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.