11-03-2014

It was one of fall’s first cold days. The wind cranked out of the northeast, pushing up whitecaps on the bay. I was beginning to think taking the skiff out had been a bad idea when I saw a cloud of birds working right up against the sod bank.

I killed the engine upwind from the bird activity and drifted down into it. Soon, big stripers boiled all around us, and silver-dollar-size baitfish sprang out of the water, attempting to evade the large vacuum-cleaner mouths. Suddenly, two poppers whipped past my head without warning. One barely hit the surface before it disappeared into a hole in the water. A 20-pound fish leapt out to grab the other.

A good seven or eight years had passed since I had last seen such a thing. The fishing in the back bays had been practically dead more autumns than I cared to recall. Bass were around, but they were on sand eels, which rarely venture into the bays in fall. Gone were the days of saving fuel, fishing five ­minutes from my marina. Or were they? The scene I just witnessed sure seemed like the good old days.

Baitfish-Driven Fishery

The truth is, in much of the Northeast, a great fall bay fishery depends on the schools of juvenile menhaden we call peanut bunker. These baitfish actually let us know if we are going to have a good fall run or not. When we start ­seeing the tiny ones swarming at the marina or in the shallow-water creeks and mud flats around late July or early August, it’s good cause for optimism.

By late August or early September, the menhaden reach a couple of inches in length, and snapper blues feast on them. Then the masses of surviving baitfish start migrating out of those shallow spots, moving into the channels and bays. Come October, they have grown to 4 or 5 inches; when the water cools down, the striped bass get fired up and seem to instinctively know where to find the peanut bunker: inside the bays.

As the bait moves, the stripers lose their minds and embark on one feeding frenzy after another. The fishing, of course, is nothing short of spectacular, but perhaps the best part is that all this generally takes place in protected water. That means many more fishable days than if the fish stayed out in the open, for the weather in October and ­November is nasty more often than not.

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