Big Nightime Striped Bass
You're floating the third drift of the night, start spacing out at the stars, forgetting you're even fishing. All of a sudden you feel that lightning rod thump you’ve been waiting for and you hear your inner voice screaming SET THE HOOK DUDE! As you're fighting to keep the fish out of the rocks you keep telling yourself “man this thing feels heavy” over and over again till you see that first flash of color in the red hue of your headlamp. All you can hear is the sound of your drag zipping struggling to slow the fish down. You know it’s an absolute cow and you can feel those butterflies start going when you finally get your hands on her. These are the types of nights I live for! If you are a hardcore Striped Bass angler in the Northeast, it’s no secret to you that the best time to target trophy fish in the summer months is after the sun goes down. As the relentless heat rolls in, Striped Bass in the Northeast will enter their summer haunts and usually stay in that general area till the fall migration. Striped Bass for the most part always feed better during lowlight hours, but when the fish start to make their homes for the summer the night bite becomes significantly more productive. I am primarily fishing in the Long Island Sound and Rhode Island so I am dealing with a lot of rocky coast line and boulder fields. However, a lot of the things I will talk about in this article will apply to situations all over the coast.
Big Striped Bass will use current and structure to their advantage and position themselves in areas where they have to expand the least amount of energy for the largest calorie reward. Boulder fields are a great area that provide current breaks for large fish to hide behind and ambush anything that swims by. Shoals and deeper reefs are also key areas that will hold a solid population of resident summer fish. They will eat a plethora of schooling bait such as Bunker, Mackerel and Butterfish but also more bottom oriented bait including Lobsters, small Tautog , Scup and most importantly Eels. Eels are a key part of a Stripers diet due to their availability, going down easy and a calorie dense meal they don’t have to chase to the surface. Since Eels are primarily active at night, throwing Eels imitations is one of the most effective approaches to targeting nocturnal Bass.
Striped Bass feed with their lateral lines at night and have a very good sense of their surroundings, even when they can’t see it. Once you have the attention of a fish there are 2 main things in my opinion that will decide whether you get a commit or swerve, and that is profile/silhouette and cadence. You want your bait to be throwing off a perfect silhouette that the fish can hone in on. You also want the profile to be right so they have no hesitation while choosing to commit or not. Cadence is probably the most important one and usually the slower the retrieve the better. But again, it’s all about finding the retrieve that works for that night, so play around with it till you see results. Oftentimes at night, certain bait will swim current lines and from rock to rock in a straight line and not all erratic to avoid sending off vibrations to predators. That is why a large straight tail bait like the DuraTech eel works so well. When I'm picking apart shallow boulder fields I will cast adjacent to boulders or as shallow as possible and maintain a slow steady retrieve with a very light crack of the rod occasionally. Sometimes they like just a straight slow retrieve with no input at all, the slower the better. When I'm fishing deeper reefs or shoals I will position myself up current from the structure, cast up current, leave my bail open and the bait sink all the way to the bottom, give it 2 or 3 reel turns, let it fall back and repeat. These techniques have been responsible for countless large fish over the years and continue to produce year after year. For colors I like to keep it simple, you want something that has contrast and throws a silhouette. A Black, Blurple or Pink are always my go to colors when I'm fishing at night and I will choose from those 3 depending on what the moon is doing. If it’s a new moon and pitch black out I will opt for a straight black. If the moon is showing I will opt for the Blurple or Pink.
Targeting Striped Bass at night is a daunting task at first but once you learn what to look out for it can be some of the most productive fishing trips of the season. Something about the peace and quiet of casting under the stars has always drawn me towards fishing through the evenings. It's not for everybody as it really leaves you in zombie mode the next few days. However, you know the chance of hooking into the potential fish of a lifetime is heightened every cast you take after dark and that's what keeps us out there!
-Game On Staff
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