Striper / Striped Bass Facts

Striper / Striped Bass Facts

Striped Bass have been immensely popular since Colonial times, a fact is, Striped Bass was one of the first natural resources to benefit from a 1639 conservation act. Striped Bass gets its name from the seven or eight dark, continuous stripes along the side of its body.

The world record Striped Weighted 78.8 pounds.
The largest striped bass ever recorded was a 125 pound female from North Carolina, 1891.
The oldest ever recorded was 31 years of age.
A Striped bass tagged in the Chesapeake Bay was recaptured in Canadian waters, over 1,000 miles away.
A Striped Bass tagged and released in the Saint John River, New Brunswick Ca., was recaptured 36 days later in Rhode Island, 503 mi away! Average 14 miles a day
The first free public school of the New World and pension funds for the widows and orphans of men formerly engaged in service to the Colony were also funded, in part, through moneys derived from the sale of striped bass.
In colonial times Striped bass were so plentiful that at one time they were used to fertilize fields which led to the first conservation law of the new world in 1639 forbidding the use of striped bass as fertilizer.
Striped bass are anadromous, which means they live their adult life in the ocean but travel up freshwater rivers to spawn.
No one paid any attention to Striped Bass in fresh water impoundments until the late1940s when Santee Cooper Lakes were impounded in South Carolina. When that lake was impounded, it trapped some striped bass that had gone up river to spawn. These fish not only survived, but thrived on the large number of shad present in Santee Cooper Lake. This created a popular open-water trophy striper fishery for the lake.
Fisheries biologists in S. Carolina and other states took note of this development and began experimenting with stocking stripers in various lakes to increase fishing diversity. In some of the larger reservoirs with good forage — usually shad — the stockings were tremendously successful and created a fishing opportunity for open-water anglers.
Female striped bass can mature as early as age 4; however, it takes several years (age 8 or older) for spawning females to reach full productivity. Once a mature female deposits her eggs, they are fertilized by milt ejected from a mature male (age 2 or 3). Spawning is triggered by an increase in water temperature and generally occurs in April, May and early June.
The average 6-year-old female striped bass produces 500,000 eggs
while a 15-year-old can produce over three million eggs.
In 1879 and again in 1881, 135 yearling striped bass (1 ½ -3 inches long) were seined from the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers near Red Bank, New Jersey by Livingston Stone., at the urging of S.R. Throckmorton of the California State Board of Fish Commissioners, and transported by train in wooden barrels and milk cans across the continent to San Francisco Bay.

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