Above: Shell Caris with a surf-side striper on a glidebait from earlier this month.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said veteran surfcaster Shell E. Caris. “It’s the best April ever.” A statement that holds weight from someone who’s fished the New Jersey surf for nearly 70 years.
Back in March, at the Saltwater Fishing Expo in Edison, New Jersey, Shell and I were part of a surfcasting panel fielding questions from the audience and emcee, “Crazy” Alberto Knie. One of those questions was about how a bitterly cold winter affects the following year’s fishing. The consensus among the panel, which also consisted of Nick Honachefsky, Bill Wetzel, and John Skinner, was that according to folk wisdom, extreme winters often preceded extraordinarily good fishing seasons.
It didn’t look that way as March came to a close. Cold temperatures lingered and fished seemed to be running a little late for their spring rendezvous in New Jersey’s bays. But everything changed on Easter. A big blitz in Monmouth County set the tone for the next couple weeks of excellent striper fishing. A few days after that, a bite lit up in Ocean County, with fishermen finding bass eating bunker in the backwaters, with anglers catching big numbers of bass. And, as Shell pointed out, these weren’t schoolies, but fish from slot size to 25 pounds.
The size isn’t surprising. Anglers should expect to see a larger average size striper in coming seasons, accounting for seven consecutive poor spawns in the Chesapeake. Fishery Scientists Ben Gahagan and Micah Dean explained that in a recent On The Water Podcast.
Shell has even been finding fish on the ocean beaches, with some pushing 40 inches. While the backwater and bay fish are focused on bunker, Shell says the fish out front are stuffed with mole crabs and other crustaceans.
The hot bait this spring? Glidebaits.
The jointed custom glides made by local builders like Jesse Stanislaw (Stride Baits) have been by far the most productive lures, says Shell. He’s even seen them outfish clams, a perennial springtime producer, in the surf.
For an added bonus, Shell says the black drum fishing from shore has been, and please pardon my pun, booming. Fish to an estimated 80 pounds have been caught by shore fishermen working the banks of Barnegat Bay. It’s the fourth straight year that a spring shore fishery for drum in Ocean County has set up, and it adds an exciting new element to the April bite.
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Shell thinks the good spring fishing should continue with the bait and bass well established in New Jersey. As the waters warm and the fish move north, we’ll find out if cold winter/great fishing pattern holds true on the more northerly parts of the migration.
Follow along for Striper Season Updates with OTW’s weekly Striper Migration Map and Striper Migration Report videos.