Striped Bass

Striped bass, caught on a fly.

I have just re-read John N. Cole's book "Striper" which is one of my favourite books on any fish. It tells of the decline of this beautiful, muscular, predatory fish through the author's encounters with it throughout his life on the East Coast of the USA. I have also been reading "The Striped Bass Chronicles" by George Reiger, which takes a similar approach.

American striped bass behave pretty much like the bass we have around the English and Welsh coasts, only they are bigger. At 16 years old they may reach over 40 lbs. Stripers love to be close to shore and they enter estuaries to breed. Small, schoolie bass of under 2 lbs. probably spend most of their time in and around estuaries while the big guys come and go. They originally bred in the great estuaries of the US East Coast, especially Chesapeake Bay, but they have been stocked into rivers and reservoirs all over the east and even transshipped by rail to the Pacific Coast at San Francisco where they are now eagerly sought by anglers in both California and Oregon.

Back east in Chesapeake things have not always gone well for the striper. This vast bay is surrounded by cities and industrial complexes that have polluted the water. Bass almost disappeared down in Maryland and Delaware and they are still in trouble. Now, it seems that the capes and bays of the State of Maine's mid-coast area is the place to look for them. Even here they declined due to the construction of dams and over-fishing.

But Mainers have recently declared the sriped bass to be a game fish and given it a lot more protection than previously. This must be partly out of genuine concern about declining numbers, but also out of the need to encourage tourism in this state that has never been wealthy since the cod fishery declined. 'Down East,' along the coast towards Canada, visitors come for trout and salmon so stripers are considered less important there.

Luckily for me, my wife's parents live in mid-coast Maine, not far east of Portland near the Kennebek River. You can fish off the dock below their house or explore the area in a boat, but the Kennebeck seems to be the hot-spot and to fish it properly you need a boat.

In the great days of the cod fishery, before the American Civil War, the river frontage from Fort Popham up to Bath was populated with boatyards. Almost every family here had its own locally built wooden boat and there are the remains of slipways and docks everywhere. These add under-water "structure" to the river where bass can prowl for crabs and small fish. Anglers also prowl these areas looking for any give-away activity on the surface. Casting a fly towards the shore and retrieving rapidly often produces a chase and an hour spent poking around in bays like this can be rewarding, heart-stopping and exhausting.

If you venture out past the fort into more open water, the trick seems to be to cast towards exposed rocks, kelp beds or sandbars. Boat docks, piles or even moored yachts can attract fish while flat, featureless water rarely produces fish.

A small striper taken on dead bait.

One year we stayed at Popham Beach resort; a couple of rows of beach cabins near the State Park. The general structure of the place was not unlike Wells Beach in Norfolk. A fairly wide beach was backed by sand dunes. Behind this was pine barrens and then a salt marsh in the back bay. The short, tidal Morse River wound into the bay between rocky outcrops. Fox Island was one of these outcrops, accessible at low tide and a good fishing spot. I say "was" because a few years ago a huge winter storm relocated the river between Fox Island and the shore and took away most of the beach. I hear it's not the place it was.

I used to walk along the beach to the the Morse River at first light and work upstream using a Deceiver fly cast straight across the current. There were no snags as the river bed was completely composed of soft sand. Wading quietly, lobsters would run between your legs and least terns would squeak over head. Piping plovers bred on the shore. It was a very special place.

Anyway, I'm going back there this summer, so I will find out if its still possible to catch stripers from the shore.

The mouth of the Morse River