Can you please find for me John Tiedeman’s article on the Striped Bass Diet?
Yes. (LINK)
Tiedemann is Assistant Dean of the School of Science and Director of the Marine and Environmental Biology and Policy Program at Monmouth University. The piece argues that stripers are opportunistic, not selective bunker specialists. Feeding studies along the coast show more than 65 fish species and more than 45 invertebrates in their stomachs, with the mix shifting by season, region, and fish size.
Main points:
– Young-of-the-year and yearlings are mostly bottom feeders on amphipods, isopods, mysid shrimp, small mollusks, and worms until they start taking small baitfish.
– Adults will take prey up to about 40% of their length, but preferred prey is closer to 20%, and even big fish often eat inch-long forage and 1- and 2-year-old fish.
– Atlantic menhaden is the mainstay coastwide, supplemented by whatever is locally abundant: herring, sand eels, silversides, anchovies, hake, flounder, crabs, lobster, shrimp, squid, and worms.
– Regional notes cover the Gulf of Maine and New England (eels, herring, smelt, sand eels, lobster, rock crabs), Long Island Sound (more invertebrates than the south shore), the Hudson and Raritan, Mid-Atlantic beaches and salt-marsh creeks, Chesapeake Bay (menhaden plus blue crab as the main invertebrate for older fish), and Albemarle Sound.
– For fishing, match the dominant local forage, stay with a lure once it is working when fish are locked on one prey, and wait out feeding lulls instead of leaving.
The page is free to read on The Fisherman’s site.