Winter striper fishing has been thrust in to the limelight over the last 10 to 15 years. Before that, there was a lot of talk about it, but it seemed that only a small percentage of anglers actually did it, and anyone that was catching offseason bass in a place not called the Thames River, was hiding their cards from prying eyes and protecting their spots like an ace up their sleeve. That has all changed thanks to social media and a young generation that trades in likes and follows. The careless posting of photos gave away the details in their backgrounds and the knowledge of exactly where to go spread like Norovirus on a cruise ship.
You may remember my editor’s log from our March 2025 edition where I interviewed Connecticut Rep. Brandon Chafee about a bill that was up for review that sought to establish a winter moratorium on fishing for striped bass in the lower Housatonic River. This bill, of course, came with a strong gust of blowback from the anglers that enjoy this fishery and the tackle shops that stay open all winter to support them. A big sticking point for Rep. Chafee was the unrecorded spawning that occurs in some of Connecticut’s waterways, most notably, the Connecticut River and his insistence that these fish needed to be protected so that they could potentially offset some of the meager spawning results we’ve seen over the past eight years in the Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson River.
Another bone of contention was the rampant poaching that takes place each winter along the banks of the Housy and the black market sales that follow. Apparently there’s enough demand for offseason stripers that unscrupulous anglers are cashing hefty checks at the expense of these winter bass. And of course, this is something that needs to end, and hopefully this new piece of legislation will help.
There was enough backlash from the original bill that it was scrapped and a new version has been crafted, it has passed the house and now is awaiting review in the state senate. This new bipartisan bill would establish a catch and release only season for striped bass in Connecticut from December 1 through March 31. This would protect these vulnerable winter populations of stripers from harvest and would set the stage for the maximum spawning success in any of the state’s rivers that might support it, even if CT DEEP continues to refuse to recognize that spawning occurs.
To turn the screws a little tighter on anyone who violates the state’s striped bass regulations, a new three-tiered system of fines will be established. Violators will be fined $150 for their first offense, $350 for their second and $500 for each subsequent violation. These would be added on top of the fines already in place for keeping numbers of fish that exceed the legal limit. Furthermore, these fines will be the standard for violating the winter ‘catch and release season’ if this bill passes.
The bill, known as sHB 5333, includes many other components including provisions for establishing fish passage at non-federally-regulated dams, the allocation of donated funds and funds collected as fines for striped bass law violations and calls for the founding of a working group that would inform state regulators on how to proceed with the regulation of what the bill’s authors call “Traditionally Non-Harvested Species”.
From my side of the table, this one is a layup. Of course we should support this action. Winter striped bass fisheries are fragile, we only need to look as far as Connecticut’s Thames River, which once stood as the crown jewel of the winter striped bass fishery, until its abrupt and unfathomable end sometime around 2009. There could be any number of reasons why Thames River stripers stopped stacking up in the river’s channels each winter, but it absolutely did coincide with a major spike in angling pressure. I saw it with my own eyes during my first stint as the editor of this magazine and, while some stripers continue overwintering there, the numbers are a mere sliver of what they once were, when miles of river seemed to be impossibly stacked with stripers 20 feet thick off the bottom.
If you want to read the bill in its entirety, the easiest way to find it is to “Google” sHB 5333, it comes up right away. If you would like to comment on sHB 5333, direct your comments to your local senators, you can find their email addresses and the districts they serve at cga.ct.gov.
