A Year’s Worth of Giant Stripers

2017 was an unbelievable year for striped bass in Massachusetts. Localized bites popped up all over, the Cape Cod Canal experienced epic fishing and schools of large stripers moved in and out of Boston Harbor and along the North Shore. As good as the fishing was, some locations had very poor fishing and the best spots were running hot and cold—one day the fish were everywhere, the next they were gone.

I spent the season targeting big bass from my Hobie Revolution 16, the fastest of the Hobie kayaks. I fish from the Revolution 16 because I often fish in current and in windy and choppy conditions. The Revolution 16 has the speed to take me to spots miles apart and slides through current and chop extremely well.

This video is a compilation of some big bass from the 2017 season with several fish over the 40 pound mark and one over 50 pounds. All the fish in the video were taken on artificials; I use big plastics when I’m targeting big fish and every one of these fish ate either the 14” Original Hogy on a Barbarian swimbait hook or a 13” Hogy Jiggin’ Eel on a Barbarian jig head. The techniques that I used to catch these bass are described in this article.

You will notice that I land most of the fish in the video using the leg lift technique. I use my leg to support the fish as I lift it into the kayak, this method is easier on the fish and less likely to cause a serious injury to the bass. It also helps me balance the kayak, pulling a 30 to 50 pound bass into the kayak isn’t as easy as it looks!

Conservation of these large bass is very important, every fish in the video was released. These large fish are an important part of the breeding population, they carry the best genes and produce tens of thousands more eggs than smaller bass. Stripers are good to eat, but fish just over legal size are much better quality than the older larger fish.