Bait fishing is probably the most common method of targeting striped bass. While part of the allure of stripers is their willingness to chase a lure or fly, bait remains a very effective method of targeting them.
Anglers use a wide variety of different baits when fishing for striped bass, and everyone has their favourite. The best striped bass bait tends to be oily, smelly, and fresh. Listed below are some of the most popular baits used for fishing stripers. I also go over the techniques used to fish them, and some other tips and tricks.
Baits
One thing these all have in common is that they’re much more effective when used fresh. Striped bass are not overly enthusiastic about rotting bait. Stinky baits are good, but only the kind of stink that the bait naturally has.
Mackerel
Mackerel have a few great things going for them as a bait for striped bass. They’re easy to catch, readily available, and tons of fun in their own right. You can make a day trip out of going mackerel fishing first and then go striper fishing afterwards.
The best shore mackerel fishing (August/September) overlaps with the some of the best striped bass fishing of the year, meaning easy access to fresh bait. You can catch a mackerel and immediately rig it to another rod and start fishing for striped bass.
Mackerel are extremely oily and also have a good amount of fishy smell to them. They fish well both as cut bait or rigged whole. You can cut them into fillets and rig them similar to pork rinds, and this works well on bucktails and jig heads. You can also cut them into chunks and rig them onto circle hooks.
Mackerel and striped bass can often be found in similar types of water. It’s actually not unusual for stripers to be positioned near a feeding school of mackerel picking off injured or sick fish.
I can’t really pick between mackerel and eels. In my opinion, one of the two make the best striped bass bait, I just can’t decide which one.
Clams
Specifically, bar clams. This may seem strange as striped bass are unlikely to eat bar clams in the wild (I’m honestly not sure if they do or not), but they sure do love the meat found inside their shells!
You do have to shuck them, although It isn’t necessary to be good at it. The bass don’t care if you make a mess of the meat, as long as it stays on the hook. Just be careful not to accidentally cut yourself, a proper clam shucking knife (Amazon Link)
Make sure to include the stomach, as it’s the meatiest, stinkiest part of the clam. It’s worthwhile to give the stomach a small poke with a knife, to let the guts slowly spill into the water. Striped bass have a good sense of smell and will be hard pressed to ignore this smell.
For someone that’s never fished with clams, it’s not immediately obvious how to properly bait a hook with clam meat. The toughest part of the clam is the foot, so you’ll want to put the hook through here. It helps if you put the hook through the foot two or three times. You can then wrap the rest of the meat around the hook shank. If you really want to make it secure, you can tie it on with some loose fishing line, clam line, or even tooth floss.
These large clams can be found throughout northeast America. They’re readily available in many areas for anglers to dig themselves. Here’s a guide I put together on digging for bar clams (and a few other species native to my old province, Prince Edward Island). The link has information on shucking clams as well.
If you’re not lucky enough to have a beach with them nearby, you can sometimes find them at bait shops. Other species of clams will work, but not as well as bar clams.
Blood Worms
Striped bass (like any fish) love worms, and these are another very effective bait. Many anglers in New England swear by these. Bloodworms are large saltwater worms that spends most of their lives feeding in the mud. O yes, they have teeth (and will bite), so be careful rigging them!
To rig them, start by pushing them onto a hook the same way you would an earthworm if you were fishing for trout. These worms are fatter at one end, start by pushing the thicker end up over the hook eye. You want the worm to hang off the hook a bit in the middle before threading the rest of the worm onto the hook. This video does a great job demonstrating how to rig a bloodworm.
These are available at many tackle shops, although you can also dig them yourself. They’re often found on mudflats. It’s a bit of a messy and labour intensive process to dig them. Make sure to bring your hip waders, and be careful, some of the mudflats are very quicksand-esque. Bring a local that knows the area to stay safe. You don’t want to be stuck in the mud with an incoming tide.
Squid
This is probably one of the most commonly used baits in the world for targeting saltwater sport fish. Most large predatory fish in the ocean have squid on the menu, and stripers are no exception.
Freshly caught squid is much better than frozen stuff. While fresh baits always a good idea, frozen squid is particularly mushy. Good luck keeping it on the hook. If you can get squid so fresh it’s leaking ink when you rig it, you’re golden.
Squid can be fished right off the dock in many areas, and are quite easy to catch. They’re aggressive predators in their own right and will strike most any lure, although special squid jigs will vastly improve you’re “hookup” rate.
Pork Rind
These are a classic bait used by generations of striped bass anglers. It can work on its own but is typically used as a trailer on bucktails. Pork rinds are much tougher than many other baits, and stay on the hook well. Modern brands come in a variety of flavours and colours.
Eels
Eels are perhaps one of the striped bass’s favourite prey items. The world record striped bass was caught on live eel, and I actually caught my personal best striped bass on an eel lure (third lure down on that list). This is the bait you want to be using if you’re targeting trophy sized striped bass.
You can cut them up and use them as bait, but the most effective method seems to be rigging them whole.
Two of the most secure ways of hooking a live eel involve its eye socket. You can put the hook in one eye and out the other, or you can run the hook through the mouth and out of one of the eyes. Either way, there’s a solid piece of bone keeping the hook in place, and it’s unlikely you’ll lose the eel.
You can throw eels out and wait as you would with many other baits, but eels actually work very well if you fish them like you would a lure. Throw them out on a heavy jighead or circle hook with some added weight so it fishes near the bottom. Then steadily reel the eel in. Eels naturally forage for food near the bottom, so this will look like a normal eel doing its normal thing. Irresistible to a hungry striper.
