Due to their feeding habits, they must be caught by a cast net, or snagged using a weighted treble hook. They will never bite a baited hook. Adult menhaden average 12 to 15 inches in length, and from two-thirds to one pound in weight. The menhaden spawn in the open ocean.
Their eggs are buoyant and don't hatch for about 75 days. Eggs and larvae wash into coastal bays and estuaries which provide nurseries for the menhaden. In the fall, after they have grown to peanut bunker size, they migrate out into the ocean in sizeable schools which attract gamefish like striped bass and bluefish. Blitzes seen along the coast are many times due to striped bass and bluefish feeding on the schools of menhaden.
Menhaden are the main source of protein for striped bass growing up in the Chesapeake Bay. However, commercial reduction boats operating out of Virginia, harvest vast amounts of menhaden from the Chesapeake Bay every year, reducing the quantity of menhaden in these waters. I also keep the ice in the bad it came in. Looks like I will be doing some walking to chunk this early summer so Rich's soft cooler idea will be taking effect. Whatever you do, dont leave them in your cars trunk overnight when the next day is gonna be a 95 plus degree day and youre not getting in your car til around 3 in the afternoon.
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Terms of Use. Privacy Policy. Keeping Bunker Fresh. User Name. Remember Me? Active Topics. Mark Forums Read. Continued engagement from anglers and angling groups is essential to making sure that management of menhaden—and all baitfish—considers the needs of gamefish like striped bass. One of the simplest ways to fish bunker is also one of the most effective. Upon finding schools of bunker, fishermen snag them with a weighted treble, and then let the bunker swim.
The weight of the treble and trauma from the impact will cause the wounded bunker to drop below the school, where stripers will be lying in wait. Not every school will have stripers lurking beneath it.
If it looks promising, he may snag a second bait; otherwise, Gutwein motors off to find the next school. Coombs starts out by looking for schools of bunker that have been broken up into smaller pods by other fish. Gutwein watches his electronics and makes a note of where he finds the subsurface schools so he can get back to them later in the day.
At times, however, he has had great fishing by snagging and dropping baits in these deeper schools. He further reduces the likelihood of gut-hooking a bass by setting the hook after a count of 3 to 5 following a pick-up.
Any bass over twenty pounds is inhaling that bunker, no problem. Coombs advises snagging baits toward the outside of the school. Some captains prefer to re-rig their snagged baits on single hooks, which gives the fishermen more control over the hook placement in the bait. One deadly tactic while fishing around an active school is to drop a live bunker over the side and keep the reel in free spool to allow the baitfish to frantically swim back toward its school.
The panicked fish will generate explosive strikes from stripers hunting the edges of the bunker school. In the shallows of Narragansett Bay, where stripers can be spread out, Captain Rob Taylor of Newport Fishing Charters out of Newport, RI, likes to slow-troll his live bunker to cover ground and find the fish.
But, when the boat is put into neutral, the bunker, given a slack line, is able to evade the pursuing striper. Captain Brian Coombs likes to start his day by slow-trolling a bunker through shallow boulder fields, targeting the stripers that have extended their nighttime shallow-water hunting through dawn. With circle hooks, he lets the boat set the hook, keeping the boat in gear and waiting for the rod to fold over before taking it out of the holder.
Most of the time, he fishes them without any additional weight. Coombs trolls his bunker on the same weighted treble hooks that he uses to snag his baits. This, he says, keeps the bait a foot or two below the surface. Often, stripers will seek out deep structure during the middle of the day after blitzing on bunker in the early morning.
Fishermen can make the most of the midday hours by taking a livewell of bunker to these structures and drifting them just above the bottom.
A whole, dead bunker fished without weight and allowed to sink below a school is a trick that charter captains keep up their sleeves to try and pull the largest bass out of a bunker blitz.
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