Monday, September 1, 2014

Bay Loaded with Bait; No Stripers

There are lots of small blues
in the Bay.  Most are under a foot long.
I went out today in the Bay in my brother's boat.  Everywhere we went there was bait.  I saw thousands of terns diving in a wide swath of the Bay that went on for miles and miles.  In many places the water resembled dark patches that were thick with small bait on the surface. In other places the fish finder lit up the entire water column with bait.  It looked like massive schools of bay anchovies to me.
Scup were also abundant as they were
under the schools of small bait.
Yes, there were some fish around.  We caught many small bluefish under a foot long.  They were chasing and feeding on the bait.  And, in many places under the bait there were good numbers of large scup. We caught several dozen of them while vertical jigging Kastmaster XL's.  However, no stripers.
We've got the bait, but I'm guessing the warm water in the Bay is keeping the stripers away.  In most of the places where we ventured in the mid and upper Bay the surface water temperatures ran from 75 to 77 degrees, way too warm for most fish.  But, things are looking up.  We just might get a run  of stripers in the Bay this fall once the water cools.  I also think we will see fireworks along the oceanfront later in fall when all that bait in the Bay hits the oceanfront as it migrates southward.