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Too many herring?

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herring
5K views 15 replies 9 participants last post by  BUB 
#1 ·
This question is for the veteran striper fisherman on this forum. I've only been striper fishing for about four years now and I'm starting to notice that the bite slows down A LOT when the herring are very abundant in the river. Am I crazy or have any of you guys noticed this as well? My (completely unscientific) theory is that when there is a lot of herring in the water, the stripers have a lot more bait to choose from, therefore the chances of them biting the herring on your line diminishes substantially. Also if this theory is true, does anyone have any ideas how to make the herring on your line more..."appetizing" than the others swimming around freely?
 
#2 ·
You are correct with that assumption. Early during run when Herring are tough to get we always get more Striper bites. Then when the massive schools of bluebacks get here, it can get tougher to get Stripers ... they need to pick your one lonely bait out of millions.

All I can say for helping your odds, move around try different areas if you are not getting any action at all. If your an anchor guy , use a mix of live and fresh chunk.

Good luck out there.
:icon_thelmutsalute:
 
#5 ·
That's a new one to me. I'd imagine they wouldn't hold up as well.

I tried the "bridle rig" with circles this year but the majority of my fish were gut hooked. It defeats the whole point of the circle. Personally, I have better ratios running circles up through the roof of the mouth and out the bridge of the nose. No issues with the hook turning in that way.
 
#13 ·
Hook them through the nostrils. The only downside to that is that the hook is more likely to turn into the herring's face thus preventing hook up. Hooking them through the back by the dorsal find solves all of that, BUT it's easier to cast the bait off and if you fish fairly shallow water you'll often have the problem of the bait swimming to the surface depending on your leader length.
 
#15 ·
I used to hook the herring through the belly. I got a lot of gut hooked striper doing that. This year I switched to hooking them right above the two specks behind their head and I only lost 3 out of 9 fish so far and all were hooked in the mouth. I also had my "loose" drag set tighter than I have in past years so it's hard to say what method helped more with my hookup ratio. I wanna say it's the tighter drag but who knows..
 
#16 ·
I like to leave my drag in the middle and use my hand as a secondary drag. Much easier than readjusting as you go.
 
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