^^Sadly, it seems this year they are in less concentrations than they have been. (so far)
If you are fishing an area they normally stop at on the migration highway, you are likely to do well.

What I have seen and am hearing so far is there are a lot of other areas that are dead water.

This could be partially due to lingering affects from Sandy...
They are in an area for a night or 2, and with no bait to hold them move on quickly..
As of the beginning of the week, there aren't many varieties of bait in most of the northern bays, other than bunker and worms....

Southern bays are a bit different....holding spearing and some other small forage....


The Spawning Areas...
Every year there are reports of big fish C&R in these areas....
There are a lot of strong opinions on this kind of fishing, so if ya's want to discuss it please feel free to start another thread on that...











1. Chesapeake Flats fishing....
started about 10 days ago with some decent action....since then it has been spotty.....even night fishing with plugs which has traditionally yielded the biggest Spring fish. A few large were reported. I've received reports from some of the area's best anglers...guys who in the past said catching multiple 40# class fish in a night was a given......

Some are saying the flats fishing has been declining for the past several years.
These same guys are reporting that those fish have not been there in numbers this year.....
Why not?


2. Delaware Bay and Flats fishing....
The activity in this fishery ramped up within the last week. Nonetheless many of the anglers out there who are reporting double digit catches are catching quite a few of those fish in the 10-22" range....small YOY and 2nd year schoolies,,,,great to see them, but where are the bigger fish?
Again, I'm well aware of some of the bigger fish...I have the pics sent to me....but as far as quantity of big spawning Delaware stock fish...guys are already grumbling and asking where did they go this year?


3. Hudson River and Flats fishing.....
They are still catching small fish up there.....with an occasional 20# thrown in....but my point is, the big bass up to 60# that normally are swimming up the Hudson this time of year have not yet been sighted or documented.....Even by the guys who are fishing the lower Hudson, and NY Bight.

(Right now the NY Bight should be filled with millions of bass, if one were to truly believe the specious argument that the Hudson stock is composed of 4 million striped bass)........

http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...dson-this-year
The anglers fishing those mentioned areas would be the first to see the bigger fish before they make the long trek up the Hudson, and they haven't....


**I know there are folks who claim to be experts on this,,,,saying that the colder winter slowed things down a bit....set the clock back.......I'll buy that argument, to an extent....and am stilll trying to be optimistic.....but if these fish are not in the bays in the numbers that they have been, not in the canals, inlets, and river mouths.......

Where are they?

** Yes there have been some ocean fish following schools of bunker and herring over the past week, but they are there one day and gone the next....which to me indicates no real concentration of bass.....This worries me greatly.

more on that in this thread here.......

http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...of-the-fishery
food for thought, folks....