Just when we thought the Hudson River strain of striped bass was going to save the striped bass we see yet another year of poor recruitment. The Juvenile Abundance Index (JAI) for the Hudson River is out and you can see above how the trend is going. While the Hudson is north of New Jersey its juvenile indices are heading south.
The Hudson River is home to the second largest strain of striped bass. It's wedged in-between the Chesapeake Bay and it's tributaries and the Delaware River, followed by a distance fourth in the Roanoke-Albermarle fish. But no matter where you look to see there's no good spawns happening. In the end, to have big fish, or spawning striped bass, or SSB, you need little ones to fill in the ranks. Not having babies, allowing harvesting to occur in those slot fish, and bonus fish, depletes the numbers of older spawning fish, more so the biggest females then the males.
It's in the spring, during the spring spawning run, where pre-spawn fish congregate below their natal waters. They'll stage in places like the Chesapeake, Delaware, and Raritan Bays, and fatten up, before making their spawning run. That's why they're so "easy" to catch and leads to drop and reel fishing, if you will. Position yourself over a school or on the edges of bait pods and you're in like Flynn. I've always believed that striped bass eat before they travel and catches, with big flies and plugs, mostly occur because they hit out of annoyance then true eating, similar to what we see with salmon and steelhead, and shad too. After the spawn they put the feed bags on in their natal waters before heading out to the ocean for the summer, and the fall migratory run.
And I also believe, and it's just my opinion, that just because waters hold striped bass in the spring doesn't mean they are spawning in it. Conditions have to be just about perfect for a successful year's spawn. Water flow and temperature, water quality, and the fresh-brackish-salt content all have to hold and carry fertilized eggs before hatching. Any one of those, and there's more, factors just has to be off a bit to kill any type of good spawning, and more importantly, surviving.
"They spawn in the Navesink and Hackensack", so I've heard. No, I'm not a believer. The same could be said for rivers in south Jersey in and around the Delaware Bay and River. Just because you see, or catch, a striped bass, and maybe even an egg laden female, in those waters doesn't means they are there to spawn. While one might say the distance between say Belford and Secaucus is far, yes if you were walking, it's not that far by the way the crows fly, or the fish swim. They're all thinking of going to the same place, home, or where they were born, to spawn.
And looking at the spawning of striped bass. Picture yourself in your prime. All gussied up and heading out with your crew for a night out on the town with the possibility of hooking up with the opposite sex for some adult pleasure. You may look like you're ready, and you might, but you just might pass on the opportunity on any given night, and that's what some striped bass do. They come to the party, in any given year, but just might be in the mood, or the opportunity doesn't present itself. In the end, not every striped bass spawns every year during every run. They may make the trip and go through the motions, but in the end the eggs, and milt, get wasted. It's like the difference of having sex for pleasure, or for family planning.
As Whitney Houston sang, "I believe the children are our future", the same could be said for juvenile striped bass. We can throw the blame around, environmental conditions, both man-ruined and by Mother Nature, over fishing, or changing patterns by the fish themselves, but in the end it's not good, nor going good. And as a true lover of striped bass I can say that over the years between the drama and roller coaster of fisheries management and what we're seeing from an anglers perspective, especially from the river banks or beaches, the passion of fishing for striped bass has diminished, at least for me.
Fishing, and fly fishing, is supposed to be just fun. It's good for the mind and the soul. But fishing has become kind of like what we see in just about every aspect in every corner of life these days, conflict. Everyone has an opinion, everyone is an expert, and everyone knows, or tells us, what we should think and how we should act. And I won't even go into this new AI world we live in where you can't trust anything you see or read anymore. Content, in word or images, isn't original or even believable. Pictures, and even video, used to be truth, now not so much.
Recently I had to "prove" I was at the World Trade Center the week of 9/11, only to be told that photographic evidence is no longer supported due to the ability to doctor up photos these days. What a world we have created.
So in the end it's not surprising to see the trend of poor recruitment. What will 2026 have in store for the spring? Well what ever is left of the SSB will, in the next two months, begin their move towards their natal waters. This freeze were in, with all the snow and ice, will pass and the natal waters will be replenished with quality and volume, but for how long? It will melt, the waters will rise, and then they will fall. We'll see 90 degree days in March, then snow in April, then monsoons in May. The inconsistencies in the weather patterns just call for chaos, and people and fish don't like chaos or drama when they are out trying to find a mate and reproduce.
And with that I would say I would support a moratorium for a few years. While Cabin Fever gives most of a us a pause and the time to re-boot for the next years fishing, maybe it would be good to give the striped bass a break for some time. Would that just skyrocket JAI's in the natal rivers, of course not. But what it might do is allow for a reset of fishes both big and small to regroup and rediscover themselves. Remember, angling pressure changes fishes behaviors, and while we think they're just dumb fish, just think how many outings you had catching nothing but a skunk.
