Schoolie striper bite is hot

S

Striperbobby

Active member
Joined
Aug 25, 2020
Messages
73
Went down to ocmd Friday night with the kayaks and caught around 75 fish each from 13 to 22 inches on the 7 weights. Water felt like it was close to 50 degrees. Pretty much non stop on the incoming tide which is usually not as good as the outgoing. Left them biting! It’s so hard to do that!
 
nice day out! I'm curious as to everybody's size descriptions. To me a schoolie is 22 to 30 inches. Anything under 22” is a juvenile fish.
 
I've always thought of fish in the range that Striperbobby describes as "schoolies."

Good news to hear about salt striper fishing in early spring. Saltwater fishing is rarely on my radar screen before the beginning of May (I don't live close to the coast).
 
i use to consider schoolies to be mid to upper twenties but lowered my definition when the slot fish came into being. Don’t know if it’s an old wives tail or not but it use to be said stripped bass didn’t start schooling until they were 5 years old so 5 year old+ fish were known as schoolies andeverything else was either a juvenile or a cow.
 
Interesting question. To me "schoolies" are the smaller homebody juvenile stripers too young to participate in the run. It's obvious the OP ran into schooled fish since he caught 75 of them and left them while they were "still bitin'!" The mid-twenty stripers to me are "shorts". But this is the type question when you ask a dozen anglers you get a dozen different answers, I suppose. Check out the article linked below.

 
Last edited:
This thread will be moved to the Warmwater forum shortly (the Reports forum is for specific trips in which the waterway is noted by date and place - general descriptions of fishing results are a better fit in a different forum. Thanks - DW).
 
Interesting question. To me "schoolies" are the smaller homebody juvenile stripers too young to participate in the run. It's obvious the OP ran into schooled fish since he caught 75 of them and left them while they were "still bitin'!" The mid-twenty stripers to me are "shorts". But this is the type question where if you ask a dozen anglers you get a dozen different answers, I suppose. Check out the article linked below.

“Shorts” another ambiguous term Indeed. Now with the slot fish a short could be juvenile fish or what some call schoolies. I always refer to the small juveniles as resident stripers. I’ve come to appreciate these small 12” to 20” residents in the river since the SMB bass population has fallen so much over the years. These resident fish are larger than most SMB, fight good on light tackle and fills a void. They also seem to be staying longer and getting bigger.
 
The various definitions oof “schoolies” witnessed here is an example of how anglers make it difficult for biologists , who would like to consider to consider angler observations, to interpret what the anglers say or write with any degree of confidence. This is why I consulted the limited numbers of anglers in various fisheries whom I knew I could trust ( numbers caught, sizes not “stretched”) and were observant/thoughtful enough to provide very specific responses, not generalities. A good example would be that instead of saying they caught 25 schoolies, they would instead say they caught 25 stripers generally in the 17-20 inch range with a few! Perhaps 5 being 13-15 inches long and one being 23 inches long. That tells a biologist a lot more info and may even point to the large year class that was expected to be passing through the population.
 
So is there a scientific definition of a juvenile and schoolie Striped bass? It seems over the years anglers have been lowering the size of a schoolie.
 
Not that I know of. Even two yr old males will yield some sperm and some females will be mature at about 22-23 inches and all will be mature by the time they reach 28 inches.
 
Back
Top