The Best Summer Striper Fishing I have ever Experienced

Decent schoolie from tonight

My friend Dave tells me stories about stripers biting throughout the summer in Narragansett Bay. He would tell me about catching fish at high tide in downtown Providence on 90 degree days in July and August. These fish would be caught during the hottest part of the day. Needless to say my mouth is usually on the ground during these conversations.

In my time of striper fishing I have never witnessed anything like the good old days. I did catch the end of the bluefish blitzes (late August-September) on peanut bunker in the early 2000's. I used to fish in Narragansett for most of July with eels. I'd usually catch a keeper or two. Any night that involved three keepers was memorable.Using eels, I'd catch very few fish, however they averaged about 15 pounds, and those were my target fish. The fishing even at night would fizzle out in the beginning of August. I'd save my gas and start fishing the ocean again in the fall.

When I left for South Dakota the stripers were still biting. The last few years, the striper fishing in the bay was OVER by the middle of May. We had a cool spring, so we assumed we got lucky with a couple of extra weeks of catching fish. We weren't killing them, but any night I catch three or four stripers regardless of size, is not wasted effort. I thought for sure the stripers would be long gone from the bay when I got home.

To my supreme surprise when I got home, Dave was still catching a few fish a night. July 4th I watched fireworks, but July 5th I was back fishing. That night we were sitting on rocks like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer casting and reeling up fish. We caught a lot of fish. However, we played a game of guess the fish.That night we landed fluke, sea robins, bluefish and stripers. It was fun.

One of the the three pound blues.
They have been running up to
six pounds.

That happened for a few nights. Then the smaller fish moved out and we started catching equal numbers of blues and stripers. Combined we were averaging about ten fish a night! Lately, the blues seemed to have moved out, but bigger stripers are moving in. Saturday night  I caught a keeper. Tonight Dave's son caught twenty five fish including a  35 inch striper! Dave and I got there later than Ben, combined we got about fifteen.

The reason for all this unprecedented striper fishing...Bait. We (Dave while I was away) found a spot absolutely loaded with peanut bunker. We are watching stripers of all sizes rip through bait balls of four inch bunker. There are also acres of little tiny half inch bait around. So as the saying goes, if you find the bait, you will find the fish. This also proves that stripers will stay in warm water if bait is around.

I've only used three lures to catch these fish in the last ten days. I got them on Jumpin' Minnow, white curly tail on a jighead and popper. The fish have been very aggressive hammering our offerings. Consider the water temperature is around 80 degrees, this is amazing.

If it ended tomorrow, I can honestly say, I've caught more stripers this summer than any other summer of my life, I've caught more summer stripers than the last ten years combined. Of course, I hope it doesn't end. I'm going to ride this out every single night until it is over, the fishing has been that good!

One of the nicer fish of the night