I write to you in a striper-induced fog. Three pre-dawn trips in a row with a sprinkling of some here and there hour long trips after work have left me feeling some type of way. Let’s just say I’m not in mid-season form yet.

But that’s okay. Because the stripers are here for real this time. The spring run is upon us—in the rivers and estuaries, along the beach fronts, in the canal (of course) and all along the striper coast. We have stripers to catch.

I’m going to keep this very short and lead with this—you should get out and fish. The new moon in a few days is going to continue to push the fish toward us. It’s gonna get good, folks. I’ve even heard of a few 32” fish caught. Now is the time if you want to make yourself a part of the spring run.

The early part of the run for me was spent in the back bays from the 120 PDL slowly picking away at mostly resident and the occasionally migratory fish. But last week, it blew up. Fish poured out on the outgoing tide, slamming Jumpin’ Minnows for close to the entire tide. It was a fish every cast type of day. Calm, foggy, and lots of stripers. What a morning.

This lasted for a few tides before fizzling a bit. This morning, we cruised out in the Hobie Powerskiff, hoping to find the dive bombing terns and fast and furious surface action we’ve seen the past few Mays. So far, this phenomenon had been missing.

As we cruised the river with the outgoing tide, I remarked that at this time last year, the Bay was full of screaming terns, clouds of silversides, and schools of migrating stripers. “They’re late” I said.

Well wouldn’t you know that just as we turned the corner, we found just what I had been talking about. Right on schedule.

Similar to early spring of last year, these fish were finicky. I tried every fly in the box and came up empty. No topwater fish, no fish on the Hogy Pro Tail. The only lure that would get bites with the Savage Sandeel. Go figure. And when they were gone they were gone.

We’ll be heading back out into Buzzards Bay this weekend to hopefully keep our blitz fix going. Pretty much every type of striper fishing is a legitimate option now: beachfront, inlet, estuary, harbor, open ocean—they’ve all got fish.

That’ll do it. Let’s see those stripers.