Late Migrating Stripers

Keep a regular check on your favorite beaches and boulder fields, and if one trip in five produces a beautifully colored, deep-bodied, late-migrating striped bass, consider it a success.

By November, the cold and dwindling fishing reports begin chipping away at a New England fisherman’s drive to fish the surf. After a few fishless trips at the end of October, staying home and sleeping in starts to look like the better option for the first time in almost six months. But one thing keeps me going—the look of the late-migrating stripers.

By Halloween, stripers have had the fall feedbag on for nearly two months, and they look like it. The fish, even the schoolies, have sagging guts, and look more like big largemouth bass than the slender stripers that arrived in May. Not surprisingly, the bass are heavier for their lengths. A 36-inch fish in May might weigh 15 or 16 pounds, while a November 36-incher might weigh more than 20.

Their coloration is also striking, as their flanks take on a deep purple sheen, perhaps an adaptation to their open ocean travels.

But, November stripers can be an enigma. The water temperatures are dropping quickly, and the bass are on the move. Early October stripers may linger for a week or more in one location, but by November, stripers may not stick around for more than a tide or two. Finding them requires a mix of determination and luck. Even last night’s reports might be too old to be useful.

One thing that can keep November stripers around is a big concentration of baitfish. A late school of adult Atlantic menhaden could stall a school of migrating stripers, but the Holy Grail of late-fall surfcasting is the herring.

Atlantic herring spend the summer offshore on popular fishing grounds like George’s Bank, where they feed bluefin tuna and groundfish. In the fall, these baitfish move south, occasionally coming into the surf, often aided by storms or onshore winds. For example, the week after Hurricane Sandy, the Cape Cod Canal was loaded with sea herring, and feeding on those herring were stripers from 18 inches to 40 pounds. The herring stuck around for almost a week until a Nor’easter moved them and the stripers out. In 2011, sea herring lingered off South County, Rhode Island, for several weeks, keeping stripers and bluefish with them. Stripers to 44 pounds were caught into December that year.

Most years, however, the herring swing wide, making the best strategy for finding November stripers simple persistence. Keep a regular check on your favorite beaches and boulder fields, and if one trip in five produces a beautifully colored, deep-bodied, late-migrating striped bass, consider it a success.