The striper fishing in Merrimack River system has begun to shift to “summer mode”. The summer mode basically means that the stripers in the river tend to bunch up together in small pods. The fish tend to be less aggressive and quickly spooked. These fish will move off the Joppa flats quickly, especially in the morning sunlight, and will seek water depths that are associated with current and wind seams. You will work much harder to boat as many fish you did 2 weeks ago. The size range continues as before, lots of smallish fish that have pod up in the flats to the 30-44” fish moving in groups to the edge of the river channel. We fished 2 days this week and managed several good sized fish up to 42”. The “gut chuckers” are now taking over the channel boundaries all the way out to the jetties and are anchoring just about anywhere making drifts along the flats edge difficult. They are catching a significant number of large fish. On Monday, we fly fished just outside the south jetty in 6-10’ of water and boated 20+ fish in about an hour. The fish ranged up to 30”. If you fish in this area, be super careful of the current swells that develop on the sand bar and the large number of boats anchored up. On Wednesday, I decided to get out side the confines of the river and cruise south down the beach. No sooner did I turn the corner of the south jetty, I found a large school of stripers feeding on sand eels. Most of the fish were between 20 and 25”. We landed a bunch and decided to continue down the beach. BLITZ! For the next hour or so, we hooked and released more bluefish than I could count! The blues took anything we threw at them; flies, jerk baits and poppers. The school of bluefish was huge; we found fish for 4 miles down the beach, from ¼ to ½ mile off the beach. The fish were on the surface and quite easy to find. The blues were “cookie cutters”, all 7-9 lbs. The water depth ranged from 25' to 60' and water temperature ranged from 64- 70. I can’t say if these fish will remain in the area, but it would be a good bet to run the beach south and up to Seabrook. Chances are that they will hang in for awhile, especially if the sand eels we saw stay close by. Captain Al reported that the big fish were all over the flats Wednesday night. The crab hatch is going on right now and the fish are taking small crabs just below the surface. The fish are very, very spooky and hard to fool. The birds flying over head and your fly line in the air are blowing the fish out of the water. The fish are moving into the normal drift pattern when the tide turns out and they will take better. This is the pattern that should have begun 2 weeks ago. Expect the good fishing to continue into next week. Looking to next week, I plan to fish exclusively in and around Cape Ann. Captain Al will provide Merrimack River info going forward. Capt’n Skip For more info on this fishing or for guided services, call or email me. 978-546-9704 northcoastangler@yahoo.com Captain Skip Montello