There’s a secret language spoken around here come spring, one with catch phrases like
“pulled him in on a blood worm” and “the boil could happen any day.” It passes like
smoke signals among men from the Hudson River to the Long Island Sound to the
Atlantic. I set out to understand it recently and found it wasn’t as tough to break as
Navajo code. Its fish talk for the much anticipated spawn migration of the Striped Bass, 4
to 6 weeks of angler bliss, usually peaking appropriately around Mother’s Day.
These fish get around. They’re in rivers and oceans, Florida to Maine, but you wouldn’t
know it unless you went searching. And it’s rather spectacular to find them. The how-to
of finding them fuels fish stories from coast to coast. The Latin name for striped bass,
“morone saxitillis” translates as “stupid found among rocks,” so you wouldn’t suspect
them of being particularly elusive. I think that’s part of their game. They’re also tricky
by being anadramous, able to convert their bodies from salt water to fresh water. The
Darwinian reason for this is making babies. Fish eggs float to the top in dense salt water
giving predators a better chance, so they figured out how to make their kidneys balance
salt intake to lay eggs in fresh water where they don’t float as they spawn on the surface
rather than in nests like salmon. That’s no morone.
The whole process is fascinating. Like us, the fish take their clues for spring break from
Mother Nature. Timing is determined by longer days (after daylight savings time), better
water flow (spring rains and melting snow), warmer water (62 to 66 degrees) and drive-
through restaurant availability (schools of fish hatching in tributaries). The major
spawning grounds are Chesapeake Bay, Massachusetts Bay, Hudson River and Delaware
River. The boys arrive first and hang out for a few days, waiting on a woman as usual.
In a stunning reversal of bad human behavior, the oldest and biggest girls are the most
desirable. They begin trickling in next, followed by the younger/smaller girls. Then the
fun begins: the “rock fights” or “the boil,” the pre-spawning ritual of thrashing around on
the surface, swimming on their sides and slapping the water with their tails. Groups of
males surround the cow, nosing and bumping her to knock her eggs out. The trigger for
the actual egg release is water temperature, 64.5 being optimal. When the time has come,
the cow sinks below the surface and releases millions of eggs. The milt (boy juice) is
released and floats all around in a milky haze, mixing with eggs and floating downstream
to hatch a week or so later. Momma Fish’s goal is for her eggs to have time to develop in
brackish water before the current carries them to salt water to hatch. She considers the
speed of the current and the distance to the sea before choosing her spot, but still only 1% make it to 2 yrs old. That’s no morone.
I had the good fortune to fish the spawn twice this season, both times fishing Esopus
Meadows and Kingston Flats, popular shallow spawning spots. The first trip was out of
Rondout Creek in Kingston on the Reel Easy with Captain Jay, a retired high school
English teacher who’s been studying and fishing striped bass for almost 20 years. We
fished by day, trolling with lures on four downriggers. He was chockfull of useful
information. The slow, no-wake zone, ride out to the river was a narrated cruise through
a by-gone era. Coal, steel, brick manufacturing and shipping were all once king here in
Kingstown, the first capital of New York (in 1777 for a year before being burned down
by the British). The tattered remnants of past wealth are all around: massive brick
buildings now re-purposed to house Ol’ Savannah Restaurant and the Tivoli Sailing
Company. Rusting husks of PT (Patrol Torpedo) boats from WWII, a hospital ship and
tugboats line the shores of the defunct D&H (Delaware and Hudson) Canal, an interesting
piece of Hudson Valley history.
The 108-mile canal and 16-mile gravity railroad were operated by hand and horsepower
from 1828 to 1898 to carry coal from the Lackawanna Valley in Pennsylvania to the
Hudson at Kingston and down to NYC. The D&H was one of the country’s first million-
dollar private enterprises, an engineering feat constructed by some of the best minds of
the time, including John Roebling who later built the Brooklyn Bridge. The boats, pulled
by mules, were often operated by families living on them during shipping season and
spurring development of villages. IBM was the last big employer to pull out of the area
in the 1970s, and the town’s recovery has been slow.
My next trip was night fishing out of Rhinebeck, a beautiful village on this side of the
Hudson just across from Kingston, with which history has been kinder. It established
itself as a center for quality woodworking by the 1850s, attracting the wealthy of the
Gilded Age from New York City who built country estates. It then became known for
cultivating violets with about 20% of its population in the business, topping out at a
million dollars annually in value. Kris and Keith of Shrill Outdoors took me out and
welcomed me in, two good ol’ boys who know their stuff. We drift fished, a method
familiar to me from home, trailering the boat to the put-in, baiting the hooks with
bloodworms and casting out, then watching and waiting while you drink beer and swap
stories.
In both cases, the rules were the same. Each fisherman can keep one fish per day, a
standard set by the Department of Environmental Conservation in 2015 to offset
dwindling schools. The fish population underwent a rapid explosion when commercial
fishing was eliminated because of PCB (Poly Chloral Bi Phenyl) contamination, a by-
product of coolants from electrical power plant operations on the river. A striped bass
hatchery was set up from 1982 to 1993 at Verplanck to further supplement stocks of wild
fish, offsetting the loss of fish and eggs inadvertently sucked into the huge cooling
stations.
These actions and The (unspoken) Fishermen’s Code have been successful in
replenishing the stock. All must adhere to the slot limit (the keepers) of 18” to 28” or
bigger than 40”. All obey the tacit rule of throwing back spawning females.
So if this tale hooks you, try your luck next spring. A list of charters can be found at
NYFISHMAN.NET. Book in January/February as they fill up fast. The best bait shop is
a hidden jewel in Wappinger Falls, Lakehouse Bait Store, where Vinnie dishes up
bloodworms the size of jungle snakes. The morones just love ‘em.
Leave a Reply