It’s no secret, Jersey’s the place to be for November stripers.
The fall run of stripers last year was pretty solid here at the Jersey Shore, so long as you had a boat in the water. Sure, we had a couple of good shots in the surf – Tuesday, November 18, 2025 comes immediately to mind; more on that later. But after several seasons of rather epic daylight action in the surf, the 2025 season just didn’t pan out for surfcasters overall.
It’s all about the bunker, bottom line. The inshore waters of the Jersey Shore beaches saw some adult bunker and sand eels which proved successful for those venturing out into the ocean waters from Sandy Hook starting in mid-October. The bite then moved down the beach to Cape May and across to Delaware where and beyond. The fall run is a movable feast of sorts that begins in mid-October along the North Jersey coast (Monmouth County), with Central Jersey (Ocean County) in its prime around Thanksgiving, followed by the winter action in South Jersey (Atlantic and Cape May counties).
While those anglers with boats still in the water, or trailering their way along 130 miles of coastline from Sandy Hook to Cape May, can find the best action from mid-October through the end of the year, surfcasters are keeping their fingers crossed that 2026 will be more like the seasons prior to 2025. For me personally, I believe the main culprit in the slow surf bite for striped bass last season was peanut bunker; more specifically, a lack thereof.
It’s blowing a gale as I write this, a nor’easter wreaking havoc along the coast with the full moon of September coming up on the 26th day of the month. What happens between then and the Hunter’s Moon on October 26 will be key to learning if this will be yet another season of madness and mayhem at the Jersey Shore, or just another surfcasters’ pick as center console crews find the best success just outside of casting distance.
Fall Kickoff
Looking back at our New Jersey, Delaware Bay edition fishing reports in The Fisherman for the past decade, the first waves of migratory striped bass sliding westerly across the South Shore of Long Island typically hit the upper North Jersey Coast by early to mid-October. Outside the mouth of the mighty Raritan Bay in the NY/NJ Bight region, from Breezy Point in Brooklyn across to the tip of Sandy Hook, migratory schools of striped bass will be looking to feed heavily before the migratory run south.
While any schools of adult bunker will undoubtedly attract their interest, young-of-the-year peanut bunker that spent their first summer in the creeks and rivers that feed into the Raritan will begin to flush out for their southerly voyage as well. A mix of both young and adult menhaden converging at this particular “choke point” will be what the surfcasting community will be anxiously monitoring.
At that northern tip of New Jersey is Sandy Hook, a national park within the Gateway National Recreation Area managed by the National Park Service. From Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day a $20 fee is required to enter, but it’s free now during the fall run and open from 6 a.m. through 9 p.m. daily. A permit is required for after-hours fishing, but those are sold out for this season. For all intents and purposes, the Jersey Shore fall run kicks off at this northernmost stretch of the state sometime in October, and filters south through November soon after.
Spot burn? It’s a National Park that’s already on everyone’s radar. It’s a six-mile long stretch of walk-on access, so the seasonal hunt could produce anywhere; from there is another 20 miles of “searchable” beachfront in Monmouth County where striped bass can hopefully be found crashing peanuts or exploding on adult menhaden schools sometime between dusk and dawn. A surfcaster’s plug bag at this time of year includes plastic swim shads (molded Tsunami and JYG heads and bodies for example), pencil and polaris-style poppers, spooks and darters, bucktails, metal-lips, and the tool of the year, the glide bait.
There’s no beach buggy access anywhere in Monmouth County, so most folks keep a box of offerings locked in the vehicle, packing the sling bag with whatever offering may be best for any particular session. Beach buggy permits aren’t offered until getting south of Manasquan Inlet into the town of Brick in Ocean County where limited sales are already over. From that point all the way down the coast into and along Atlantic and Cape May counties, each town has its own beach driving rules and regulations.
Buffalo Stampede
At the Jersey Shore, when winds are blowing offshore they’re coming from the west, which lays down the inshore waters and provides solid visuals for those looking to score. Many surfcasters love staring down a nor’east wind and swell, throwing bucktails and heavy metals into the heave with success. Night creepers as well find the quiet solitude along the entire Jersey Coast in various pockets, with dark and blurple darters, SP Minnows and other Finnish style plug offerings. But it’s those westerlies that see bunker nosing up against the wind, tight to the beach, which has brought National Geographic imagery to the surf scene that many claim eclipses the days of old out east in Montauk.
