By Thomas Lemaire
Posted Tuesday, January 18, 2005
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Winter Stripers off Nags Head, NC
Hi, I’m Tom and I’m a …. Stra… Stra… Striperholic. “Hi Tom”
Call it addicted, call it possessed, whatever you call it… I’ve got it bad.
It started after the last fishing trip of the fall, around November 20th in Long Island Sound after a cold, fishless night. My buddy Rob and I looked at each other and shook our heads. We talked about the great season past, recalling every big fish, the good nights, the bad nights, the lost cell phones and all the laughs. We put the boat in gear and head back to Grisswald Point in Old Lyme one last time. The same thing happened 5 weeks earlier up north, in Cohasset, MA, where I charter in the summer. In the following days we pulled our boats, mine in Cohasset, MA, his in Old Lyme, CT and put them to bed for the winter.
Phase two came with the daily phone calls… sometimes 2-3 calls a day. We talk about new rods and reels, hooks, boats for sale and selling out boats. I spend night after night following the Striper movement down the coast via the internet.
I scanned the internet all winter long, bookmaking sites in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware following the great migration all the way down to there winter home in North Carolina when around the end of March I will reverse the cycle and follow the Stripers all the way back up to New England. I scanned the internet all winter long, bookmaking sites in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware following the great migration all the way down to there winter home in North Carolina when around the end of March I will reverse the cycle and follow the Stripers all the way back up to New England.
Nobody knows what triggers this great migration north and south. Some think it is the magical 50 degree water temperature change that starts the movement… some think the Stripers follow the bait movement in need for food. Whatever it is, it happens every year, hundreds of miles of birds, bait and Stripers move up and down the coast… on of Mother Natures most amazing shows.
Then… sometime in April I’ll drive over the Connecticut River and see a fleet of boats fishing just south of the Baldwin Bridge. I’ll call my buddy Rob and we’ll jump in his Whaler with some light spinning rods with Storms and Hab’s and confirm what we will see… The Schoolies are back… we’ve made thru another winter.
The months of shoveling snow and scrapping ice will pass. We’ll survive another winter and start all over again… working to fishing for the beloved Morone Saxatilis. I’m luckier than most and actually get paid to take people fishing helping me with my problem.
Then, while reading about the Striper catch off of Oregon Inlet, North Carolina, during the New Year break an idea came into my head like the incoming tide.... ROAD TRIP to NC!
We mapped it out… 10-11 hours from Old Lyme… I’ll plan some Friday morning work down there so we could leave by noon. We searched the internet for a Charter guy like us finding Captain Ray and his 22’ Angler. I used my Preferred Guest points and booked a room in Nags Head on the beach for free. We took our rods out of winter storage and packed a fishing bag. The weather looked good so we headed south.
The trip down was as planned with no traffic until Washington, DC and Rob and I switching driving duties every 2 hours or so. When not driving we surfed the internet for weather and fishing reports via my cell phone and tied Eel rigs for next summer. The Garmin I-Que guided us right to the front door of our hotel with us arriving there at 11 PM as planed. After we got to Nags Head we checked out the boat ramp we were going to meet Captain Ray at in 7 hours then turned in for a night of dreaming about 50 pound Stripers
We bunked in and passed out to the sound of the 12-15 knot winds pushing the ocean up on the beach. The wind was the only thing that could stop us now… so we thought.
 The next morning the air was a balmy 58 degrees for 5AM on a January morning and the winds were calm! Went to take a quick shower and when I got out and looked at the ocean all I could see was a wall of Fog!
Rob was taking bets that Captain Ray would not show but when we pulled into the ramp there he was, rigging up his boat!
Just 200 yards from the ramp in the pea soup fog we hooked up to a 50… a 50’ Buddy Davis Sportfisherman stuck in the mud looking for a tow. After helping him out for 20 minutes we were on our way.
 We followed the fleet of around 25 boats into the foggy ocean and headed Northeast for around 3 miles when the boats in front of us stopped. Ray showed us the school of bait and fish in the sonar and told us to drop the rigs back. We wanted top water action but would have to wait until the fog cleared. Within 10 minutes Rob was on with his Mo-Jo rig in 50 feet of water but it spit the hook. 5 minutes later I was into a nice 38” 20 pounded on a Chartreuse deep swimmer.
Not bad for a January Striper while Boston was getting dumped 8” of Snow.
Rob hooked again with a 42” 26lb fish that went in the box for dinner at his brother’s house in Annapolis later that evening.
We trolled for 4 hours in the fog until hooking 4-5 more fishing with some spitting the hook. (Sharpen your hooks)
 The fog cleared and we saw the birds working bait on top so we worked our way over to them but could not hook up. Ray was more upset at the slow day than we were but we had a great time ending the day with a great whale and Dolphin show.
We showered and checked out of the room with a $25 late charge, washed the truck and rods then headed north to his brother’s house. By 9:30 PM we were eating Steak and Striper talking about the 129,600 minutes left before we see the boats by the Baldwin Bridge.
Article by Tom Lemaire at MTCFISH.COM
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