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 When out on Delaware Bay, one can’t help but think
of the history the bay contains. Imagine how the “Big
Pond” was in the days of Henry Hudson who poked the
bow of his ship in on his way to, well, the Hudson River.
Or Samuel Argall who in 1610 was blown off course and took
refuge inside the bay. He named the bay in honor of his governor,
Lord De La Warr.
During the Revolutionary War period, the bay was a hot zone
for naval battles and was bordered by several forts protecting
the center of the colonies, Philadelphia. It is not really a stretch
for they bay’s anglers to envision that they
are fishing in the very same spot George Washington himself sailed over two
hundred years ago. But the bay has changed much since then. Now the bay serves
as the entryway to the port of Philadelphia, the 4th largest port in the US,
which handles more than 5000 ships per year at its docks.
If the history of the Delaware Bay is not enough to grab
you, then the striped bass fishing certainly will! It has
been speculated in many magazines and by many top anglers,
including our own Bill Donovan, that the next world record
striper will come out of Delaware Bay, and soon. The fishing for big fish
is THAT good.
The fall striper season on the bay begins in earnest around
the last week in October and lasts until the water temperature
drops too low for the stripers to feed – usually sometime in December. During this period, migrating
bass make a stop into the bay to gorge themselves on the abundant bunker
and other forage that will keep their energy up for the rest of their migration
southward. Many anglers now believe that some of these bass will stay in
the bay through the winter in preparation for their spring spawning run up
the Delaware River. Regardless, there is no questioning the numbers of truly
large striped bass that spend time in the Delaware Bay in the late fall.
In this episode, our hosts Bill and Darren take advantage
of one of the few calm days throughout the entire months of
October and November. Though the weather was perfect on this
day, a hard northwest wind had whipped the bay into a froth
for the entire week prior, and there were absolutely no reports
to work from. The plan, therefore, was to head to a honey hole near the
shipping lanes, an 8-mile run from the Cape May Canal. There,
the water would be cleaner than in some of the more heavily
fished areas closer to the canal. Bill and Darren planned
to give this spot no more than a half-hour to produce before
running further up the bay. With the calm water and no established pattern
to work from, mobility was to be a key element of the equation.
As it turns out, mobility had nothing to do with our hosts’ success on
this day. The first fish hit the deck with a few minutes, and the action continued
nonstop until all the entire bait supply of 40 adult bunker was exhausted.
Truth be told, Bill and Darren had to ignore multiple hookups on several occasions
just to record some instructional sequences and dialog. It was tough to concentrate
with rods bending over double and reels screaming! The day ended with probably
25 stripers, at least a dozen of which exceeded 20 pounds, and a few big blues,
too.
In the Delaware Bay striper fishing community, fresh bunker
is treated like gold. It is considered an essential element
in the striper fishing equation. In fact, many skippers will
scrap a trip if they can’t obtain “fresh”.
Bunker is such a commodity along the bay that most tackle shops take reservations
for the bait days in advance so that anglers can be relatively certain about
their bait supply. The number of bunker needed for a full day on the bay
varies depending on the action and the number of dogfish, skates and other
bait stealers in the vicinity. Usually, somewhere between 2 and 4 dozen baits
are needed. This may seem like a lot, but you’ll go through your supply
quickly when the action is hot!
Most boats fish a four-rod spread, with two baits cast out
behind the transom, and two baits fished on the bottom just
behind the boat. Bill and Darren both prefer to put out two
bunker heads, or “Noggins”, along
with a pair of chunks. The heads are hooked from the bottom jaw upward, much
like an angler would hook a killie for fluke fishing, and the chunks are
hooked through a corner of the belly section. These baits are presented on
a simple fish-finder setup, using a 30-inch leader of 60-pound fluorocarbon
and a 10/0 Gamakatsu Octopus-style 10/0 hook. Anywhere from 2 to 8 ounces
of lead is required to keep the baits on the bottom depending on current
flow.
Bill and Darren use Penn International 975 Lever Drag reels
for this style of fishing. When the current is minimal these
reels are fished in free spool with the clickers on. When
the tide picks up, the drag tension is adjusted accordingly.
The infinite tension adjustment provided by the lever drag
is a very important element in this style of fishing.
On the “Big Pond” good hook sets are imperative, and often somewhat
difficult. By nature, striped bass feed and swim into the current, yet anchored
boats sit bow into the current. This means that most runoffs will be toward
the boat. Many times, when an angler grabs a rod and attempts to set the hook,
all they are really doing is lifting the sinker off the bottom and alerting
the fish that something may be wrong. The best way to achieve solid hook sets
is to come as tight to the fish as possible before setting the hook. This usually
means reeling very fast for quite a while – very often for several seconds
or more – in order to come very tight to the fish before setting the
hook. This simple technique will improve your hookup ratio dramatically.
Another important element of a good hook set is the tackle.
In short, it must be stout enough to drive the hook through
the bait and into a big striper’s
bony maw. A good quality braided line, such as Power Pro, helps tremendously
in this matter. The lack of stretch in these lines translates all the power
an angler generates directly to the hook point, and more hookups result.
Although keeping the reels in free spool and giving the
fish a few seconds to gulp a bait down generally helps the
hookup percentage, there are days when bass strike very aggressively
and can be hit immediately. If you’re suffering
from a poor hookup percentage, don’t be afraid to hold the rods with
the reels locked up and cross their eyes once the strike is felt. Sometimes
this makes all the difference!
To chunk or not to chunk, that is the question. Chunking,
which is nothing more than cutting bunker up into small pieces
and tossing them overboard, is really a double-edged sword.
While some believe that chunking is the key to attracting
bass to the boat, it also brings in the scavengers en mass.
Plus, during times of peak current flow, by the time the small chunks reach
bottom they could be as much as a quarter mile down tide, and of little
use. Some anglers will only chunk on a slack tide, which certainly
has merit.
Our hosts believe that keeping four large, fresh, oily baits on the bottom
beneath the boat (complete with hooks, of course) does an adequate job of
bringing bass to the boat and keeping them there, assuming the competition
from “neighboring” chunk
slicks isn’t too great. They prefer to chunk only very little, and usually
during periods of slower tidal flow. To put this in better perspective, on
the day this show was filmed, there was not a single boat within a half-mile,
and neither Bill nor Darren threw a single chunk in the water that did not
have a hook in it.
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