Today I started my Buzzards Bay recon for stripers. We’ve been hearing about a few fish here and a few fish there, but for the most part these are holdovers. The big push of fresh fish has yet to happen, but they should be here any day now.

Clouds of small bait were everywhere in upper Buzzards Bay.

I struck out today (Sunday) on a run from Bourne out past Cleveland Ledge. I ran both shorelines of the bay and covered most of the area with radar.

More bait clouds near the bottom.

The good news is a ton of bait (see radar screen shots). I saw bait—what looked like small sand eels—pretty much everywhere I ran. A fair number of terns showed up as the morning wore on, and I encountered several small flocks working the bait pods. However, I couldn’t find a fish under any of them.

Marking lots of bait, but no predators.

Water temps are right at 50 degrees, and that’s the magic number for seeing stripers start to roll into the area. Several friends of mine have been finding good numbers of squid around the bay, and that, combined with the clouds of small sand eels, has the table set for incoming masses of basses.

May 7 has historically been a banner day on Buzzards Bay for me, and I’m predicting the same this year. So, if your gear is not ready yet, take some time in the next few days and knock the dust off it. It’s going to blow wide open any day now!

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