Sounds like that commercial, "What's in your wallet?". I must be getting old, or dying. Hit the sack at 648 pm last night and woke at 3 am. I heard the rustle of the trees outside from the storm that has hit the tri-state area. While we're on the fringe of it here in Mercer County those down along the shore will be taking a beating. I fear for some this one could be worse then Sandy in 2012. The coastal flooding around the high tides will wreak havoc. We're watching what's happening down in Cape May because our house is located on one of the fingers off Cape May Harbor.
But what got me thinking as I laid there was a post I saw from Long Island fishermen Yugo Marinkovic. He was out, like he always is, fishing hard and landing a schoolie sized bass.
He took it home and prepared it for the table. He was surprised to see several rocks, one four ounces in size, in the striped bass's stomach. The only food source was a 12 inch fluke. So the question is, and it's been a tale from old times, Do fish eat rocks before a storm for ballast, or do they eat rocks to aid in digestion?.
I'm not the first person to tackle this question and in fact a quick AI/ Google/ everyone's an internet expert these days/ looked in the books, told me that Jimmy Fee from On The Water Magazine had tackled this same question back in 2021.
I did some digging in what I call my striped bass Bible, Fly fishing for Striped Bass by Rick Murphy, and a newer book by John Field's Fly Fishing for Trophy Striped Bass. I couldn't find any reference to rocks being in the striped bass's diet, with both books outlining what that fishes normal diet is. Neither mentioned striped bass intentionally targeting rocks for ballast, in big storms, or as an aid in digestion.
Animals with gizzards, like those without grinding teeth, like birds, such as your back-yard chickens, utilize gastroliths, or gizzard stones, as an aid in digestion. Humans use the mechanical process of mastication, or chewing, during the first step in digestion.
In a study, by then Doctoral candidate Aaron Olsen, he explains how the skeletal structure of a largemouth bass mouth aids in suction feeding. Through the rapid opening of the mouth structure a force is created that "sucks" prey into the fishes mouth.
That can occur as well in striped bass when targeting floor- based foods like crustaceans, crabs, lobsters, mantic shrimp, sand eels, eels, and mole crabs, as well as fishy foods like small white bait to menhaden, mackerel, squids, and all things with fins and tails.
You may have also seen striped bass "rafting" or "raft feeding" when they are in big schools and have baits, like bay anchovies or silversides, up near the surface and are swimming with their mouths open catching baits just by the nature of swimming through and catching them in their mouths. Below is a photo from Montauk guide Jim Levison.
It would be fair to say that it is during that suction feeding where striped bass injest rocks, probably as by-catch. Marinkovic's bass had a four ounce rock inside its stomach, boy that woulda hurt on the way out.
And then the question is how do striped bass prepare for and weather big weather. Striped bass are powerful swimmers, and use that body shape and strong caudal fin to ambush prey in a quick propulsion motion forward, as a weapon by tail slapping and stunning prey, to turn quickly when eating prey off the bottom, and to navigate in depressions and troughs when the waters above are turbulent.
I shot this video on October 29, 2011 when I ventured out to fish a nor-easter. Needless to say I wasn't alone as then fellow members of the Asbury Park Fishing Club had beaten me to The Flume. Fly fishing in this? Yes. Easy. No. But when there's a lot of bait and it's all turned around and confused the bass will put the feed bags on. Pockets are the place to be, and 8th Avenue was one of the best.
So do striped bass, or other fishes, injest rocks before an upcoming storm to swim straight, or to be able to hold bottom? Well, it seems to be an old wives, or Captain's tale. In a study in 2007 that was published in Science Daily, "Fish Help Geologists by Gathering Stones from Ocean Floor", researchers looked to deep water fishes to determine the type of geology
that existed on the ocean floor. They turned to the Antarctic toothfish, aka the Antarctic cod for help. They found that larger tooth fish, greater than three feet in length, held stones up to one pound in size. While they couldn't determine why the fish held stones, they speculated it was for digestion and or ballast.
So these days we don't see big fish dangling from the scales of the local marinas after the boats come in. We do still see big fish held incorrectly, like vertically where all their guts get squeezed down and can't perfuse, for the big weigh in on the Boga Grip. But remember, that big
fish that came in at 50.14 pounds may have a small bucket of 1/4" clean in it's intestines.
After the storm it'll be game on for the continued first push of big fish. It'll be fish out of water pics, flopping on the deck, held north to south, bleeding from the gills, treble hooks jammed in mouths and scales and gill plates, oh yeah and eyes, why would they need them, all to have claimed to, "Swam Away Strong". The ratio will be 500:2, boat to shore, and 2000:2, spin to fly. But don't get frustrated or feel like a loser because you're not catching, soon the internet and your buddy's cell phone will tell you when the fish hit the beach.
You'll then be able to join the fray and catch those rock eating rockfish. My prediction after the blow....slow. Then one day, in about seven (October 21st New Moon), on a good tide ( 8 and 8 high), with the temps dropping (50's at night), the bait will move and there will be fish on the beach. I hope the anglers putting their time in get rewarded before the word gets out and fall-blitz chasers show up.