along the south side. But not one bass I saw caught was over the 28-inch limit. Most get picked off as soon as they hit 28.

In 1984, after the states ran stripers into commercial extinction, Congress passed the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act, a law requiring a moratorium on striper fishing in any East Coast state that refused to comply with a management plan hatched by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).

Recreational anglers, then and now responsible for the vast majority of striped bass mortality, were limited to one fish daily at 36 inches. Stripers surged back.

But rather than managing for abundance, the ASMFC responded by expanding the recreational limit to two fish at 28 inches. The stock steadily dwindled, and it kept dwindling even after the ASMFC cut the limit to one fish at 28 inches. Finally, the ASMFC admitted what anglers knew: that stripers are “overfished.”

On October 30, 2019, the ASMFC had a chance to reverse the decline. Instead, it imposed a one-fish recreational slot limit for the ocean of between 28 and 34 inches.

“That decision dooms the 2015 and 2016 year classes,” remarks Blinken. “Why can’t we remember past lessons? Stripers are such special fish. You can find them in the rips or on the flats, 20 miles offshore or 20 miles up rivers. They fuel whole economies, providing income for hotels, restaurants, marinas and tackle shops. Now there are gillnetters all along the south side of Long Island. They’re blocking striper migration, creating boating hazards, killing turtles, birds, and marine mammals. And the six-pack guys [running large charters for recreational trollers] kill even more big breeders than the gillnetters. To destroy this resource to make a few people happy is so wrong.” 

The Fishing

Albies can be as picky as brown trout, especially in fading light. When they get lockjaw, try a white Gartside Gurgler with lots of flash in the tail or a Crease Fly.

Blinken’s standby fly (which he originally invented for bonito) is the Jellyfish.  “When I first started fishing albies I used only epoxy flies,” he says. “They’d bang off the hull or engine and shatter. So I started experimenting with a fly that was durable and could imitate lots of bait–squid, spearing, peanut bunker, anchovies. I’ve always tied my flies with feathers splayed. When I started doing Hi Ties I didn’t get enough movement, so I took some slender feathers and tied them into the back tarpon-style. Then I tied in uniform collars of synthetic material. When the fly sat it the water with the tendrils hanging down it looked like a jellyfish.”

Another popular Montauk fly is the Albie Whore, invented by our friend and Blinken’s regular client, Richard Reagan. It’s a bit like a Deceiver but tied with tail feathers splayed and side feathers anchored with hot glue. Google “Albie Whore” and you’ll get dozens of videos of guys tying it. Everyone save Reagan is tying it wrong (flylifemagazine.com/at-the-vise-albie-whore).

For albies, Blinken and I use only 10-weight fly rods. In deeper water, where most albies feed, a 10-weight has lifting power that 8-weights and 9-weights lack. “You want to beat that fish as quickly as possible so lactic acid doesn’t build up,” Blinken says. “Of course you can land an albie with an 8-weight, but you might kill it.”

Use an Albright knot to join leader to fly line. If a fly line comes with a loop, an Albright is all the easier to tie. A loop-to-loop connection creates a hinge effect that impedes your leader from turning over.

The angling mistake I see most is “trout striking”—i.e., lifting the fly rod instead of strip striking. Trout strikes guarantee missing at least half of your fish.

The next most common mistake I see is making too many false casts. For albies, Blinken and I use floating lines. They allow us to water haul and, with a single back cast, deliver the fly. “Albie fishing is very aggressive, very fast-paced,” says Blinken. “When the pod moves 20 feet to your left or right, you need to pick up and present it again quickly. If you’re using an intermediate or sinking line, you’re not going to get to those fish.”

When you’re throwing into big bait balls, matching the hatch is bad strategy. Why should a fish eat your fly when there are several hundred thousand baitfish that look just like it? Usually your flies should be two or three times bigger than the bait.

