The morning of August 30th, Doug Rafferty, News Anchor for WGME News 13 went out on Casco Bay to do a little striper fishing with Eric Wallace of Coastal Fly Angler. While on the water we enjoyed a beautiful sunrise, did some fly fishing and shot a news piece on the tournament. The news piece is slated to air September 4th on Doug’s Discovery. 

Here’s a little video clip depicting our excursion.

A couple years ago, I enjoyed a fly fishing vacation on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. This trip specifically targeted Atlantic salmon and we “sports” were put up in bunk-house lodging and each provided a guide. Until this time, I’d never had the experience of fishing with a professional, so I was a bit reluctant to open my mind to the possibilities (I’m a stubborn Maine native).

For the first couple days of my fishing trip, I delicately pounded the waters with some success. My guide offered comment and even a fly, but I shrugged off the advice. The fly was a tube fly, something I’d never seen or used, and it clearly offended my staunch traditional ethic. After a particularly long dry spell, I finally relented, partly to appease the guide. I tied the monstrosity onto my leader and pitched her out there, quickly working the fly through the pool. I didn’t want this “thing” to put all the fish down.

After several casts, the fly swung over a holding lie I’d already fished thoroughly, and as you might imagine, up came a 15 lb salmon to smash the tube fly. Frankly I was shocked, but pleasantly so! We landed the fish and I proceeded to repeat the process over and over again for the next three days. I never took the fly off and it was my secret weapon. I almost cried when I lost the fly 30 plus salmon later. The moral of this tale is, local knowledge can play a big part in your success.

For the 17 Rivers Striper Tournament, anglers are permitted to use the services of professional guides and those guides can be a big help. They spend a great deal of time on the water, exploring territory and learning where and when the fish are feeding and these feeding patterns are dynamic. Seasonality, sun light, weather patterns, water temperature and bait all drive the stripers behaviors.

At times, striper will key in on the obvious like schools of bait fish, which anglers typically see fleeing the slaughter. At other times, anglers will see fish hugging the bottom of a flat, but everything they try is to no avail. Stripers can be super aggressive or incredibly particular. A local guides knowledge and experience better your odds of success.

Those interested in procuring the services of a guide can contact any of the “Official Tournament Guides” to book a fishing trip. These guides all have differing approaches and strategies. Please feel free to review the “Fishing Guide Profiles” a News Category, to learn more about each of the tournament guides.

Publication: Coastal Journal (August 27th, 2007)
Author: Robert Fernald

Are you a serious saltwater fisherman? If you are, you’re certainly looking forward to this falls striper fishing and you already know the stripers are beginning to gather in anticipation for their fall migration south.

Those who have never experienced the fall striper action, are really missing out. The fishing during September offers some of the hottest action anglers can experience all season. Not only will you catch plenty of schoolies, but you are also likely to hook into a big striper. The fish are plump and fat from gorging all summer and have put on inches since spring. The added size makes for great fun on light tackle.

As the days shorten, stripers congregate into large schools and feed with increasing intensity in preparation for the coming journey. These behavior patterns afford anglers some great fishing opportunity. And with the tourists departed and the kid’s back in school, their’s time for us locals to pursue such quality activities.

With weather cooling and as fall rains sweeten the stale summer waters, alewives begin dropping out of the lakes and ponds, heading towards the ocean. This abundance of bait coincides with the stripers fall migration and they take full advantage of a readily available food supply.

In the tidal rivers, anglers can expect to find schools of stripers working the alewives as these balls of baitfish drop out of the rivers. Stripers are often lurking just under the bait and slash at the panicked minnows in a feeding frenzy. The bait typically moves fast on the tide and the stripers follow in hot pursuit. Dropping a lure into this chaos can produce some fast action.

This September, the 17 Rivers Striper Tournament provides a great excuse for serious anglers to get out on the water and experience this fall sports fishery. The tournament takes place in the coastal waters of mid-coast Maine, which offers fishermen the setting for great adventure. The fishing there is wonderful and the scenery, including the early fall foliage, can be spectacular. It’s fun exploring the tidal estuaries of the Kennebec, Back, Sasano, Sheepscot, Damariscotta or the Marsh rivers in pursuit of that illusive monster striper, the potential derby winner.

