Fall has long been celebrated for striped bass fishing in New England, but June might actually be the best month of all for chasing linesiders. Spring striper fishing is more predictable than the fall run, when a series of nor’easters can send the schools packing and alter their southbound trajectory just enough to leave you muttering at a lot of empty water. Spring is far more benign.
The returning fish are hungry and aggressive. They’re found everywhere from bays and tidal rivers to ocean beaches, rips and reefs. The waters are still cool, in the 50s, which means that the fish fight with vigor, shaking their heads, ripping off line and perhaps even tossing a face-full of water your way once you’ve brought a good bass alongside.
By the end of June, stripers are settling into summer locations and feeding patterns, which are marked by increased nocturnal feeding. You can still find daytime bites in June, with early mornings and evenings the best bets when they align with the right tides.
One nice thing about June is the many ways you can pursue stripers. The fish take a variety of artificials, from bucktails and swimming plugs to soft plastics and top-water noise makers. I catch stripers in this last month of spring on a variety of live baits, including menhaden and eels. I also enjoy great action working popping plugs on those foggy days that are so common in June. The diffuse light on soupy outings provides the fish with the cover to wallop midday surface lures with abandon. Try working a large, white surface plug known as a Doc across the top—you won’t be disappointed.
And if you have a hankering to chase striped bass on a flyrod, again June is a great month. Plenty of bass are feeding in bays and salt ponds on newly hatching worms, small silversides and sand eels, which fly anglers can easily match. Most practitioners fish 8- or 9-weight rods, although you can sometimes get away with a 6-7 weight if the conditions are right, which is great fun on schoolies.
Starting in May and continuing through June, I sometimes slowly troll the mud flats, coves and rockpiles of a Rhode Island tidal river from my kayak with a small tube lure tipped with a fresh sandworm. It’s a productive technique, especially given the worm hatches taking place in the spring shallows. A tube-and-worm rig is a good way to find fish when exploring new waters. I never tire of the sound my 7-foot spinning rod makes thumping in the rod holder as the drag shouts my name and a nice fish sprints off. I set the paddle across my thighs, reach behind me for the rod and let the tussle begin. Stripers spook easily even in tannin-colored shallows, so the ability to proceed in stealth mode gives the kayak an edge over small outboards, especially in spots where tons of glacial debris lurk just beneath the surface.
During recent springs, I have spent more time casting small soft plastics from my kayak and center-console than any other method. My go-to plastic bait is a 5-inch Albie Snax, in either amber or amber and white. It weighs a ½ ounce, casts well and has an enticing darting action that drives stripers bonkers. I rig Albie Snaxs on an Owner Twistlock Beast Hook, in either 4/0 or 5/0. The twist lock is helpful in keeping the plastic bait on the hook. You can also rig one on a jig if you need to get deeper, but I prefer to fish them weightless.
Many are the spring outings when I carry nothing but a couple of packs of Albie Snaxs, extra hooks and leader material. During late summer and fall, they also catch more than their share of their namesake false albacore. These plastics are easy to rig. Check out YouTube for step-by-step instructions.
The same holds true with tube-and-worm fishing. Sandworms are dug by hand on the Maine mudflats and their numbers have been in decline for some time. Increasingly, large worms are harder to find at tackle shops. But spring stripers have a hard time ignoring a slow-trolled sandworm, so it’s still worth the effort to find large ones.
This spring marks my 55th season chasing striped bass. After all these years I’ve never grown complacent or dispassionate, but only increasingly respectful of the species, and in my affection for the waters where they are found. Each season I still find something new in the chase. These never-ending surprises draw me back and keep me firmly engaged in the pursuit.
As adolescents, my fishing partners and I were as eager as young duck dogs. One of us had only to raise a hand and feign tossing a stick for all of us to hit the water, legs churning, ready to chase fish deep into the night.
From March through November, we lived for the tides. We listened in on conversations in breakfast joints, boat yards and tackle shops—anywhere someone might have intel on fish. And we’d try anything that might give us an edge, experimenting with tactics, tides, lures and baits. Striped bass reward anglers who pay close attention to the natural world and aren’t afraid to mix things up, to try new techniques and search for new spots. The best fish are sometimes hiding in plain sight.
Sometimes the experimenting paid off, and sometimes it didn’t. One June, my partner Bruce and I were regularly catching and releasing large bass on live bunker and herring, drifted close to the bottom on 3-way rigs. Bruce and I strutted like hot shots, puffing out our chests and cavalierly discussing switching to lighter tackle to inject more sport into our pursuit of these 30-plus pound fish.
Big mistake. The largemouth bass tackle we experimented with worked fine on fish up to about 25 pounds. After that, the rods didn’t have the backbone to keep a large striper from diving into a sticky rock bottom and staying there. The large fish tore us up. It was a good lesson in hubris and an important reminder that a large spring striper can be a handful.
You should check local fishing reports for specifics on timing and locations, but remember the exaggeration factor is at work in many public striper prognostications. Secrecy has a long tradition in this fishery. If you haven’t fished bass in a couple of seasons, the size limit is one fish a day between 28 and 31 inches. For live bait, you can only use in-line circle hooks. And please handle the fish carefully and release them quickly.
A good evening in June is as fine as any you’ll find in this fishery. As the tide floods and twilight gathers, stripers feed along a thin strip of hard bottom that juts into deeper water. The current accelerates as it flows over the bar. Before dark, a dozen terns screech their hunting songs as they drop on schools of small silversides. The bass bite improves as darkness rises and the small birds depart to roost. The slight breeze keeps the bugs at bay.
I’ll toss a small epoxy sand eel on a 7-weight fly rod with a floating line, and amped-up schoolies up to 10 or 12 pounds are often happy to crush it. Time catches its breath as the tide slowly fills the bay. The larger noisy world pauses. That’s a difficult thing to find in our fractured go-fast universe, but so refreshing when you manage to experience it for an evening. It fills you up until, like the bay I am fishing, the tide and anglers are both full. Spring stripers are good for the soul.
William Sisson is the executive editor of Anglers Journal and author of Seasons of the Striper, Pursuing the Great American Game Fish (Rizzoli New York). It’s on our Editors’ list of top Father’s Day gifts for 2023.
This article was originally published in the June 2023 issue.
