The fall was always a favorite time of mine. Besides the season that leads up to my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, it was the time of the big southernly migration of striped bass as they made their way past New Jersey. When I lived in Monmouth County it was a 24-hour a day obsession. Trying to figure out where the bait and bass were, and putting in a lot of time trying to find them, was a part of my daily life. The passion was still there when I moved to Mercer County, but the distance eliminated the chances to run down and check things out, or jump when I got a call from a friend.
But like everything else in the world, even the fall runs have changed, as have the striped bass. Yes, we always had big fish, or so it seemed first, followed by the rest of the biomass, which were "normal" in size and behavior. And then just as winter came, and our fingers would freeze off as we fished, the micros would arrive around the first of the year, and then it would be over until the spring.
The striped bass are in, and in a way, and have been for some time. But those slot fish, or 28-31 inches, and in and around that size, just aren't there in the numbers we used to see. And while the bunker still swims around the New York Bight, people in the know the numbers have been decimated by the reduction fleet. As my friend Paul always said, "No bait, no bass".
While there are flurries of bass hitting the beach, it has morphed into a boat fishery. Common these days are consistent catches of bass from 40 to 55 inches, which used to be a unicorn, and not the norm. And one of the problems with just big fish around is that that's what people are catching, and then either properly handling and releasing them, or not. It's big fish being caught on big baits, with big hooks, on big boats. The fish are hauled up from the bottom taken on shads or metal, or dragged in after failing to a large multi-treble hooked plug. The hot thing this year are those glide baits, where some are cheap knock-offs, loaded with shitty undersized hooks that make removal more difficult, and swallowing them much more easy.
And the snag and droppers are still snagging and dropping. Yes, some are still using illegal snagging treble hooks, some are playing by the rules, others are bending them like cheap hooks.
The law calls for using circle hooks when using live baits. Single circle hooks. But after the laws were written guys found a way to skirt the intended purpose. The AMSFC put out the
above in 2021, soon after the boards decision. In it, we see words like "hooks", and "A circle hook..." which, depending on who's reading it, or looking to skirt the intended purpose, can interpret it to their liking. So now we see snagging set-ups with two, or three, circle hooks.
And while a perfect photo, not like the one above, can show proper technique and well being for the fish, so many are left fatigued, damaged, or near death. And then there's the fly rodders, from the "fly or die" crowd to the "Grab the fly rod" part timers. We who fly fish never harm striped bass, and are never part of the F, or catch and release mortality. I'm kidding, we kill them, inadvertently, as well.
So then there's the anglers fishing from the beach. I have always enjoyed the hunt, from picking where I'd start a day, how long I'd hang in an area, to where I'd end up. I never had a big group of friends and wasn't part of the fishing cell phone network, so it was always more luck then anything else. Sometimes I would hear they had them in Lavalette the day before, and would go the next day, only to find guys up to their necks on the sand bar casting big plugs out a quarter mile. Yes, they had fish, but not fly rod fish. There's a difference.
The new generation of anglers may not know what we used to have, and I only caught the tail of end it. Even during the spring and fall we used to have fish that came, and stayed for a bit, before moving north or south. When the fish were at 8th Avenue, they were there for a day, or days, or even a week, not like today, where blitzes last 45 minutes and they're gone. I blame a lot of that on the changing beach structure, or lack of it, from the constant dredging and beach replenishment, which ruined places that hold bait and bass. It's now a north to south highway along the Jersey Shore, and they just pop in from time to time.
So in a time when a fall run lasted the fall, at least on the beach, where you had a shot of finding and catching them for an entire season, it's now just pure luck to have a few good days, or at least one day. The chances of that happening are less these days, with things like where the fish are, what the weather is doing, and where you are and what you're doing. Today guys at work, especially those who work around computers, keep the tabs on the beach cams open, ready to run if they can, if the action starts to build. And sadly, that's not the way it used to be.
I enjoyed the hunt, and running around, sometimes it worked, many times it didn't. I have friends, like Leif or Richie, who just stayed put and fished the same waters each morning, knowing that one day the stars would align, and they usually did, at some point. But that takes dedication, no ADHD running through your brain, with a lot of time put in. But the rewards were great, only if someone behind you didn't call a friend, or 100 of them.
So writing this from the Lowcountry I can only speculate what's going on, and is going to happen, back in New Jersey. Soon those big fish will move on, and the, "There's a ton of fish up north", will only be a hunch, like it alway was. The big questions will be, is there plenty of bait in the back that hasn't come out yet, and will there be any "normal" sized fish to chase them around.
A lot of the success of the timing has to do with the weather. We've already had our big nor' easters for the fall and now guys are waiting for the temperatures to drop. And this might be the week. The water is still warm, in the 60's, so things aren't moving yet. Yesterday my son Sean sent me this video of what he woke up to yesterday.
He just moved into his new first place near the Manasquan Inlet and I'm sure the landlords didn't tell them that their street is one of the first to flood out when the weather goes sideways. But events like that don't really come into play with the fall run, other then ruin a nice day out fishing.
This week the winds will be, "West is best", bringing the bait into the beach, before it comes out of the north which will drop air and water temps. Maybe that'll be the impetus to get things going. That's not to say there's no fish around outside of the blitzes everyone wants to get in on.
I got a text from Leif with a perfect fly rod bass he got fishing, to me, some boring looking water. Each fall he and I would come together and have at least one good day fishing alongside each other. If I remember correctly most of those times where we had them good were up on The Hook, where it required a long walk and time committed to those spots.
The above is some video I shot when we fished together on November 9th, 2023. The best part, besides landing a bunch, was that you could get away from the tightly packed spin crowd, and go and find your own fish, which at times, were at our feet. You can read about that day, HERE.
I'm sure today the ocean will be chocked full of boats, running through bunker schools, all adding to the shit show we have come to see as normal behavior. There will be the usual pit stops along the beach where there's more guys waiting and watching like Shepards rather than with lines in the water. Soon the cell phones will be blowing up and the guys will begin the chase from Sandy Hook down to Island Bech State Park. And tommorrow's reports will be like, "They had them up north", for like 20 minutes. But whatever they had yesterday, or even 2 hours ago, will be history, as the fish, these days, move with lightning speed down the shore. So, images like below, of a guy just going out, finding his own fish, tossing a fly and catching, will be a thing of the past.
