My first cast with a Rebel Jumpin’ Minnow was a poor, tumbling mess. Yet, somehow, it splashed down in the strike zone off the starboard side of the bow and “jumped” only when a schoolie striper tail-whacked it two feet into the air as if to say, “That’s not what we’re eating this morning, stupid.”
It was the first weekend of May—a prime time to explore the many nooks and crannies of northern Buzzards Bay. A typical spring brings schools of migrating menhaden into the necks, rivers, and harbors of Upper Buzzards Bay, but last spring was different. The bunker schools pulled up much later than usual, but migratory stripers, most with a long swim still ahead, have got to eat something.
(Note: On The Water is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.)
Groggy from one too many pint-size Manhattan’s on Friday night—courtesy of my local watering hole—Matt “Vench” Ventre and I set out for the nearest Dunkin’ before heading to the launch spot. With caffeine secured and a pair of “Wake-Up Wraps” in hand, we headed for Taylor Point Marina. There, Cam Whitney and Jack Renfrew were already sitting in line at the ramp with Whitney’s 21-foot Release in tow.
Vench is a casual fisherman living in Long Beach, New York. No matter how hard I press him, he seems to wet a line only when we link up. So, each spring, Vench follows the path of migrating stripers from Long Island to coastal Massachusetts, where I act as his unofficial guide for a weekend. We typically ply the estuaries, salt ponds, and south-facing beaches of Cape Cod for three days and nights without much rest, but he seldom gets a chance to hang up his waders and cast to blitzing bass from a boat. Thanks to a generous invite from Whitney earlier in the week, that was about to change.
Just a few minutes from the ramp, we were greeted by diving terns and surface-feeding bass, with only two other boats in sight. The vessels ahead of us at the launch had surely spotted the surface activity, so we were surprised to be sharing this bite with so few other fishermen on a cloudless Saturday morning in early May.
Sign up for Weekly Fishing Reports from On The Water!
Flocks of common terns lead the way to picky, subsurface striper feeds.
The birds guided us to the fish, with Whitney’s Garmin electronics helping us fill in the gaps when the bass went down. Renfrew and Vench stood on the bow with their bails open as Whitney gently eased us toward a few scattered feeds. Before long, both were into fish, and Whitney stepped away from the helm to baptize a new Jumpin’ Minnow as I snapped a few photos. Small topwater plugs got the skunk out of the boat, but just as quickly as we got into the fish, the bite did a complete 180.
“They’re boiling everywhere. I think they’re eating silversides” said Whitney. A confluence of churning currents caused by the ebbing tide from Onset Bay, Cohasset Narrows, and the Cape Cod Canal sent helpless schools of spearing tumbling from their backwater refuges into a washing machine of doom. I glanced at Whitney’s Garmin display, which revealed clouds of bait and bass all around us. Stripers were feeding near but not quite on the surface. With the sun cresting the horizon and more boats motoring toward the flocks of hovering terns, what started as a perfect spring-run morning seemed to be taking a turn for the worse. Small bait, unobstructed sunlight, heavy fishing pressure, and swift currents were creating a cocktail of unfavorable conditions. It was time to reassess our game plan.
Low-profile plastics and jigs dupe migratory spring stripers when larger baitfish, like herring and bunker, are missing in action.
The Atlantic Silverside
In the surf, bays, and inlets of the Northeast, the Atlantic silverside is often the first baitfish to arrive in the spring and the last to leave in the fall. Though rarely exceeding 6 inches (with the vast majority measuring less than four inches), these baitfish get far less fanfare among striped bass anglers than larger baitfish like bunker, herring, or sand eels.
A silverside has a short head, large eyes, and a prominent metallic-silver lateral stripe that gives the fish its name. Its back ranges from pale green to a darker olive, while the belly is translucent.
Silversides are omnivorous, eating algae, invertebrates, and even scavenging large dead fish. They spawn in the late spring and early summer. Their eggs, which can tolerate air exposure, are laid above the ow-water mark, attached to spartina or seaweed.Most silversides die in their first winter after spawning, with very few fish making it to two years of age.
