Do you really want to catch some stripers on Great Bay and the Great Bay Watershed or do you just want to go fishing? You need to make that decision as this big watershed is like a desert when it comes to finding stripers, which mostly hang out in certain “Oasis” places where both food and shelter abound.

First you have to know that striped bass are fierce predators that when forced into it, will feed on just about anything alive or dead that will fit in their mouths. They are feeders of opportunity that do have some preferred food, but when that is not available they will fill their stomachs with anything that can be digested and often are found with stuff in their stomachs that couldn’t be digested, like lobster and clam shells or big bones of fish.

Next you should know that only with certain exceptions, the Great Bay itself is not a good place to find stripers. The exception to this is when schools of baitfish such as menhaden (more often called pogies) invade the Bay itself. You can also find an occasional striper in the small channel in the middle of Great Bay at low tide. But the vast part of Great Bay is not striper country.

The good striper grounds start where Great Bay narrows into Little Bay at a place called Thurber Straights which is off of Adams Point where the UNH Marine Laboratory is located. Here the fish will stack up in tidal rips, behind or in front of what we call ledges but are often just a hump of oyster bed. They will use these places to ambush baitfish as the cover not only provides a place for them to hide but also allows stripers to avoid using up energy by fighting the currents and tides.

These places are not that hard to find as water disturbance over these “ledges” is a telltale signal that you can investigate with your depth finder. At the mouth of the Oyster River, where it meets Little Bay, there are several good fishing locations. You should know that courtesy dictates not getting on another boat’s drift of trolling pattern so that all boats fishing that same spot can be successful.

As you travel down Little Bay towards Dover Point and the Dover Point Bridge on Route 4, there are several other great places where stripers hang out, with one of them being right under the bridge. However, with current construction. it’s probably not a good idea to hang out there too long. Also know that fishing is best there at slack tide, both low and high, as this location has a very, very strong current that adds an element of danger.

From that bridge all the way to the mouth of the Piscataqua River all you have to do is to fish where surface currents and rips identify underlying structure.

Also you should know that on different strengths of tides the stripers will move onto different bottom structure. If you learn how to read a tide calendar you should also make note of where you’ve caught fish on different tide heights.

One more tip. At low tide stripers will move into the nearest deep water and concentrate there until there is enough water to provide them cover to move onto the flats to feed. Use your depth/fish finder to take advantage of this.

Another thing that many striper anglers don’t realize is that in shallow water, you will not mark fish on your depthfinder usually. That is because your depth/fishfinder’s signal is cone shaped and when it leaves your unit’s transducer it is only inches wide and gets larger as the depth increases so you’d have to be right on top of a fish for it to mark. Stripers in shallow water will usually move to the side when a boat passes over them. The Piscataqua River stripers are used to a lot of boat traffic but will not usually allow a boat to run right over them by just moving a few feet.

There’s one more very important tip. This watershed is full of floating debris, mostly dead eelgrass. When your bait or lure is covered with this debris you are not fishing, just going for a boat ride. We check our baits and lures almost constantly and remove the debris. Lazy striper fishermen are not going to catch many fish, a fact that we’ve pounded into the minds of many of the youngsters we’ve coached, right now including two great-grandsons, Kyle and Colby Griffin.

@Body copy tagline diamond:.

Dick Pinney’s Guidelines column appears weekly in the New Hampshire Sunday News. He may be reached at DoDuckInn@aol.com.