Guides make mistakes, too. Churlishness and too much advice are major turnoffs. And this from Blinken: “I think the biggest mistake a guide can make is having his client show up when it’s unfishable. We all want to make money, but if it’s blowing 25, you don’t tell your client to show up anyway, especially if it takes him four hours to get there. And guides need to be flexible. I keep my skiff available all fall, so if Montauk’s too rough, I can fish west.”

Once, when I was in Blinken’s boat, we watched a guide chase stripers in past the wave break. It’s a dangerous practice, but sometimes they can’t resist. “He’s gonna turtle,” yelled Blinken. When he did, we went in stern-first and fished out the client who had lost his rod, fly box, and car keys. Someone else fished out the guide, who didn’t get a tip that day. The boat rolled around under the cliffs all fall.

Best Conversation on the Water

I trailer the Assignment to Niantic, Connecticut, and cross to Long Island. After I tie up to the dock, I don’t like to hold up the scup guys. Scup are as prolific as they are delicious. The fishery has a huge African American following.

One early morning, after I’d parked my truck, I ran back to the ramp because nine scup anglers were preparing to launch a boat scarcely bigger than mine. They were headed a mile offshore, each with an excellent chance of filling his 30-fish limit.

One gentleman declared: “Take your time. You ain’t a young man no more.” Then he pointed to my one-piece Loomis rods and inquired what I was planning to do with the “long fish poles.” I explained that I was headed to Montauk to chase false albacore. Slapping his forehead, he intoned, “Twenty-five miles for fish you can’t eat?”  (…continued)

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Visual excitement aside, there are other good reasons why you should add surface flies—popping bugs, sliders, and hair-heads—to your bag of tricks. First, nothing gets a striper’s attention like a wounded baitfish, and there’s no better way to transmit distress signals than with a popping bug. While a streamer must pass through the fish’s field of vision to trigger a strike, poppers can summon fish from a distance. A striped bass’s lateral line is ever alert to low-frequency waves such as those generated by baitfish in trouble; it gives the fish a sensory “radar” that extends out to around 50 feet. Therefore, the surface commotion generated by a popper or hair-head attracts fish that you may have missed with a more subtle subsurface offering. In short, when fishing for striped bass, don’t hesitate to ring the dinner bell!

Topwater Fly Designs

Surface striper flies fall into two broad categories: popping bugs/sliders and hair-headed streamers. Popping bugs and sliders typically are made of one of three types of material: cork, balsa wood, or most commonly foam (such as the closed-cell foam from which lobster-pot buoys are made). Most striped-bass poppers range from about 1/2 inch to 5/8 inch in diameter, and from 1 inch to an 1 1/2 inches in length, minus the tail. Poppers much larger than this become difficult to cast.

The tails of most popping bugs are made of either bucktail, saddle hackles, or a combination of hackles and marabou. Saddle hackles allow for a longer tail, but the commotion produced by a popping bug creates the illusion of a prey item much larger than the popper’s actual size.

The bodies of sliders tend to be slimmer than those of popping bugs, and the face is often cut to a V. Sliders are meant to move across the surface quietly, creating a wake that the bass still feels. Sliders are particularly good in calm water and, unlike poppers, they can be deadly after dark—especially when bass are picking off small baitfish on the surface. Despite the slider’s subtlety, bass will hit them just as hard as they’ll hit a popping bug. Under the right circumstances, fishing a slider can be like pulling your fly through a minefield.

When fishing shallow over structure like rocks, seaweed, or grass, there’s a chance you could hang up on something other than a fish, and you’ll do well to use a fly that has some buoyancy. Streamers with heads made of spun or flared deer body hair work well in such situations. The late Bill Catherwood’s Giant Killer series of flies are the prototypical hair-heads, dressed in a colorful melange of saddle hackle, marabou, and clipped deer body hair that striped bass find irresistible. A full-size Giant Killer runs seven to nine inches long, and the construction technique doesn’t lend itself well to a fly half that size. So if you’re looking to throw the sardine rather than the full kipper, you’ll do well to go with a more basic pattern. One of my favorite hair-heads is Lou Tabory’s Snake Fly. It sports a wing of of ostrich herl flanked with marabou that has a lot of inherent action in the water. It’s a deadly-effective pattern that’s relatively easy to tie and lends itself to a size-2 to 1/0 hook.

