How to Locate Striper Bass
- 1). Look in river mouths, estuaries, small, shallow bays and along sandy beaches and rocky shorelines for stripers. Give each spot about 30 minutes, then move on to other areas if you are not getting strikes. Stripers cover expansive areas while sometimes moving parallel to the beach, or from the ocean into river or bay waters to forage. Inlets and breachway waters are very productive, as many baitfish move through these waterways.
- 2). Use large, live baits to entice big stripers of 20 to 50 pounds. Productive baits are natural big forage such as menhaden, hickory shad, Atlantic mackerel, Atlantic herring, American eel, squid and alewife. For artificial lures, opt for rattle plugs, subsurface swimming plugs and bottle plugs; these lures attract striper bass by probing the depths with a life-like pulsating action. When trolling, use large bunker spoons, 8 to 12 inches, along with a weighted keel to take them lower into the water. Colors such as yellow, white or stainless steel work really well in resembling the striper's natural food.
- 3). Cover a lot of water and locate feeding areas by trolling. The forage species of stripers tend to congregate in eddies and rips adjacent to points or edges of dropoffs. Rocky ridges are also productive areas which can easily be accessed by trolling. The ideal speed for striper bass trolling is from 2-1/2 to 4 knots, with large striped bass preferring a slower pace than smaller ones. Approach holding structures from different directions until a fish preference pattern becomes apparent.
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