I had laid my fly rod across the racks on top of my car and was wriggling my wadders down around my knees when this fellow drives up: "You lookin' to take the first striper of the season?"
I always expect to catch fish: I've taken some trout from this river around this time, but no stripers yet.
We talked a bit about how it seemed for a while we might have an early striper season up here on the north shore of Long Island. But after a couple of weeks of tough winds, the water temperature seemed to have stalled in the low to mid 40s. Nothing yet.
There are stripers to be caught, if you're persistent, right through the winter, at the out-flows of power plants, but I've always been reluctant to target such fish. With the stress of fighting off being hooked, that there's so little bait available to them, what's the chance they can reasonably recoup from that? If stripers come into the rivers I fish, it's because they're coming after food. I'd rather wait.
Last time I was out (Monday, the 13th), still no stripers, but... Gulls crowding the sand bars exposed on the ebb. Cormorants flocking in. Egrets and swans working the mud flats at low tide. Ospreys nesting on their platforms. Gentlemen, we are on the verge.
Good fishing to all!