They are preyed upon by stripers, bluefish, fluke, sea bass, and sea birds. In times of slow fishing, desperate anglers have been known to bread and fry the small fish whole, calling the dish “fries with eyes.”
Divide or Conquer
We had two options: make a run south to search for more, potentially larger fish, or play the hand we were dealt. After some deliberation, our 4-man crew decided to stick with the feeding fish until the action fizzled out. We’d adjust our presentations and then attempt to jig in deeper water once the sun was sitting higher in the sky.
“Clip this on,” Whitney gestured, offering Vench a slender silver 1-ounce paddletail. “I’m going to pull up on the down-current side of the next feed. Just cast it over the school, let it sink for 3 seconds, and jig it back to the boat.” Vench obliged, and as his first cast with the slim-bodied, pre-rigged plastic splashed down, Renfrew came tight with the same offering. Moments later, after imparting action to the paddletail with sharp, upward swings of the rod, Vench tied into a beautiful schoolie. Its glistening scales, peppered with sea lice, reflected shades of blue, purple, green, and the sun’s warm, blaze-orange hue. The bass, he said, ate his jig on a slack line as it fell through the water column. “Worth noting,” I thought.
Jack Renfrew slides a just-under-slot striper back into the bay, where it will continue its northerly journey.
When stripers are feeding on small bait like silversides, they can be notoriously fussy toward artificial baits. My fishing logs hold many frustrated entries that recount challenging spring nights in skinny water when stripers ignored any lure that wasn’t 4 inches long and white. However, by using the surrounding structure to our advantage—namely, the sharp edges of the Cape Cod Canal channel—we resolved that the bass were chasing schools of spearing from deep water up to the adjacent flats where they could briefly corral groups of the finger-sized baitfish.
For a good hour, the bite remained cyclical. By using Whitney’s electronics and the glass-calm conditions to our advantage, we were able to pinpoint areas where the next short-lived feeds were likely to pop up. Schools of spearing created patches of nervous water along the channel edges, and stripers, hot on their tiny tails, revealed themselves in the form of boils and occasional splashes. Keeping one eye on his display and one on the flocks of terns, Whitney deftly positioned us down-current time and time again so that any rising fish would eventually run into us. In doing so, the bass stayed up a bit longer, which saved us from chasing them down and spooking them back to the deep.
When the fish go down, Whitney leans on his Garmin electronics to mark stripers sitting lower in the water column.
At this point, every rod in the boat had a paddletail dangling from the hook hanger. While other boats came and reluctantly moved on, we had a healthy tally of well-fed schoolie stripers until around 7:30 a.m., when the bass went down and stayed there. Celebratory doughnuts—some of which had been lightly doused with sea spray—were had as we formulated a plan for the rest of the day.
Matching the Silverside “Hatch”
When stripers set their sights on these small, slender baitfish, they can be difficult to fool with lures that aren’t a close match to the bait. Here are a few tried-and-true matches for Menida menida that work from boat and shore.
Spearing-sized minnow plugs, like the 4-inch Bomber Long A or the 5¼-inch Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow retrieved super-slow at or just below the surface, make a deadly presentation for stripers that can be heard “popping” on spearing in quiet backwaters. Retrieves that leave a subtle V-wake often get the best results.
With an internal foil and transparent body, an epoxy-style jig is a near-perfect match for silversides. To use them for stripers, fish with sweeps and twitches, giving them time to fall through the water column like an injured silverside. They can also be jigged vertically with great success when the bass are deep.
Fished weightless or on a light jighead, soft-plastic flukes, like the Z-Man Jerk ShadZ or the Lunker City Fin-S Fish, have the same erratic, darting action as a silverside. Fish them with long pauses to best imitate a baitfish’s movements and trigger strikes.
Slender-bodied, soft-plastic paddletails are a silverside-imitating staple. Paired with a light jighead, these lures work well on straight or lift-and-drop retrieves.
Light-Tackle Jigging
Content with the morning’s action thus far, we moved down the bay in search of more fish. While it was good to get away from the busy waters near the Big Ditch, our search yielded only two more bass—schoolies plucked from a small wolfpack we stumbled upon in open water. Whitney and Renfrew discussed our next move as Vench, seated upon the gunwale, listened intently.