Tournament organizers anticipate hundreds of serious fishermen will participate in this catch & release tournament all vying for the adult division grand prize of $2,500. A junior division also exists and prizes of tackle and gear will be awarded to youth ages 16 and younger.

For those anglers registering as adults, a special promotional discount allows children to participate in the tournament for FREE. This special discount is designed to encourage family participation in the tournament and engage youth in a positive, healthy outdoor activity like fishing.

Across America, the Department of U.S. Fish & Wildlife estimates “nearly 50 million adults and children participate in fishing activities”. Taking a youth fishing is a great opportunity to teach a children about boating, nature and conservation. Maine’s Inland Fisheries & Wildlife program, Hooked on fishing - Not on drugs, recognizes “these types of experiences often create favorable memories which will last a life time“.

For today’s youth, physical activity appears more sedentary. Watching TV, playing hand held electronic games or surfing the net are common. Research conducted by the Center for Disease Control indicates “nearly 1 in 10 children living in Maine have not participated in a vigorous or moderately physical activity in the last 7 days“. Our children’s health suffers due to such inactivity. Research by Stanford University further illustrates the resulting problem, “13% of children ages 6-11, and 14% of children ages 12 -19 are over weight“. Fishing is a recreational activity that represents a healthy form of exercise and exposing youth to such activities at an early age, promotes a life time of interest.

This September, serious anglers are wanted to join in the fun of the 17 Rivers Striper Tournament. The tournament is the reason to go outdoors and enjoy the great fall weather with friends and family, while attempting to catch that monster striper. Who knows, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to achieve the highest tournament score and win the grand prize. But even if you don’t win the tournament, you’ll enjoy some great experiences from participating in these activities.

Late summer, when the waters warm and the suns bright and high in the sky, stripers tend towards cooler deeper water. Fishing the outer shore can produce some really good results.

For those trying to learn how to catch stripers, the best advice is “spend some time fishing and cover some territory” and by this we mean, work a shoreline. Run a boat parallel to the shoreline just within casting distance to the shallow waters. Cast almost to the shore and work the lure back to the boat. Depending on the depth of water, you may need to almost bounce the lure off the rocks. Stripers often feed in the shallows and it’s common to drop a lure right next to the seaweed, give it a twitch, and instantly get a strike.

When working a shoreline, anglers should key in on structure. Structure can be a mussel bar, a submerged rocky shelf or a sandbar that juts out from a point. What these feature have in common is they provide shelter for bait and the physical shapes of these features often effect how water moves around them. Stripers are like cows, they wander around and graze when the opportunity presents itself. Structure often provides the necessary conditions that funnel the bait right to the stripers awaiting a tasty morsel.

Over time, as you get acquainted with a bay or river system, anglers will learn to read the water and recognize where stripers will most likely take up such feeding positions. Things to look for are accelerating current, slosh or sudden transitions in depth. Areas where you have a combination of these variables are sure hot spots.

Reid State Park offers a great illustrative example. There one finds a shallow tidal river which penetrates deep into a marshy estuary, sandy beach, rocky outcroppings, surf and deep water close at hand. The tidal river provides a temperate environment where bait fish, green crabs, eels and sand worms come and go on the tide. The surf pounds the beach stirring up the sand and such movement provides easy pickings for stripers working the rollers. Waves also roll onto the ledges and the resulting slosh shakes loose green crabs and other tasty treats stripers gorge on.

Look closely and you will notice areas where the waves feed back into the ocean. These are typically denoted by foam pockets created by the receding water. Often striper will take up feeding positions right in these foam pockets. All this great habitat adjacent to cool deep waters makes for some great fishing.

The 17 Rivers Striper Tournament will run the entire month of September. Anglers who participate stand a great chance of catching lots of stripers, and just maybe one fish will be the derby winner.

Event organizers anticipate hundreds of anglers will take part in this years tournament all vying for the adult division grand prize of $2,500. Anglers can fish as much as they want during the month of September and will employ many different techniques to catch fish. Some anglers will use bait, others spinning lures and a few hardy souls will break out the fly tackle.

