Dave Anderson opened The Fisherman's May 14 New England Forecast with one of the strongest week-one striper paragraphs in recent memory.
"This week it's all about the striped bass," Anderson said. "We have had 40-pound stripers reported from all three southern New England states. We have migratory fish now arriving in southern Maine. There's been incredible catches across the region with average sizes that are far exceeding what we usually see this early in the season."
The second story is the Saturday opener. Both Massachusetts and Connecticut reopen their black sea bass seasons on May 16 with four-fish limits - 16-inch minimum in Massachusetts, 15 inches in Connecticut. Anderson's editorial reminder is for boats fishing close to state lines.
"You don't want to drift into Rhode Island waters because Rhode Island doesn't open up until May 22nd," he said.
The striper detail by state is where the report goes deepest. In southern Maine, migratory fish are pushing into the Mousam, Saco and Kennebunk tidal rivers in the 10 to 15-pound class with a few going just north of that. On Plum Island, the mouth of the Merrimack is still the bigger-fish bet, with cows up to 17 and 18 pounds, while the wider beach school size is about to change.
"A good push of fish has now moved into the Boston Harbor area," Anderson said. "These fish are in the 15 to 20-pound class. Might be a couple pushing north of that."
On the freshwater side, central Massachusetts is still producing what he called great lake trout out of Wachusett, great smallmouth out of Quabbin and Wachusett, and quality largemouth out of the Quabbin and Chew. Anderson flagged the timing nuance for big-water bass anglers.
"I do suspect that being that these lakes are so big and so deep and so cold, the spawn may lag behind a little bit," he said.
"Everyone's kicking their season off with bigger fish than normal," he said. "And everyone's fired up."
The forecast's lure feature this week is a new size of the Yo-Zuri Hydro Twitchbait. Chris Bishop, Yo-Zuri's vice president of sales and marketing for North America, joined a tagging trip on Captain Rob Radloff's Conch 27 with Gray FishTag Research and put a 7.5-inch, just-under-five-ounce slow-sinking twitchbait through its paces.
"Slow sinking bait with a wide wobble, natural action, kind of a roll to it. A little bit of a searching action," Bishop said. "What I really like about it is you could slow it down, twitch it, you can burn it, you can really slow roll it. Basically do anything you want with it. And the profile is the key. That bigger bunker profile."
Bishop's read on cadence is location-dependent. In April's high-40s water with bunker around, a straight retrieve drew strikes. In flat-water bottom fish that are not actively feeding, it is the pause that triggers.
"I'll give it a couple cranks, get it to swim, and then pause it. Give it a couple hard twitches and they eat it on that pause and twitch," Bishop said. "What I'm trying to do is run it across their face with an erratic action and then kind of pause it in front of them and they got to eat it. It's more of a reaction bite."
Bishop, a Florida snook angler by background, has also become an unlikely Northeast striper evangelist.
"They're quickly becoming one of my favourite fish in the world," he said. "They're not the hardest fighting fish pound-for-pound by any means, but they hit hard. They travel in big schools. They eat top waters. They eat jigs and swimbaits."
Offshore, the Canyon Runner crew's read on the Gulf Stream is the second tactical anchor of the report. A rotating plume of warm water has pushed north over the Washington Canyon, the Poor Man's, and the Baltimore for roughly five days. Boats out of Oregon Inlet and Norfolk have started catching bluefin and yellowfin on the edge, and tile fishing in the Hudson Canyon has been producing incidental bluefin shots on the bottom.
"Guys working this water are catching bluefins, and there have been some yellowfins, and that should just get better and better," the Canyon Runner host said, with surface temps reading 68 to 69 degrees on the edge.
The takeaway for the New England weekend is the kind anglers actually want: oversized fish, a hard sea bass opener Saturday, fluke firing in Rhode Island, and the kind of bait innovation - 7.5-inch slow-sinking twitchbait, bunker profile - that looks tailor-made for the bait class running the coast right now.