More than any of my closest friends, Vench has an appetite for learning. Whenever we are wading the bays or fishing the surf, he routinely asks questions about how to make the most of each cast. He’s concerned with minute details such as his rod angle or how to swing a bucktail through a choke point and over the hole where the fish are stacked up––things that will, ultimately, make him a better fisherman. I could tell he was digesting each bit of information being exchanged by Whitney and Renfrew. “I’ve got a spot we can check,” I chimed in. Whitney liked the idea, so off we went.
My prior experience in this location was reserved to short drifts made from the seat of a pedal-drive kayak, but with Whitney’s bow-mounted MinnKota Terrova trolling motor, we were able to position ourselves over the juiciest structure or any fish we marked. The depth ranged from 20 to 40 feet, considerably deeper than the 10- to 12-foot depths where our morning began.
Almost immediately, Whitney marked a few good fish. With the trolling motor deployed, our drift stopped abruptly in 30 feet of water. We were flanked by two boats throwing large topwater plugs to no avail. As I motioned for the same light spinning combo I had used all morning, Whitney handed out a trio of Lamiglas Tri-Flex Inshore SEs paired with 4000-size Shimano Stradics. Each of the reels were spooled with 30-pound-test braided line connected to a lengthy 25-pound Seaguar Inshore fluorocarbon leader. The sensitive, medium/heavy-power rods provided the backbone needed to steer larger stripers away from craggy structure below. After a few minutes of jigging over the fish we marked, Whitney, using the trolling motor, inched us forward until we were positioned almost directly over another hole. “There are a few fish here,” he said, eyes glued to the Garmin display. “Drop ‘em.”
Paired with 7-foot medium-heavy power rods, spinning reels in the 3000- to 4000-size range provide ample stopping power on schoolie to slot-size stripers.
Renfrew and Vench stuck with 1-ounce paddletails, but I tied on a 1½-ounce, olive-colored Fat Minnow––a stout epoxy-style jig made by Fat Cow Fishing. With its enticing flutter and natural spearing profile and pattern, it got bitten first. I swung hard to drive the single hook through the rubbery mouth of what was surely a healthy striper, based on the sizzling run it took before a few headshakes freed the fish of its involuntary lip piercing. Not soon after, Vench hooked a good fish, and before I could grab my camera, Renfrew shouted “I’m tight!” As the two winched their fish to the surface, Whitney directed Vench to the back of the boat and Renfrew to the bow to keep their lines from tangling. Two 30-inch-class stripers surfaced.
Jack Renfrew (left) and Matt Ventre admire a pair of well-fed stripers that fell for 4-inch soft plastics.
It was almost lunchtime, and with both fish revived and released, we debated heading for port. “Not so fast” whispered the deities of striper fishing. Just then, one of the two boats that had been relentlessly casting 9-inch Docs around us hooked a fish that erupted on the plug in a fit of white water. It was within casting range, and Whitney, acting fast, rifled through his tackle and clipped on a 5-inch pencil popper. If there were any followers, a rattling pencil that was half the size of the Doc ought to turn their heads.
Sure enough, Whitney’s popper got whacked on its way back to the boat, and our captain got his cookies for a morning full of spot-hopping and adjusting techniques to keep us on the fish.
The Takeaway
Early spring migration patterns, while somewhat predictable year after year, are not set in stone. A lack of adult bunker in Buzzards Bay in May 2024 required anglers to pivot and decipher what the fish wanted in order to consistently bend a rod. And while silversides are not exactly a recipe for big bass, they are often the first baitfish to show in backwater striper spots come mid-April; however, baitfish are just a small part of the equation.
Ultimately, our ability to piece together a good day of fishing came from a collective understanding of how to imitate the forage that was present and how stripers related to both current and the structure below us. Electronics and birds are always helpful, but in an area loaded with small bait in fast-moving current that receives daily fishing pressure, positioning and “matching the hatch” were paramount to success.
