Start Striper Fishing seriously in May

Striper Fishing is popular and you can catch big stripers up and down the East Coast each year, using a variety of methods and many kinds of tackle. If you wish to take full advantage of your chances for a striped bass longer than 40 inches, then live bait on a 3-way rig is your best option. Standard baits in the New England region are eel, hickory shad, scup and menhaden, also called porgy or bunker. Live baits work well no matter the time of day or day of the week. Start Striper Fishing seriously in May, and you can keep on until ice becomes a problem on the boat’s deck in late November. Big bass over 60 pounds have been caught at night or during broad daylight.

How often can you honestly say that anyone strong enough – from a child to your grandmother – to land one of these monsters can have a great day Striper Fishing!  Some of the heaviest bass from 55 to 78 lbs have been caught in New England.  Valiant Rock, Sugar Reef, Plum Gut and the Sluiceway have all bragged about stripers in the weight range of 55-70 lbs while Al McReynolds landed a 78 lb striper at a jetty in New Jersey using a 3-way rig. The next big catch was made at Montauk Point and the proud fisherman that day was Captain Rod Rochetta who was also using a three-way rig.  These rigs have made Striper Fishing so simple that with a few pointers, anyone can land a great fish once you find out where they like to be.

If you think that a Striper Fishing three way rig is hard to fashion, think again, it’s actually quite simple.  The name explains it all – the starting point is a three way swivel, one from your main line, and two leader lines.  One of these lines is created from a dropper loop – simple enough to design, a loop to attach your sinker to which allows bounce during a running tide.  Experiment with weights – depending on the area you are fishing you can utilize as few as four ounces or as many as twenty.  The second line will be home to a fluorocarbon leader generally about five feet in length. Remember to balance out your line – decide if you’re looking for the unobtrusive approach or if you’re looking for a stronger approach. It’s not that difficult to find the right balance between the two.  Generally a fifty pound line is best for this leader as it offers exactly the right balance for most.  Depending on the weather, you might find that a thirty pound fluorocarbon line is best for Striper Fishing on a day that’s especially clear and you’re in clear water.

This Striper Fishing rig can get very expensive and this is one downside of it. However, you can control costs fairly simple to avoid turning this fun hobby into one that requires massive spending.  When you factor in the cost of Gemakatsu hooks, Seaguar Fluorocarbon line, and a three way Spro Swivel, you can soon find your costs mounting up.  But, if you set your rig up so that your main line is your heaviest (55 lbs is ideal), your leader line is heavy (around 50 lbs) and your dropper loop is your lightest (30 lbs is preferred) you can cut down the cost of losses by merely snapping the dropper loop losing only your sinker.  The bottom line is that the sinker is the least expensive item on your rig and is the easiest to replace cost-wise.

For Striper Fishing main line, use naught but braided line. Using braided line has a few distinct benefits for this application. One is that its smaller diameter offers less resistance against a moving tide, letting you use less weight to keep the bait in the strike zone. Possibly an even bigger advantage is that braided lines offer minimal line stretch. With monofilament, you can typically expect up to 10% line stretch. With almost no stretch with braid, you can feel everything that is going on, and you get excellent hook sets. You can plainly tell if you are fishing over a sand bottom, mussel bed, or boulders as a result of the line’s sensitivity. There are many effective brands available, such as Fireline, Stren, Daiwa, and Power Pro. The definite advantage that Daiwa has is that the braid is weaved from eight strands, while many others use four. Most braids feel as though you have to break them in before they are useful, but Daiwa is a very limp and smooth line.

There are many reels on the market which are great for Striper Fishing, some of the more popular ones include; Shimano Calcutta Fishing Reels and BG90.

Tags: Bass Fishing, Big Bass, Broad Daylight, Captain Rod, daiwa bg90, Dropper Loop, Fishing With Live Bait, Great Fish, Hickory Shad, Jetty, Late November, Mcreynolds, New England Region, Plum Gut, Porgy, Rock Sugar, Scup, Shimano Calcutta, Striped Bass, Stripers, Sugar Reef, Valiant Rock