The 2024 Striper Migration Recap
In the Northeast fishing community, no event is as highly anticipated as the spring striped bass migration. Fishermen who bid farewell to these fish in the late fall or early winter eagerly await their return to our coast, watching the weather and fishing reports beginning in March to see when the bass will come back. As we all eagerly await this year’s spring run, we’re looking back at the 2024 striper migration.
Recent History: The Spring Migration
2021: Big bunker schools returned to the Northeast in the late spring, but a lack of large bass with them left anglers worried about the future status of striped bass numbers. A noticeable shift in the presence of trophy stripers around popular summering grounds like Block Island and Montauk left anglers questioning what the 2022 spring migration would bring.
2022: Schoolie and slot-size stripers made a strong showing from Delaware Bay to eastern Long Island in the early spring. The large bunker schools that had congregated around Long Island and southern New England in years past were concentrated around Boston and the south shore of Massachusetts; trophy stripers gorged on them throughout the summer.
2023: The spring run was ahead of schedule, especially with large, post-spawn stripers from the Chesapeake. Fish as large as 50 inches reached New Jersey in the first week of May and Massachusetts by the second week of May. By the third week of May, there were even reports of 40-inch stripers in the rivers of Maine.
The 2024 Striper Migration
March 29
It’s a lukewarm start to the striper migration, with torrential rains dampening (literally and figuratively) fishing efforts. Fishermen later blamed the rains for keeping bunker out of Raritan Bay, which made spring striper fishing there a little slower than in the previous few seasons. Still, sizable stripers are seen staging outside spawning tributaries in the Chesapeake, with reports of decent numbers of schoolie bass in backwaters and estuaries from Delaware Bay to Long Island.
April 12
Cooler-than-average temperatures slows down spawning in the Chesapeake, but as the weather stabilizes, the spawning intensifies. Waves of larger fish hit both the Delaware and Raritan bays. Migratory stripers reach Connecticut and, within a week, fishermen in Rhode Island and Massachusetts report the first fresh schoolies of the season.
May 3
Raritan, Narragansett, and Buzzards bays are hotbeds of striper activity, with fish to 40 inches blasting baitfish on the surface. Fish to 50 inches are reported in New Jersey, and post-spawn bass are exiting the Chesapeake and heading north.
May 10
Bunker continues to be in short supply throughout the Northeast, but stripers find plenty of fuel for the migration in herring, squid, cinder worms, and rain bait. Stripers that left the Chesapeake are showing up along coastal beaches in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Long Island. Migratory fish to 30 inches reach Boston.
May 24
The May full moon kicks the migration into higher gear as 40-pound stripers are reported all the way up to Massachusetts. Big schools of very large bass are staging off the Western South Shore of Long Island and Northern New Jersey, and Montauk is inundated with schoolie and slot-size stripers. Post-spawn fish from the Hudson continue populating Long Island Sound.
June 7
The June new moon brings big bass into surfcasting range from New Jersey to Maine. The action continues to be widespread, but in parts of southern New Jersey, the fishing begins to wane as warming water temperatures send the fish north.
June 14
Warming waters push any lingering stripers in southern New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland north and offshore. Large stripers are reported chasing bunker in Massachusetts from Cape Cod Bay to Boston, while big schools of large bass continue to move east along the South Shore of Long Island.
June 21
The reefs of Long Island Sound load up with big bass as Hudson and Chesapeake fish converge on the sound. The fishing gets spotty in New Jersey as warming temperatures push the bass north. Fishing at Block Island, Boston Harbor, and Montauk ramp up as the fish settle in, while some stripers continue to swim toward Maine, where anglers at the northern edge of the striper’s migratory route experience another great summer of fishing.
» Follow @onthewatermagazine & @stripercup on Instagram for 2025 Striper Migration updates!
Related Content
Spring Run Stripers and Herring on the Hudson
WATCH: OTW’s Striper Migration Reports
Source: https://onthewater.com/the-2024-striper-migration-recap
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