During the month, anglers may submit as many striper entries as they want. We are excited to receive such photos as we want to recognize the fishermen and their great catches. These fish submission photos will be posted on the tournament website and provide a unique forum for viewing the anglers achievements. And wouldn’t it be great if a new State record of 67 lbs was set ? That would be a huge fish!

For anglers sitting on the fence, consider this… assuming 500 anglers participate in the adult division of the tournament, your odds of winning are 1 in 500. Those are really great odds! Compare that to Power Ball or lottery scratch tickets. So all you need to do, is register for the tournament, then get out there and land some fish. The more time you invest, the greater the chance is you’ll boat a contending striper, so register early and fish hard. 

GOOD LUCK TO YOU ALL!

We are so fortunate to live in Maine. August is really a great time to enjoy the beautiful weather and we’ve had quite a spell of top quality days. With weather this nice and Labor Day fast approaching, we’ve all been enjoying the last few days of summer.

During August, fishermen put in a lot of hours and it’s typical for action to be slow. However, we are hearing many positive accounts of big fish being around and some nice catches.

At Hermit Island Campground, their is confirmation of a camper landing a 45 inch striper using chunked herring. As the story goes, he literally dragged the fish all over the campground showing it off. Around that same time boat fishermen fishing off Small Point were consistently boating stripers into the 30 inch range trolling tube rigs around the sandy bottom bays.

Action off the beaches has been slow, unless fishing the low light hours which includes throughout the night. Bait fishermen have recorded many nice 30 inch plus stripers. Worms and green crabs fished on bottom are working well.

Top water action’s been a bit slow. Usually this time of year the fish are staying tight to bottom and anglers see little surface activity. However, in the last week surface action is starting to pick up. Near the mouth of the New Meadows River, balls of bait were visible drifting along the shoreline and the bait seemed nervous.

It seems early for this bait, but when it arrives, the stripers get worked. With bait and shorter daylight hours, the stripers are starting to bunch up. In the last week, I’ve personally seen schools of stripers working bait on the surface in both the Kennebec and the Sheepscot Rivers. This is a great sign!

Some of our professional guides are telling us they have been seeing ”baby bunker” getting slammed by stripers. This bait apparently was pushed on shore by strong onshore winds last weekend. The striper are keying in on this bait and their are some really nice fish in the mix too. Watch what happens… It usually takes the striper a week or so to bunch up and get organized, but as a group they will chase the bait into the tidal bays and onto the flats. The bait will get cornered and then the chaos ensues. This is what it’s all about!

Publication: The Maine Sportsman (September Issue)
Author: Robert Fernald

It’s the end of summer. The oppressive heat and humidity is waning. The sun is lower in the sky and its rays are less intense. But, before we turn our attention to hunting, there is one last hurrah, the fall run of stripers.

The fishing can be sizzling in September; so don’t put your fishing tackle away just yet.

The number of boaters is fewer once Labor Day is over. Generally speaking, we have the waters to ourselves. The fishing is great and it’s easier to get on fish busting bait without other boater’s or fisherman putting the schools down.

In the fall the rivers run clear. The debris typically found in the water in June has flushed out to sea. Late summer rains sweeten the waters and juvenile alewives begin dropping out of the lakes and migrating down the rivers to the sea. Schools of stripers are gathering, preparing for a massed migration south to their wintering grounds. Stripers take advantage of this abundant bait and feed heavily, bulking up before they depart.

Some of these fish began their fall migration in Canadian waters; others are local residents having stayed handy all summer moving from flats and runs to deeper holding waters along the coast of Maine. Many of these resident fish have taken on the colorations of the tidal waters in which they’ve lived and have a golden green hue to their normal silvery appearance.

Aggressive Fish
Fall stripers are plump and healthy, having lounged in the balmy waters during the summer slurping bait like children eat french-fries. In preparation for their migration stripers become aggressive, often chasing fast moving balls of bait. Dropping a lure in their midst produces fast action.

