Merrimack River Retrospective -- By Capt. Charles Crue

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by Capt. Charles Crue
of Channel Edge Charters fishes the waters of the Merrimack River and can be reached at (978) 462-9212

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A Merrimack River Shad

The combination of warm, dry weather, with few windy days helped to make the '99 season on the Merrimack River estuary a memorable one. This lush fishery is a true natural resource, filled with a cornucopia of baitfish upon which the predators can forage. It's common to see the water full of sand eels or silversides, probably numbering in the millions.

Most of my clients, like myself, are saltwater fly fishermen who practice catch and release, with the exception of the occasional larger striper. This means that we take extra measures to minimize stress on the fish we catch. For instance, the hooks of the flies we use have the barbs bent down to make extraction easier and we try not to play the fish for an excessively long period. After we boat a fish for a quick photograph, we revive it before letting it go.

The Early Season

A Guided Trip

Capt. Charles Crue can be reached at:

165 Garden Street West Newbury, Ma 01985 Tel/Fax: (978) 462-9212

or check out his website

It was a good season, simply put. I started out in late April shad fishing up the river in West Newbury. The shad were a little sparser early in the season, compared to other years, but we caught quite a few in the later season while chasing stripers.

As May arrived, my thoughts turned towards stripers. Past experience has shown the first fish will start to show up around this time, so I stopped by Surfland Bait and Tackle to get find out what Kay Moulton, the proprietor, was hearing. She'd already talked to a few fishermen who reported getting a few. It was time for me to start checking the north end of the island each day, beginning May 2, in an effort to get one of the first migrating stripers. I love this time of year, a brand new season, with the anticipation of that first solid strike as strong as the warmth of the early May sunshine.

I caught my first striper of the year on May 4th. That fish, along with three others, heralded the beginning of the 1999 striper season for me. On each succeeding day that week I caught more stripers. Three days later, on May 7th, I caught and released more than forty stripers while fishing for about two hours at the north end of the island. Most of these fish were schoolie, size ranging from sixteen to about twenty-five inches in length. They took Clouser deep minnow, in white or olive/white. My technique was to cast out into the tidal current letting them sink as the tide swept them in toward the shore. Stripers hit the flies as they drifted into the shallow water. The season had begun!

Word spread quickly that the fish were back and soon the crowds gathered, making it tough to fly fish off the beach, so my emphasis shifted to fishing from my 19' Mako center console. I keep the boat at Channel Marker Marina in downtown Newburyport, which is fairly expensive, but worth every cent when you weigh in the value of being so close to Joppa Flats. I'm in prime fishing territory five minutes after leaving the dock. In fact, many mornings the stripers are crashing bait right in front of the slip!

The early season can be unpredictable. Rapid weather changes often result in abrupt drops in water temperature. After great success fishing at the north end of Plum Island during the first weeks of May, the action slowed down dramatically. The weather and the water turned colder, which called for a dramatic shift in tactics. Rather than using the boat, I felt the water temperature had dropped far enough that the fish would be further up the river, where the water would be warmer. My hunch was right, the water was five degrees warmer and pinstripes were there. The early season stripers chase herring up the river when they arrive. Warm water improves the situation. A couple of days later I took my first striper clients to fish up around Carr and Eagle Islands and they had a good time catching numerous schoolies on flies. Some fishermen may feel that catching (and releasing) small stripers is not great fishing. I disagree with such a view. Small stripers are very powerful for their size and provide exciting action.

The Main Event

Later in May, as the water warmed again down the river, my clients and I found stripers breaking water all over Joppa Flats. On the early morning of May 19, we were into stripers for more than four solid hours. My hands were battered and water logged from reaching over the side to release fish. One of the fishermen, using a spinning rig, including a jig and a dropper fly brought simultaneous 26-inch and 18-inch stripers to the boat. The season was moving into full swing.

Fishing started to pickup across from the "tooth pick" marker located on the Salisbury side of the river. We had constant action drifting on the outgoing tide near buoy #11 many days. We also found a fast-moving school of stripers outside the north jetty. According to my logbook, I was out alone Tuesday, June 1 and caught twenty-one stripers from 18 to 23 inches, plus one shad, using sand eel imitation flies with my 8 WT rod.

On Wednesday and Thursday, June 2 and 3, Joppa Fats was alive with breaking stripers on the morning outgoing tide. Fly fishermen wading out from the shore were in the thick of the action, as well as the boaters. Later in the week, when the tide was high we got some keeper size stripers on the flats. I recall one about thirty inches followed the fly right to the boat. I told my client stop stripping momentarily and the striper took it. A nice run and battle followed in about four feet of water. Olive/white and gray/white Clouser flies worked well. Birds, bait and stripers continued to provide visual, as well as fishing excitement throughout the month of June. Some mornings we used floating lines and Gartside gurglers to take stripers on the surface as they chased silverside minnows. Light spinning tackle with jigs attracted some keeper size stripers.

By the end of June the water temperature was generally in the high fifties. I heard reports of some bluefish being taken around the island. There was some good striper action on the up riverside of the sand bar off the north end of Plum Island on the incoming tide. We also caught our first "snapper" bluefish that were feeding in with the stripers. There was no question about what the fish were eating because the blues would spit up sand eels while we were removing the fly.

In early July a few pogies showed up in the river but in small numbers. A couple of years ago the menhaden population was decimated by a factory ship off of Cape Ann.

