Ed Mitchell Outdoors

Small Stripers Hold Our Future

When you catch a small striper, you hold our angling future in your hands. The chart below tells you why. It shows striped bass reproductive success in Maryland, the principal spawning grounds.  As you can see 2019, 2020 and 2021 were very poor years. So right now the only halfway decent year class is the one born back in 2015.

If there is any good news the 2015 year class is bigger than the 1982 year class, the one we saved under amendment 3 and lead to the boom years in the early 1990s. If we can protect the 2015 class there is hope.

Caught a Striper Yesterday!

Yes in deed-dee I caught a small striper yesterday. Amazing that. In fact I hooked two, but lost one. Wow. Why on earth would I report catching one small striper? Because, this is an extremely odd fall. Almost zilch out there on the water. Nada, nothing, zero. Yeah yeah, I know, there are few decent reports. There is always a hot spot or two. Still overall it has been very disappointing. Bleak. So frustrating that I’m totally thrilled to land a small schoolie bass. Loved it. Bring them on.

A friend of mine fished Watch Hill yesterday from a boat. Now we all know Watch Hill is an El Primo spot, especially in the fall. Top of the line destination. Mecca. Valhalla. How did they do? He and his fishing buddy got a chub mackerel, a sea robin, and one albie. Ugh.  Dismal, dismal. Lets hope good fishing is coming soon. Got my fingers crossed. Don’t you?

No Fall Fishing Yet?

Yeah there are some fish around, here and there, but the fall run doesn’t seem to be in high gear yet. Today my friend Phil and I hit several spots in Rhode Island. We caught the flood at  Quonochontaug, hoping for albies.  No dice, saw nothing.  Went to Weekapaug next. There were zero anglers on the jetties, very odd indeed. Misquamicut was loaded with surfers. Lotsa waves pounding the beach. No fly fishing possible. So we headed back to Connecticut. Went to Ocean Beach. Fished for awhile, no luck. Then headed over to Pleasure Beach. Nothing going on there either?

On average the first frost in Connecticut is October 11th. And that first frost is what lights the fuse. It forces the bait out of the estuaries and salt pond and onto the coast. Bingo the blitzes begin. Well today is in fact October 11th. It should have been cold this morning. It was in the 60’s. And the day time highs are in the mid 70’s. That’s a problem. The weather is all wrong. Doubt me? Look to the north. Ontario is experiencing August like temperature right now.

Chub Mackerel

Yesterday was only the second time I’ve ever seen this great little mackerel in Long Island Sound. Last year was the first and they are back again this fall. Chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus) are better known to the north in Nova Scotia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but even there they are not well documented.

Chubs lack the vivid coloration of other mackerels, such the Atlantic bonito, but their body shape and tail are very similar. In the size department, think Atlantic mackerel. The chubs I’ve encountered run upwards of about 20″, and like all mackerels they fight far out of proportion to its size. Believe me, these chub mackerel put a serious bend in even a 9wt! You’ll work to land one.

Much like false albacore, they feed in school, ripping up the surface into white water displays you can see for a hundred yards. (enlarge the picture above and you’ll see their greedy mouths) And chubs are lightning fast, erratic, and hard to stay up with. We had to run-and-gun to catch them. The ones I saw yesterday were feeding on schools of baby bunker. And once you got a fly in their midst, the chubs grabbed hard.

Apparently, chub mackerel go through periods of great abundance, and then may disappear for decades. Records show that over a hundred years ago, in Provincetown Massachusetts, three men and a boy landed 3,000 on hook and line in single day! In those years chubs were often called “Hardheads” or Bullseyes”.