Striped bass are without a doubt the most sought after gamefish that frequent our waters of Northern Ocean County throughout the year. With seasonal restrictions with other popular species like fluke, winter flounder, tautog, and other species, stripers come to the forefront in our angling community from April to January.

The Point Pleasant Striper Season can be broken down into two completely separate seasons, spring and fall.

• The spring striper season runs from roughly the end of April through the first week of July. The spring season is more of a bait fishery, for typically bigger fish.

• The fall striper season runs from around October 1st through January 15th, give or take a few weeks on either end because of extreme weather (tropical or cold). The fall fishery features more fishing with artificials, but for smaller stripers.

In the Point Pleasant area, spring fishing kicks in gear by late April and can last into July. The early spring fishing (April into mid May) is typically a clam and worm fishery, taking place in areas where the waters will be the warmest – in tidal rivers and bays, as well as the shallows along the beaches on the ocean side. Typically, with this early fishery, we fish an area that is holding stripers by anchoring over readings or structure, cracking whole skimmer clams, sending a chum pot down full of clam bellies, and fishing whole clams on fish finder rigs As the waters warm, a jigging-trolling-plugging fishery develops as smaller baitfish like rainfish and sandeels re-enter our area. Spring jigging brings a lot of bluefish on the boat, but bass can be real whoppers topping the forty pound mark, or even better. Jigging metals like AVA’s, crippled herrings, krocodile spoons, butterfly jigs, or other shiny metals brings bass to the boat in short order. Trolling is typically done with bunker spoons or shad rigs over structure, and plugging is done when the fish are up on top and you can cast big wood plugs at the fish.