Striper and bluefish action picked up around the sand bar at the north end of the island. One early Sunday morning I was guiding two guys, one from Vermont, the other from Andover, MA. They had booked a day to fish together and renew old ties. The fellow from Vermont has a small fly fishing shop in Burlington and also guides in that area. I hoped the action would be good and it was. When we arrived at the sand bar we found striper mayhem as the outgoing tide flushed sand eels over the bar. Stripers were almost banging the boat as the struck at the bait. My clients had strikes as soon as their flies landed. The Vermonter targeted a spot right next to the boat where a decent striper had inhaled a sand eel. I think his fly cast, or better described as a flip of the fly line, for about ten feet, resulted in an immediate hit. The striper made a run from the boat stripping line very easily. After some exciting minutes, as the battle ended next to the boat, I grabbed his fat 26-inch striper for a quick photo. As the striper action slowed down with the tide, we found some small bluefish in the same area.

Around the middle of July, bait fishermen, anchored out in or near the channel were scoring well with chunk herring and other bait. Boat activity picked up and seemed to be affecting the stripers. I marked most fish in deeper water holding near the bottom. They could be enticed to take a fly fished deep with a heavy sinking line. I recall one Monday morning when I fished the low and early incoming tides. There was good striper action on flies near Plum Island Basin. Cormorants were loading up on large sand eels just outside the jetties on the incoming tide. There were a few bluefish around. I donated a fly to a bruiser. Then I caught a nice three or four-pound shad just off the sand bar at the north end of the island. The weather was perfect and it was a great morning to be out fishing.

Late in July the fishing held steady with some very good outings. I recall one Friday morning around the twentieth of July. My two clients and I were out on Joppa flats as the first light arrived. After I positioned the boat for a nice drift, Norm cast out a white jig that was immediately taken by a nice striper. First cast - first fish! That set the stage for some friendly competition between a fly fisherman (Steve) and a spin fishermen (Norm). Steve brought in a nice 29-inch keeper at the lower end of Joppa flats and just before we quit Norm landed a nice 25-inch striper. Norm claimed to be the winner because he had performed the Merrimack River "grand slam" having caught stripers, bluefish and one shad.

As the month wound down, there were some keeper stripers taken on bait by fishermen in boats drifting outside the jetties. We took some nice fish by sinking heavy (450 grain) lines to get the olive/white Clousers down to the big fish.

The Later Season

We had some foggy mornings in early August. My GPS was put into use and helped me to get my clients around. However, later in the month, there was one morning when the satellites were not working because of some technical changes. As luck would have it, it was foggy, and I had to resort to compass navigation to find my way back to the Marina after some very active striper action on the incoming tide near Badgers Rocks. The fish were slamming silverside minnows at the surface. We caught many with sliders and gurglers.

A friend and I participated in a fishing tournament sponsored by the local Mako Boat dealer, Hudson's Outboard. It is more of a fun outing than a tournament, ending with a great lobster cookout. We caught and released seventy-five stripers in two mornings of fishing. The sizes ranged from about 16 to 27-inches. We fished a total of about twelve hours and used only flies. It was great fun with a terrific cookout at the end! Where were the August "doldrums?" I had been reading about the striper fishing slowing down all along the North Shore at that time.

For about two weeks in August there was a dredging operation going on just outside the jetties. Following the dredger made for some excellent fishing as the stripers followed the ship around, gorging themselves on the stirred up bait. One morning the water was very rough and I had two clients. The action was very slow up inside the jetties. So in spite of the rough water conditions, I took them out to where the dredge was working. Standing up to cast was very difficult because of big rollers, so they sat, and I told them to let their flies drift out as I did a very slow troll. It paid off with hit, after hit, by stripers in the twenty to thirty inch range.

Later in the month, the stripers were concentrating on silverside minnows. A client of mine did very well with an epoxy imitation tied on a number 1 hook. Poppers and sliders were providing lots of action on the surface. Bluefish continued to show up inside and outside of the jetties.

In early September some big stripers showed up on Joppa Flats on the high tide. These fish were not as timid as the ones out there earlier in the season. Several were caught that measured in the low 30-inch range. Also in September, we experienced the invasion of little jelly fish creatures know as Salps. The water was full of them at times, tiny translucent creatures that would get snagged by flies. They were generally harmless but slowed down the striper fishing.

The summer had been very warm and dry. The fresh water normally flowing must have been much less than normal. When the first serious rain came in September, I think it triggered the stripers to feed, probably because the bait was getting swept down with the rising river. The stripers were hanging around the jetties. We were catching nice stripers, around keeper size, by fishing flies deep near the jetties. There were signs that the fish were on the move because some had sea lice and many had lighter color that our usual fish. One client-less morning I got into some terrific striper action off of Salisbury Beach. Birds and stripers were chasing baby bunkers. Silverside imitation flies worked perfectly. By the end of September, the fishing became more sporadic, as it usually does when the fish begin to move south. We had some good action out on Joppa flats as stripers continued to chase schools of baby bunkers.

A Fitting End to the Season

The last striper of the season was a nice one. In mid-October I had a father and his eight or nine year old son whom, I'd fished with previously. We fished all the usual areas with little success. The last hour we tried just off the north jetty. I marked a few stripers down deep, so I told my clients to let the lures sink. The youngster, holding the spinning rod sitting in his dad's lap, hooked up. The two of them fought what turned out to be a nice striper about 27-inches long. The smiles told the story. It was a fitting end to the season!