Handling eels can prove tricky since they’re so slimy, especially if you’re live rigging them. One trick is to use a cut up a piece of burlap bag to handle the eels. This material gives a better grip than most gloves on the market and should make handling the eel easier.
Gaspereau
Gaspereau run upriver in May and are easily caught at this time by net, lure, or fly fishing. They can be an easy source of bait for early striped bass season. Gaspereau makes up a good portion of a striped bass’s natural diet and makes great bait.
It’s one of the stinkiest baits on this list, so there’s no way a bass won’t smell it in the water. You can prepare it the same way you would mackerel for bait. Cut into chunks, fillets, or rigged whole, this is a solid bait choice that will catch you big stripers.
Sand Crabs
These little crustaceans make surprisingly good bait. They’re found in the southern range of striped bass’s habitat, so they may not be in your area. If they are in your area, they’re quite easy to catch(0:40 on that link), use the biggest ones as bait and discard the small ones.
These beach bugs are great because (if you’re in their region) you always have easy access to fresh bait when surfcasting. They’re plentiful, living their lives in the sand. Stripers love to feed on any that get kicked up in the surf.
Crabs
More typical crabs can also be effective striper bait. Blue crabs and the invasive green crab are common prey items and are commonly eaten by a variety of predatory fish.
The best way to rig them involves first removing their legs. work the hook through one knuckle of the crab and out the other. Tying the crab to the hook is a good idea to further secure the bait.
What Not to Use
Smelt
To be fair, they can work, they just are not the best bait. I thought I should mention it here since it’s a question I see posted on forums fairly often.
Striped bass heavily prey on smelt in the wild, so it’s strange that they’re not actually more effective. I think the issue is smelt season and striper season don’t really overlap, so anglers using smelt as bait are usually using old frozen bait, not fresh smelt. Fresh bait is much more effective than previously frozen bait.
You can catch hundreds in the spring, and they’re quite easy to catch in the winter as well. They’re a great source of bait if you’re looking the fill a freezer for backup bait. I also personally love eating smelt, just remove the roundworms they have in their muscle tissue (they won’t hurt you if you miss one or two) if you plan on eating them.
If you live in an area that you can get fresh smelts during striper season, then they’re an effective bait in that situation. Otherwise, they’re better as a backup source of easily attainable bait, but there are better options.
I’ve actually had better luck fishing Berkley’s Powerbait Smelt (Amazon Link)
Old Bait
I’ve said this multiple times throughout this article, but old bait just doesn’t work. While they are opportunistic, they typically don’t scavenge for food. They are much more interested in fresh meat. If you have some old bait, throw it out. Don’t waste your time.
Frozen Bait
Frozen bait can and does work, but it’s really a last resort. Some baits freeze better than others, but fresh bait will always out fish frozen bait.
Sport Fish
Even though many of these would probably work, they’re illegal in many areas. Anything classified as a sport fish cannot be used for bait. What is considered a sport fish varies by region, but it often includes trout, salmon, and freshwater bass. Oddly enough, stripers are not classified as a sport fish in my area. They likely are elsewhere though, so check your local regulations.
In many area’s you are not even allowed to use sport fish heads or guts from a fish you cleaned to eat yourself.
Float and Weight Rig
This is the bait rig I use most of the time when targeting stripers. It works in a variety of situations and is fairly straightforward to set up.
A float and sinker rig is great for presenting bait suspended a few feet in the water column. Even though stripers will eat off the seafloor, (they love lobsters, but that’s a bit of an expensive bait choice so it’s not included in the list above) it’s helpful to get the bait up into the water column. Having the bait suspended off the seafloor keeps it away from the ravenous crabs that will quickly tear bait off your hook.
Many crabs are good swimmers though, so they may eventually find your bait even up in the water column, it’ll just take a bit longer.
Eagle Claw Striped Bass Rig (Amazon link)
Final Thoughts
Striped bass are big fish, and are energy efficient. They’re going to target high fat foods such as mackerel and gaspereau to maximize calories. Any oily species like this make good bait. The oil in these fish also break down and go bad more quickly though. This decaying bait is not at all appetizing to the fish, and you’ll have a harder time getting the bait to stay on the hook once it’s aged a bit.
So if you have to use slightly less-new (never use old stuff) bait, it’s better to go for less oily options. Keep in mind freshness is still key to effectiveness in striper bait though, you can just get away with slightly older bait if it’s less oily. You can always soak less oily baits in fish oil or synthetic fish attractant. Soaking real bait, or soft plastic lures in PowerBait Attractant (Amazon Link)
Striped bass is a hugely popular sport fish, partly due to the variety of ways you can catch them. They’ll readily take a wide variety of lures and are a blast on the fly rod.
Consider taking a spinning rod and a few good striped bass lures, or a fly rod with some large streamer flies with you next time you go striper fishing. You can fish these while you wait for a bass to take the bait on your other rod. You double your chances, and it’s alot of fun to actively be fishing a lure or fly while you’re waiting for a bit on your bait rig. Make sure it’s legal to be fishing two rods at once, it isn’t in some areas.
Tight lines, hope I’ve helped you out. Maybe I’m missing a bait? Maybe you think one of these baits stink? If you have anything to add, feel free to comment below.
Great list. Agree with most of these.
Eels in particular make awesome bait!