With striped bass being fairly plentiful in New England waters today, it’s hard to imagine that this hasn’t always been the case. Stripers have been mentioned since the earliest settlers. Called rockfish further to the south, they were sometimes known as linesiders to fishermen around here. Youngsters are known as schoolies.

Prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims, several explorers mentioned stripers, along with cod. Captain John Smith found them so plentiful in 1614 that he wrote, “I myself at the turning of the type have seen such multitudes pass out of a pounce [fish trap] that it seemed to me that one might go over their backs drishod [dry shod].”

The first mention of stripers at Plymouth Colony occurred in 1621. William Bradford wrote about them when he described the preparation for the harvest feast that we have come to recognize as the first Thanksgiving. “…others were exercised in fishing, aboute codd, & bass, & other fish of which yey [they] took good store…” Striped bass were definitely on that first Thanksgiving menu!

In 1622, Plymouth Colony helped sustain itself through the summer on stripers caught with nets and hooks. John Pory, a visitor to Plymouth at that time, wrote that they caught smaller fish up to three feet with nets and those four and five feet with hooks! Many kinds of fish were plentiful, so stripers were not the only food eaten by the Pilgrims.

Early leaders worried that cod and stripers should be carefully watched, so supplies wouldn’t run out. In 1639, Massachusetts Bay passed a law forbidding using cod or stripers as fertilizer. They remained extremely plentiful, sustaining the colonists during the 17th and 18th century. In Plymouth, 1,500 were caught in a creek and taken on a single tide.

You know that there has to be a strong connection between Cape Cod and striped bass when the Cape’s biggest river is called “Bass River” and the early major port on the north side of Yarmouth was “Bass Hole.” One local tale told of the bass wintering in both areas up to 1790. That winter was exceptionally warm and the bass in Grand Cove (just north of the Route 28 bridge on Bass River) enjoyed the warmth. A sudden deep freeze flash froze the bass near the surface and people came with wheelbarrows to haul the frozen fish away. Bass were supposedly quick learners and never came back in the winter in numbers. The story leaves unanswered the question as to how dead frozen bass can be quick learners…..

An old fish house in Weir Village, Follins Pond.

While some stripers continued to winter over at Bass River and at Bass Hole, the October Gale of 1841 brought so much silt to these two areas that the saltwater never flowed again with the same volume. Weir fishing at the northern end of Bass River in Follins Pond totally ceased, and the bass and other fish left, looking for a better winter habitat. The damage was so severe to the fishing area that Weir village houses were dragged or flaked to other areas in Yarmouth.

Fishing clubs were established in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the 1830s. Quickly, they expanded from handlines to rods and reels. In the 1850s piers were built. These piers, later called stands, were made by driving metal rods into the rocks and attaching narrow wooden walkways to them. At the end of the walkway, a small platform was constructed. Heavily chumming the area ahead of fishing time attracted many fish to the area. Those caught were gaffed when brought close, avoiding the pitfalls of landing fish over rocks.

Unfortunately, too many clubs competed for seasonal total poundage, rather than individual fish of size. This was a waste, as no fish were thrown back. The clubs were extremely popular with businessmen, except during the two depressions in 1873 and 1893. The last club in the Elizabeth Islands closed down in 1907 due to lack of fish.

Stripers all but disappeared from the New England coast as the 19th century came to a close. While some fish experts have suggested that there have always been cycles where fish are scarce and times when they are plentiful, in fact there are no records of stripers being scarce from the time colonists first landed in 1620 until after the Civil War. Some places started seeing a decline before 1884.

Overfishing was a major reason for this decline in numbers. As early as 1829, the Barnstable Journal reported on July 30 that “300 bass, good sized ones, were taken with one haul with a seine on Yarmouth flats last Tuesday.” In 1845, at Tisbury Great Pond on Martha’s Vineyard, twenty seven tons of stripers were taken.

The overfishing continued into the 1850s. In September, 1854, three to four tons of bass were sent by rail to New York where they sold for 12 cents a pound. A year later, in October 1855, it was reported that Dennis seiners caught 2000 pounds of bass. On October 19, 1858, the Barnstable Patriot noted that Captain Sam Soper of Provincetown took 700 bass in one day in his seine.

The end result of this overfishing was that virtually no stripers were caught north of Boston in the 30 year period following 1897. Stock numbers declined dramatically. Since that time, stripers have declined twice more, but numbers following each recovery have never come back to the preceding levels.

Stripers recovered somewhat by the early 1920s, and the mid 1930s saw greater numbers of fish. Especially important, schoolies showed a large increase in their numbers. Massachusetts outlawed the seining of stripers in 1937. Phil Schwind, a Cape fisherman and writer, wrote in 1972 that he had seen schools of stripers as big as 18 square miles – solid fish – all surface feeding offshore. The great numbers of bass in the 60s and 70s led again to overfishing. Schwind reported that one year a local fisherman “put 3000 pounds [of stripers] on the beach in November and had to quit with the fish still here in December – it was too cold.”

The 1970s ended the period of abundance, with a large decline in numbers during the period up to 1985. Congress stepped in on October 31, 1984 by prohibiting all commercial fishing for stripers using nets and restricting fishing in spawning areas during spawning season. They coupled this with minimum size recommendation and limits on numbers allowed to be kept.

Stripers caught out of Bass Hole in the early 1970s.

The result has been a rebound of the species, to the pleasure of fisherman everywhere. Some old Cape fishermen tend to think along the lines of author John Hersey. He wrote that “the abundance cycle of bluefish are reciprocal to those of striped bass; when one species is up, the other is down.” Others agree with George Reiger, who mused that the rise and decline of stripers has been attributed more to the effects of man – overfishing and the decline of spawning habitats.

There aren’t any scientific studies that prove or refute either of these theories, but Reiger’s views seem a bit more credible based on the evidence. Both blues and stripers were plentiful in colonial times. There have also been times such as 1879, when one rapidly declines as the other increases. Regardless, let’s hope to keep optimal conditions for both of these wonderful game fish to prosper.

Researched and written by Duncan Oliver