The Outfit

For striped bass, consider the size of the flies you’ll be casting before you consider the size of the fish you might encounter. Although I feel an 8-weight outfit is adequate to handle any striper I’m likely to hook, I often fish a 10-weight rod, simply because it makes casting the largest poppers and hair-heads much easier.

I’ve read about anglers fishing popping bugs with intermediate lines, but I feel a full floating line gives a bug its best action. If you find casting popping bugs a challenge with a standard weight-forward taper (that is, a head in the vicinity of 40 feet), one of the shorter, more compact tapers being produced by such manufacturers as Airflo or Royal Wulff might help you better turn it over.

Striped bass aren’t particularly leader shy, so it’s unnecessary to use a long tapered leader with a popping bug. Six feet of level 15- or 20-pound test monofilament is ideal. Should you wish to build a tapered leader, keep it simple. A three-piece leader no longer than nine feet that tapers to 15- or 20-pound test is sufficient. If there’s a chance you might hook into a bluefish, consider adding eight or so inches of 60-pound mono or wire to the tippet as a bite guard.

Where and When

Popping bugs can be effective wherever bass are found—in tidal rivers, off beaches, in bays, near jetties—but they’re not for all occasions, and I limit their use to specific situations. During the day, I generally won’t use a popper in water less than six feet deep. Shallow-water stripers tend to be spooky, so your chances of catching these fish are better with a streamer. Exceptions to this occur in the spring and fall, when you’re likely to encounter schools of bass smashing bait tight to the shore. During this wild surface feeding a popper can be deadly, as its prominent silhouette and the commotion it causes enable fish to key in on it immediately.

Poppers are also good for attracting fish from deep water. Over holes and drop-offs, where a streamer might go unnoticed, a noisy bug is sometimes just the thing to make the fish come up and take a look.

Popping bugs are also good searching patterns. If you draw a strike with a popper but your next dozen cast casts go unnoticed, switch to a streamer. Conversely, I’ll tie on a popper as a change-of-pace fly when streamers aren’t producing.

The most productive times to fish popping bugs, in my experience, are in the early morning and the late afternoon until nightfall. Although stripers will feed readily on the surface after the sun has set, for reasons I don’t understand, poppers just don’t seem to produce after dark. For proper night fishing I’ll tie on a slider.

Don’t hesitate to drop a popping bug into any likely bass-holding area—the mouth of an inlet or tidal pool (particularly on a falling tide), or in the middle of a rip. In rivers, I’ve had my best success by casting directly across the current. In particular, work the edges and eddies.

If the setting doesn’t lend itself to a popping bug but you’d still like to play the topwater game, don’t hesitate to tie on a hair-head. One of my most memorable hookups came a number of years ago when I was fishing with my old friend, Captain Dave Tracy, who used to guide around Boston and Plymouth. It was a July 4th weekend. We had had some good fishing in the morning, and it was now coming on noon. We had bright sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, and the temperature was approaching 90 degrees. Dave had us drifting along a rocky shore in Plymouth that used to produce well on a coming tide. We were within yards of a crowded sunbathing beach, with fairly heavy boat traffic behind us.

Dave was used to having to produce for clients, so he fished a Clouser Half-and-Half on a sinking line a large percentage of the time. He wanted me to fish one now. I could tell I was annoying him. I was standing on the bow, throwing a full-size Catherwood Herring (one I had dressed—not an original) 90 feet toward shore, then skating it back across the surface in foot-long strips over a field of submerged boulders. (I may have been trying to impress a girl who was with us—I can’t quite remember.)

“You really have confidence in that big fly…?” Dave asked.