The W/NW winds also help push more of those peanut bunker out of the estuaries in the fall, and with each outgoing tide baits are flushed from the bays and salty rivers to add to the beachfront buffet. With the inlets at Manasquan, Barnegat, Little Egg and Absecon in particular acting as some of the largest pipelines for emptying back waters of forage fish, the fall blitzes can occur just about anywhere. Case in point, on October 4, 2024, I was headed to the Poconos early Saturday morning with my wife when my phone began blowing up with reports of jumbo stripers piling on adult bunker along the Northern Ocean County stretch during westerly breezes after a week of easterlies. In fact, as I’m writing this during the late September nor’easter, I’m already licking my chops for the first tides of early October! (To my wife Michele, I’m sorry, but no weekend in the Poconos this time around!)
I like to think of this first wave of action as a buffalo stampede. When these first striped bass charge the beaches of the Jersey Shore, it’s often fast and furious. Whether these big fish cycle back out into the main body or continue along in a southerly run as the leaders of the migratory pack, I don’t know. But what typically follows – given the amount of bunker present for the fall – can be sustained bedlam through the month of November, or fits and starts. In fact, in 2025 it was much the latter, as the most intense of the seasonal action occurred on November 18 along the Ocean County beaches with one full day of bunker busting madness with adult bunker the primary bait, and larger spooks and glide baits leading the charge.
For you lunar calendar fanatics, November’s new moon and corresponding heavy tides fall on November 9, followed by the full moon on November 24; smack dab in the middle of the two heavy tide moons pushing bait around, I already have November 18 circled on my “must fish” day for the season.
Fall Into Winter
When social media imagery turns hot and heavy in November from along the Jersey Shore, I think a lot of folks from out of the region think that the entire 130-mile stretch of coast is firing on all cylinders. Barnegat Bay is a huge estuary that spans nearly the entire stretch of Ocean County in the middle of the state, with most of the back bay waters flushing out of Barnegat Inlet situated between Island Beach State Park and the beaches of Long Beach Island. For whatever the reason – the structure of the coast to the south of Barnegat or all of the late season cold winter pouring out of the inlet – it’s been an invisible barrier to the blitzes, and a tale of two states.
Down into Atlantic County (Brigantine and Atlantic City) and Cape May County (from Ocean City to Cape May), some of these blitz conditions with bass on bunker in the surf might not even materialize until mid-December into January. Sure, there are striped bass to be caught in the lower part of New Jersey, and pluggers with sealed lips often enjoy more quiet success with SP Minnows, Yo-Zuri Hydro lineup and Tsunami Tidal Pro series plugs. Wherever you fish, it comes down to having access to any number of baits, from search style offerings and swim shads, to those “mayhem and madness” tools.
Luckily, unlike many seasonal businesses, tackle shops at the Jersey Shore remain open and active through the holiday season. This becomes especially important if sand eels enter the bait fray as well. Twenty years ago when I used to head off to deer camp in early December, I found myself sneaking away from the blind to hit the beaches most mornings, as a pretty significant sand eel bite would materialize most mornings after dawn. Tins and teasers, needlefish and soft plastic offers in the form of Tsunami Sand Eels or Joe Baggs Miracle Minnows are another must have in the fall into winter surf at the Jersey Shore.
Truth be told, I’ve been in the middle of a November peanut bunker blitz on occasion where the molded Tsunami Sand Eel – perhaps because it stood out in the underwater melee – outfished any of the smaller peanut matches I’d throw.
Overall, we’re seeing a healthy amount of peanut bunker in the creeks, canals, lagoons and estuaries behind the New Jersey beaches this summer, and once this late September storm blows through I’m anxious to see how things shape up towards the fall 2026 run. It’s no secret to anyone along the Striper Coast that the Garden State has become somewhat of a destination in the past 10 years for surfcasters following the migratory run from New England, across the shores of Long Island, and then mostly due south towards the Delmarva Peninsula and the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
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There’s an old joke that folks love to say, “What exit?” when referring to where a New Jerseyan might reside. Each exit on the north-south Garden State Parkway represents a mile, and from Exit 117 for Sandy Hook, down past Exit 82 for Island Beach State Park, past Exit 63 for Long Beach Island and towards Exit 38 for Atlantic City until registering ‘0’ at Cape May, the fall run could prove worthy of travel at any point through November and December, even into the start of the New Year.
Will it turn out to be another epic season in the surf? Only time and bait will tell, but my glass is half-full on this windy late September morning.
