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Fly Fishing for Hudson River
Striped Bass
by Ray Ottulich
The Secret Season (Nighthawking
Stripers)
Imagine the moon hanging like a powdered jelly doughnut
in an ink black sky, and the ambiance of a quite firefly
accented pool on a small creek whose surface is filled
with countless small splashes. While this plethora of
activity is going on at about intervals of 3-5 minutes
you will either hear or see the huge splash of a striper
breaking the water at various visual and audio locations
some close enough, right at your feet, to give you a
start. It's a big adrenaline rush to observe this action
which has probably been going on for millennia, even if
you don't hook up.
There is about a six week season available to fly
fishermen in New York that is all but ignored by the
vast majority of adherents of the long wand. Those
intrepid souls, who at this time of the year, busy
themselves casting flies upon the rivers and kills of
the Catskills. Let's keep it that way. If you are one of
them read no further tradition has you anchored squarely
in a ritualistic observance. However if chasing hatchery
stock trucks and pretending that that it is on par with
your brethren wading on the Big Hole, the Yellowstone or
the Kootenai is getting to be a bit long in the tooth,
let's get on with it.
At a temperature of about 40 degrees schools of
anadromous bait fish gather at the mouth of the Hudson
in preparation for their spawning run. These fish, known
as alewives, green backs (Alosa pseudoharengus), blue
backs (Alosa aestivalis) and in aggregate as "river
herring" are the impetuses for the secret fishery. As
the water warms further, the schools ascend en masse up
the Hudson over the still torpid schools of striped bass
who in nature's annual cue are still awaiting a
temperature of closer to 50 degrees to awaken from their
long winters nap. In the vanguard are the alewives and
these are the proverbial fish to, in fly fisherman's
parlance, "match the hatch". Streamer patterns from
5-8-inches will suffice, though the actual alewives
themselves are closer to a foot long.
All fly fisherman that are familiar with the broad
Hudson as they cross the George Washington or Tappan Zee
on their way to rivulets of the Catskills, will dismiss
it as too large to adequately fish with a fly rod, and
for the most part they are right. Yet, just as the once
aqua incognito of the Atlantic has now become a venue to
fly fishers with the advancements of knowledge and
equipment so now has the Hudson begun to unlock her
secrets. Perhaps this knowledge was just lost and
forgotten during the last 200 years when the Hudson
became the cloaca maxima to the Industrial Revolution.
The key ingredients to the secret fishery are these:
One, alewives need fast, clean, rocky bottomed tributary
streams to spawn in. This fact traditionally
concentrated particularly the alewives into all the
Hudson tributaries. They will travel upstream to spawn
with each fish, in an effort similar to shad, attempting
to advantageously deposit their eggs as far upstream as
possible, they are stopped only at the first barrier to
migration. Large dredged tributaries diffuse your
opportunities; small wadeable tributaries are your
targets.Two, stripers on their own spawning run will
feed on alewives, but the stripers stay deep in the dark
safety of main channel of the Hudson (ask any bait
fisherman using chunk herring), that is until nightfall,
when darkness spreads security over all waters.
Three, most small tributaries to the Hudson have a bar
at their mouth; here is where the spring freshets drop
their bed loads. At low tides there may be only a foot
of water over a bar, no survival instinct hard wired
striper is going to risk passing a bar at low tide no
matter how alluring the alewives are. So they will wait
for a high tide at night.
Four, alewives begin their mating ritual at the top of
the water column. A female hangs suspended just below
the surface surrounded by a cadre of males who rub
against her inducing the female to eventually dive for
the bottom and release her eggs, followed closely by the
males and their milt.
Interested fly fishermen will have to do their footwork,
homework, and research. Not every tributary is pristine
enough or undamaged by human activity to still have a
good run of river herring. Herring like salmon return to
their home streams to spawn following the scent of their
natal waters, pollution, power plant intakes, over
harvesting, incidental by catch and probably predation
have devastated herring runs in New England and to some
extent also in the Hudson. This isYour preliminary
activity is to see if there are herring present, at all,
and this will involve first scouting out your target
creek in daylight at both high and low tides, and then
at night when the herring are apt to be there in
abundance. Remember tidal waters are held in the public
trust for the people of the state of NY so finding an
access where you are not trespassing across private
lands may require a trip to the public record office or
access by walking upstream from the Hudson itself. The
Hudson can have a high tide of 5.5 feet (i.e. over the
top of most heads not to mention waders) and that can go
higher with a either a blow in tide and or a high
tributary flow, know your tides. While you are at this
activity you might as well volunteer your gathered
information with Amy Bloomfield for the NYS Herring
monitoring program visit the website (on the link
provided) and share the info, herring need all the help
they can get.
As far as fly fishing paraphernalia for this fishery,
the essentials are, a good headlamp, felt soled waders,
for rods you can get by with a freshwater rod, at least
a 6wt., with a very good disc drag reel, a weight
forward floating line and a straight 25lb. test leader
(I have caught a 33 inch striper on the six but be
for-warned, your arm will be a limp noodle by the time
you land the striper) I've since upgraded to a 7wt. I've
used either a regular fly fishing vest or an over the
shoulder pack for flies and leader material. So get out
there and do some night hawking for stripers and help
the herring fishery to boot.
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