For those fishermen in the know, fall striper season offers one of the best chances for landing a real cow. Tidal rivers, such as those in the mid-coast region and the outer ledges are often full of fish. Targeting flats, structure and flows can produce great results.

This fall fishery differs from June. Stripers are often bunched and in fast moving schools. It’s therefore a good idea to stay flexible. Plan to try a number of spots. If the action is slow, move on. When you start locating fish, you’re in the money!

The fall is also hurricane season. It’s common for seasonal weather patterns to produce a series of storms that sequentially roll up the east coast. It’s these storms that can result some of the best fishing of the season.

Bait Bonanza
A few years back, a hurricane passed some 200 miles off shore to our east. The resulting swells pushed an enormous amount of bait onto the coast of Maine. From Kittery to Rockland, the beaches and coves were thick with bait. A band several yards wide lined the coast. Following the bait onshore were mackerel and stripers, who gorged on the four-inch long, silvery pogies. Stripers were everywhere, slashing into the bait. In the pandemonium, panicked bait skittered across the waters surface trying desperately to escape this feeding frenzy. The chaos was so great, bait literally jumped onto the shore to escape feeding stripers.

During that two-week period, we slammed the stripers. Our flies fell apart from use and the leader became ragged. And it wasn’t just schoolies, the big cows were right there in the mix. At times we’d see pods of 20- to 40-pound stripers prowling the shallows, right in the middle of the day.

I can attest, it was a terrible experience, but humbling too. Ever try to tie on a fly, when big stripers are aggressively smashing the waters all around you and bait is literally jumping across your feet to escape? When action is this hot and the water is exploding, it is hard to think clearly. Your hands shake and just picking a direction to cast can tax your mind.

Stripers in the midst of such feeding frenzies are sometimes so keyed in on the bait they won’t touch anything you throw at them. This can be an incredibly frustrating experience, but the anticipation of the next fish keeps you going. The reality is, you’re fishing over lots of fish, and that next cast might produce a monster that will test your tackle and possibly take you to open ocean.

17 Rivers Tourney
Every year is different. What will this fall yield? Some years the stripers are concentrated in schools and prowling very localized areas. A section of shore or river can be totally devoid of fish, but a half mile away, the waters are exploding. While other years the fish are everywhere. So, local knowledge is a key factor for success.

Local tackle shops represent a great resource for fishermen who can’t be on the water daily. Although these business-fishermen are reluctant to tell you where their honey-hole is, they’re often willing to point you to the general areas where the action is hot and tell you what bait or lures are working.

With striper fishing growing in popularity, the eco-tourism industry is maturing around this sports fishery. As a result, those making their living guiding anglers in the coastal waters of Maine have formed a professional organization, the Maine Association of Charterboat Captains. This organization represents professional saltwater fishing guides who primarily target stripers. They are knowledgeable about the coastal waters of Maine and their tactics yield results. Their often-daily forays, provide experience and intimacy with the waters that is necessary to consistently put their sports onto fish. It’s this type of local knowledge that can be invaluable to fishermen who don’t know the waters and want to catch big fish.

This September, the 17 Rivers Striper Tournament offers fishermen a month-long excuse to explore the mid-coast region and experience this world-class fishery.

If you haven’t fished the Kennebec, Sheepscot or Damariscotta rivers in the fall, this tournament is a reason to plan for some quality time on the water. So, get out while the weathers still nice and catch some great striper action before the snow flies.

In the Junior Division, children ages 16 and younger will compete for some really nice prizes. The prizes represent tackle and gear donated by the differing tackle shops that are “Official Registration Sites”.

To qualify for prizes and to make it fun for the children participating in the Junior Division, the minimum size requirement for stripers is 24 inches. Juniors will still have to meet the photo submission requirements, but the reduced size requirement will make it easier for kids to catch a fish that qualifies. And when they register a fish, they can view the photos once posted on the tournament website.

To be awarded prizes, anglers must be in attendance at the Awards Ceremony. This event will be a fun experience for the children and parents as we have a good deal of tackle and gear to give away to youth participants. So please plan to attend and to bring the kids.