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Drought Affecting SF Bay Stripers

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phoenixbass

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Curious if and how the lack of freshwater this year will affect the fall run of stripers in SF Bay. Are they going to hang in the salt longer, in the bay longer? On East side vs West side of bay. Maybe no change at all? I wasn't able to get out this past spring, was it any different?

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Did big stripers even leave sacto this year? Since maybe late May or early June my FB feed has been non-stop with pics of quality fish (20lb+) from the river. Don't know about anyone else's summer on the beach, but I caught a ton in June, less in July and a pitiful few so far in August. My context is about 10 miles of shoreline south of Sloat.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 8/18/2021 at 7:10 AM, phoenixbass said:

 

Curious if and how the lack of freshwater this year will affect the fall run of stripers in SF Bay. Are they going to hang in the salt?

I don’t fish for them out there, but I see things….

- there are anchovies more inland than usual… Martinez to Pittsburg.

- upriver of Pittsburg, juvenile American shad, threadfin shad, and inland silversides seem to be abundant.
 

To answer your question, they don’t care about salt or fresh… it’s not “instilled*” in their ‘runs’ the way it is with salmon… our stripers are “moving in” to find dinner, and escape the cold.

 

* Their migration is weird here. Really weird. On the east coast, they are moving down the coast now; here they come in, mostly, when ocean play-time is over.

 

 

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals.

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4 hours ago, CabbageHead said:

I don’t fish for them out there, but I see things….

- there are anchovies more inland than usual… Martinez to Pittsburg.

- upriver of Pittsburg, juvenile American shad, threadfin shad, and inland silversides seem to be abundant.
 

To answer your question, they don’t care about salt or fresh… it’s not “instilled*” in their ‘runs’ the way it is with salmon… our stripers are “moving in” to find dinner, and escape the cold.

 

* Their migration is weird here. Really weird. On the east coast, they are moving down the coast now; here they come in, mostly, when ocean play-time is over.

 

 

Some good intel Rob, I can tell you my experience this year the fish were few and far between, and for me, I haven't beached a striper this year and I noticed not many people fishing for stripers along the beach.

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  • 4 weeks later...

If you want a general non-scientific impression of the striper population, it does seem depressed to me. From monitoring the forums, I'm seeing plenty of smaller fish caught lately (bay, delta, surf), which bodes well for the future I think. I'm south of Big Sur, and some years can be pretty good down here, but 2020 was a total bust for me, and 2021 yielded only about a dozen sublegal bass from the surf. 

 

Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught. 

 

 

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On 10/3/2021 at 5:43 AM, Uncle Stu said:

… yielded only about a dozen sublegal bass…

That jump…. from a shtton of eggs, larval fish, sub legal bass…… then big bass, isn’t adding up. There’s loss, and it’s not from the pumps.

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals.

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4 hours ago, CabbageHead said:

That jump…. from a shtton of eggs, larval fish, sub legal bass…… then big bass, isn’t adding up. There’s loss, and it’s not from the pumps.

I'm having a hard time getting any fish over 18' on the Marin Side of SP Bay. One day with several 24" fish and nothing as large since then. Maybe an injection of fresh water will change things.

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