So my quest for knowledge regarding everything striped bass continues. I got into the game later in my life and past the heydays of striper fishing. When I joined the Asbury Park Fishing Club about 10 years ago I learned about how productive livening herring was back in the day. The 8th Avenue jetty and the Wreck Pond outflow between Spring Lake and Sea Girt were go to spots. Although, if you caught you're herring elsewhere, say int the Delaware River and kept them alive, they would be a sure big bass killer no matter where you fished them. I always enjoyed hearing my buddy Al tell me great stories of the live lining action from days past.
So there are tons of resources to learn about herring. The herring family is large, and includes herrings, shads, and menhaden. For me I am focusing on the herring that return each spring to spawn. They are the alewives and blueback herrings, collective called river herring.
For years the herring were hammered by commercial and recreational fisheries, to the point it is illegal to harvest or use for bait these herring. One problem that I have come to learn is that river herring swim in the ocean with ocean herring and have been decimated through by-catch. For years strong spawning grounds had been destroyed by the building of dams, which blocked the fishes full migration. River like the Raritan have seen key dams being removed, or along the shore like Wreck Pond, fish passages or ladders have been constructed.
Herring have been mainstay in peoples, and predators, diet throughout the last centuries. Herring smoked, stewed, pickled, broiled, steamed air fried. They also have been harvested for use as bait
for lobster and other crustaceans, as well as for fish like striped bass. I have seen anglers using sabiki rigs on the Delaware at Trenton before that fishery was shut down in 2013. The bots would be lined up along the channel and it was a quick drop down, reel up a few, then live line them, and then reel in a large striped bass. I looked into the NJ Fish and Wildlife river herring surveys. The last I found was in 2017 where gill and seine net sampling occurred. Between the overfishing and floods and droughts the numbers have been just about decimated.
Blueback
On April 22 2019 I found a ton of river herring amongst the trees and brush along the river following a heavy rain. While I believe this may appear to be a blueback, the alewives eyes are larger, and the
one below looks pretty big. Alewives are also broader built, while the bluebacks a little stealthier, like the one above. What is known is that alewives like to spawn in slow moving water at night and the bluebacks over faster rocky structure during the day, so they are active around the clock, perfect for the nocturnal striped bass. In doing some digging around ;looking for good patterns I found Ian Devlin's tie. He's another mad scientist. He is from Connecticut and if you ever want to talk fly rods, lines or skiffs, he's your go to guy. Like Steve Farrar, Ian also has a live of blends, called Devlin Blends. He has developed a pattern he likes for matching the herring. Like most big flies, its a mix of Hollow, and something, and his, and hers, and whoever. But what I like is the tail, and if you look at the link
was taken from the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah at Herring Creek off Menemsha Pond. You can see hope the the dark and forked tail really stands out, as well at the iridescent purple and pink and the large eyes. In a few weeks the herring will be making their way into Delaware Bay following the American shad and the stripers will be chewing on them as they make their way up to their spawning grounds. Hopefully by then I will I will have settled into a pattern and have a bunch ready in the quiver.
