Just as twilight advances into the day, stripers work their way back into Cape Ann's shallower waters after dodging the dog days of summer laying low, literally, in deep holes, and chasing the plentiful schools of mackerel, mostly.
But even now, memories of the 2011 striper season hereabouts are forming to create big and little pictures.
It comes as no surprise that Al Williams won the big prize — a trophy and $1,000 cash — for weighing the biggest bass entered in Winchester Fishing Co.'s 2011 Bluefish and Striped bass Tournament.
Williams' winner weighed 46.9 pounds. One can't be certain, but it is likely that Williams also caught the first striper of the year, a schoolie, back at the start of May in the Little River where the new arrivals seem to head once they get funneled into the Blynman Canal on high tides, after sprinting up the coast from primarily Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay and the Hudson River.
Read the complete story by Richard Gaines in The Gloucester Times