April 12 & 20 - Raritan Bay, by Alexi

   After years of resisting the lure of fishing Raritan Bay in the Spring, with a few mis-attempts in the past, I went on a tip from a friend who had grown up along the shores of New Jersey's side, and decided to try my hand at what is a known early spring Striper fishery.

   Perchman and I had driven to Sandy Hook in the past, only to abort the plan and drive south to Barnegat.  Besides that trip, we had fished the Jamaica Bay Tournament eons ago.  That is the extent of our collective experience in the waters surrounding New York City.   This time we had better local intel from a friend of mine, who showed me some spots on the maps app on his phone to launch a kayak around Union Beach.  I did a little internet research and found a tackle shop that would be open, and a plan began to emerge; the NOAA charts show that that area is void of any channels or structure, so why not just troll around a tube-n-worm and see what happens.


   On the 12th we got a late start.  I pedaled (that's Hobie for paddled) straight out into open water until I saw a fleet of boats off in the distance, and then I headed straight for them.  It's my open water tactic that works in the ocean for catching fish, as lame as it may seem, it works.  I was into some fish pretty quickly.

one of several 

   I believe it was my first fish that came unbuttoned boat-side, and it was probably the biggest of the day.  This happens more often with the Tube-n-worm lure than others for several reasons:
1) The tube gives the fish some leverage to twist off of the hook,
2) (And this my own undoing) Because I've caught many shorts with tube n worm in the past, I've filed down all of the barbs on my hooks for an easy release, and
3) I tend to bring the fish boat-side green (not tired).

   Suffice it to say that I was more careful after that.  I caught and landed a few more around the fleet, and marked MANY fish on my fish-finder.  And one of the many more fish was a 30"  keeper.  Others were almost all 27"....close.

raritan striper

   I had fish early and consistently, but  Perchman, who was waylaid at the boat ramp by ghosts and had a late start had only caught diapers.  As the day wore on, however, we were both into a steady pick of fish.  We returned to the ramp around sunset.

April 20th.

It was rainy and colder than the previous week.

   We made an attempt to fish early.  It was  a repeat trip in many ways, only most of the day I was skunked.  I had the same plan, go out to the middle, look for the fleet, go to the fleet, only this time they were WAY further away.  I was marking fish and watching other boats pull big fish across the gunwale, but I was not hooking up.  Perchman was having consistent action with the 27" fish, and lost a keeper at the side of his boat.  I was pretty beat so I took a long overdue land-break at Union Beach.  Re-vitalized, and inspired by the prospect of fishing the magic hour (sunset)  I went back out to "the middle."   That's what we called anything that wasn't close to shore, since this part of the bay is just empty.

In the last hour I had consistent action, three fish, all very close to 28"

27" bass

   The waters around New York Harbor are likely cleaner than they've been in the past 100 years, and efforts to re-seed the bays with Oysters along with more waste water  treatment plants are making it better and better, despite the occasional diaper, dead seal, or trash that we see.