6 posts on water temperature.
Striped bass spawn in tidal fresh water in spring, from mid-April into May in the Chesapeake and from late April into June in the Hudson, as the rivers warm. The fish you catch in Massachusetts did it weeks earlier, hundreds of miles south, then swam here to feed.
5 min read
Tagged striped bass left Massachusetts bays mostly in September and October, trickling out rather than leaving together. In Duxbury Bay, half were gone by the week the water averaged 62°F. The fall run is that exit, working slowly south on cooling water and shortening days.
5 min read
Tagged stripers that summer in Massachusetts spend the winter far to the south, off Virginia and on the Maryland shelf, with North Carolina a known wintering ground. Not every fish goes. Some stay in their home rivers year-round, and a Maine river has a documented group that winters there.
5 min read
Above 25°C, striped bass released into fresh water died at 70.4 percent. The same fish released into mildly brackish water died at 1.8. The difference is not handling or hook placement — it is salinity, and it is one of the biggest levers any of us has over whether a released fish lives.
3 min read
Every August someone tells you the bass shut off above 75°F. Tagged fish say otherwise — routine occupancy past 77°F, and in Chesapeake Bay an avoidance threshold closer to 81°F. Here is what the primary literature shows, including the warm-water fact that should change how you handle a fish.
5 min read
Alewife start running at about 9°C, and river herring runs are over by about 20–21°C. Across twelve Massachusetts streams the northern runs go later, warmer and in a narrower window than the southern ones — so a single statewide date is wrong by construction.
3 min read