I was about to tell him that I had more confidence in the fly than in the location, when a bass appeared from the bottom—if it wasn’t 40 inches, it was close—and slammed the Herring. I was tight to the fish, but instead of running to deeper water it headed toward shore, into the rocks. Seven seconds later, it was all over.

I think Dave and I both learned something that day.

Cast, Retrieve, and Hookset

Some fly anglers believe you must form fairly open loops to cast popping bugs. This applies more to casting weighted flies, which take on their own momentum. (Bringing a weighted fly through a quick change of direction, as you do when you form tight loops, jars the cast.) Popping bugs are more wind-resistant than they are heavy, so forming a tight loop will carry the bug farther, more efficiently, than will an open loop.

When I first began pursuing striped bass with a fly rod, my only previous experience with popping bugs had been fishing them for largemouth bass. In fresh water, a popper can suggest anything from a large insect to a small bird or rodent. In the ocean, however, a popper imitates baitfish, period. The pop-and-wait retrieve so effective in fresh water is useless in the salt. To get a striped bass to smash a popping bug, you’ve got to keep the popper moving.

Start slowly at first, using short strips to move the bug three or four inches at a time, kicking up water every now and then. If that doesn’t draw any strikes, intersperse the retrieve with a few longer strips to suggest the erratic behavior of baitfish in trouble. Convey panic by stripping quickly, skittering the bug across the surface. At times a choppy two-handed retrieve is effective. No matter which retrieve you use, the important thing is to keep the bug moving.

Whether hitting out of curiosity, or attempting to stun prey with a slap of the tail, a striper doesn’t always take a surface fly into its mouth immediately. Raising the rod on such hits will not only result in a miss; it will pull the fly out of harm’s way. Instead of trying to set with the rod tip, keep the rod tip close to the water and pointed at your bug during the retrieve. Pay attention—the interest a striper shows in a popper is often subtle. If you see a swirl behind your bug, or if the bug’s wake seems unusually large—get ready. Chances are a fish is inspecting your fly.

If you rouse a fish but draw no strike, cast back and work the same area again; a striper that’s shown interest seldom passes up a second chance. If the fish strikes, keep your rod down and continue to strip line. That way, if the fish doesn’t take, the bug will still be in position for the fish to take another swipe. I’ve seen bass slap at a bug as many as four times before they finally took it. Only when you feel the weight of the fish should you strike. One sharp strip is often enough to set the hook.

A Floating Sand Eel slider has produced well for me when bass have been slashing at naturals on the surface. I’ve also done well with it when there was no surface activity, usually in calm waters in the evening or at night. With sliders, and particularly after dark, I’ve found a continuous retrieve is most productive. Retrieve the fly hand-over-hand and brace yourself for an explosion—it takes nerve to fish a slider well.

Retrieve hair-heads with single strips of six to 12 inches, or use a continuous retrieve. In heavy current or rips I like to let them swing as you would swing a streamer on a trout river, adding an occasional strip for interest. Although hair-headed flies do absorb water and may eventually sink, they’ll ride close enough to the surface that they’ll remain snag-free, and you’ll still see every take. (To watch a short instructional video on topwater fishing for striped bass, visit my website, the address to which is listed in the byline.)

If catching striped bass on the surface turns out to be your cup of tea, you might consider taking the flies, gear, and techniques to other fisheries. Jack Crevalle love a popping bug, and Puerto Rican tarpon will absolutely crush a Catherwood Giant Killer. Lou Tabory’s Snake Fly is my favorite fly for false albacore, particularly around Harkers Island. Watching a 20-pound tuna launch itself out of the water to clobber your fly may just be enough to get you to put your sinking lines away for good.

Bio: George Roberts produced the first video fly casting program devoted exclusively to salt water: Saltwater Fly Casting: 10 Steps to Distance and Power. He’s also the author of Master the Cast: Fly Casting in Seven Lessons (McGraw-Hill, 2002). For more information on fly casting and fly angling you can visit George’s website: masterthecast.com

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The post Bass on Top first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

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