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!