We are currently about halfway through the striper season for 2025. It has been fair to poor for me, and it has gotten poorer as the summer has worn on. I have to go back to the moratorium days to find years with similar poor fishing. I know other fishermen, particularly boaters, have been finding some fish. Even some shore fishermen I know have hit it lucky once in a while especially for larger fish. But, there is no question that the numbers overall are DOWN for most striper fishermen.
Here are my striper totals for the last five years up to the end of July:
2021- 703 stripers
2022- 350 stripers
2023- 272 stripers
2024- 222 stripers
2025- 183 stripers
Note that each year I fished about the same number of outings mostly from shore but sometimes from a kayak. These are the totals up to the end of July. The sizes have varied with a larger percentage of bigger fish in the last couple of years and more schoolies back around 4 or 5 years ago. No surprise here since research tells us the schoolie population is way down due to poor spawning years.
The naysayers will give you a lot of excuses about why they think I'm full of you know what. You've heard many of them I'm sure. Global warming, warm water, the population is shifting north, the fish are mostly offshore, the bait has moved, and some people just don't know how to catch them!
One positive note here. Better fishing could be coming. The pattern for me in the last five years has been much better fishing the second half of the year. We have seen decent fall fishing. I'm hoping that will happen.
In the meantime, I will keep plugging away and hope fishing improves.
Only registered users may download. Registration is free.