Inside a cramped Leonard’s Sporting Goods on Opening Trout Day Eve, I was explaining to my dad why we needed both mealworms and waxworms for the following morning when another man walked in and strolled right past the wall of Roostertails and the rack of Power Bait dough. He ignored the packs of snelled Eagle Claw hooks and the Water Gremlin split shots. He walked right to the counter where Mr. Leonard leaned in close. I couldn’t hear the conversation, but watched as Mr. Leonard nodded and pulled out a flat cardboard box with bits of seaweed spilling over the side. He picked out a dozen fat, wriggling bloodworms to place in a Ziploc.
When it came time to check out, I asked Mr. Leonard what the bloodworms were for. I’d used them before for kingfish and croakers, but that was in the middle of summer, not early April.
“Stripers,” he responded.
“Down the shore?” I asked.
“No, no. Around here.”
By then the line of trout-stamp-needing fishermen had begun to grow restless, and before I could ask further questions, my dad settled our bill and we left.
In a few days, I returned to Leonard’s to ask about those local stripers. Mr. Leonard told me of the fish that ran up the Delaware each spring within earshot of the opening day crowds at Citizens Bank Park. He talked about the bait fishermen who caught cows under approaching airplanes, and the lure fishermen who hooked stripers near where Rocky ran the stairs. He said that they arrived in March and lingered through May. I left the shop in disbelief that for so many years, I’d been waiting for occasional opportunities to chase stripers at the Shore when I could have been catching them much closer to home.
Unlike Boston and New York, Philadelphia’s striper fishery doesn’t unfold around scenic harbors and salt marshes. Our stripers swim through fresh water, hemmed in by old industrial neighborhoods, refineries, and shipping terminals. Like the city itself, Philly’s striper scene is less flashy and has more grit and humility than Beantown or the Big Apple.
While Leonard’s, located in a southwestern suburb, was my closest shop, Brinkman’s Bait and Tackle was the soul of the city’s striper fishery. For 62 years, the shop served the fishermen of Philadelphia until it closed in 2023. During those years, the Brinkman Family watched Philadelphia’s stripers disappear as pollution on the Delaware River created a toxic dead zone that blocked the bass from their spawning grounds. And they were there to welcome back the stripers, and outfit the striper anglers, when the river cleaned up and the bass returned to spawn.
Philadelphia’s greatest influence on the larger Northeast fishing community came from the factory in Hunting Park where Penn Reels were made. From the Senators spooled with wire line trolling off Cuttyhunk to the Spinfisher 700s working the surf off Island Beach State Park, Philadelphia-made reels caught stripers throughout their entire range.
Still, it’s tough to romanticize Philly’s striper scene. There’s no shifting sand dunes or regal lighthouses; no beautifully crafted wooden swimmers snaking through wave-beaten boulder fields. Instead, there’s unyielding concrete and broken down buildings; writhing gobs of sea worms cast among rig-stealing rebar. Yet, the first time my rod bowed under the weight of a Delaware River striper, I didn’t see any of that. I saw a beautiful, wild fish that could, and would, swim the entire Northeast Coast, yet returned each spring to Philadelphia.
