Stripers with Pogies May 25- June 5.

Last 2 weeks have been hectic so I haven’t been able to post, but I’m back. This year the pogie fishing has been hot and cold, not very consistent yet. A couple of times out I caught less than 2 fish one time I caught 10. See what I mean inconsistent. It appears there are quite a few small stripers around (30-34 inch class). Don’t get me wrong that’s a nice fish by any standard but that size fish has a hard time swallowing a pogie. I’ve had a lot of hits, stripers harassing pogies at the surface and pogies stolen right off the hook. These are all signs of relatively small fish. The ones I’ve managed to catch have been around the 34-36 inch range with a couple in the low 40’s. The pogies were more spotty in late May than in previous years but they seem to be more consistent in the first week of June. Hopefully the bigger fish will come in big, but it’s anybodies guess if that will happen. Last year mid June was on fire so there’s still hope. I’ve also been marking large numbers of big fish on my fish finder but they’ve been very fussy, a sign of too much bait not enough stripers.


Tactics:

Find the pogies as soon as you can. Snag a bunch. Live line them on 2 or 3 drifts of 100-200 yards. If you don’t get a hit move 100 yard to the left or right of the first drift, still nothing move to another spot and try again. The stripers are not always under the pogies. Recently I’ve taken to driving around an area slowly looking foe fish on the fish finder. If I find a cluster of big fish I give the area a few drifts. If it produces I stick around until the fish have left then move on. I also like to drift 2 rods one with a cigar weight one with no weight. I don’t weigh the pogies down to much just enough to make them tired and slow down (about ½ to 1 oz). Whichever rod gets a hit first that’s what I switch to. I also use a mono leader, my brother had on a wire leader on and I caught 4 fish to his 1. The only problem with the mono is there are some blues around so stock up on hooks.






Below is a video compilation of some of the last few weeks. I was out on Memorial Day with my friend Paul (an experienced angler) and some time later with my brother and his son Matthew. Mat and I managed to hook up 2 good fish at the same time. That was a good day I was on the water for about 8 hours and managed to land about 10 fish from 36-44 inches.