The striped bass fishing out here on Prince Edward Island is ridiculous!

Bearing in mind that John Quinlan and I have come to a big area essentially blind, wow the fishing we have found has been pretty awesome (with a lot of credit to John and his fishing brain). The Canadian striped bass fishing seems to be getting better and better each year after there was essentially a total collapse of the stocks a good few years ago and then (thankfully) a careful and strict rebuilding programme. My understanding is that the striped bass fishing which is being seen now essentially didn’t exist until about twelve or so years ago. On the one hand it makes me even more sad and mad about what we could have in the UK if something drastic and serious was done about our (sea) bass population, but on the other hands it’s bloody amazing to come to a place with so few anglers - haven’t seen another one so far - and so many fish………….

The thing about this fishing here in Canada is that you are not going to catch a massive striped bass like you could in certain parts of the east coast of the USA. At the end of the day it depends what you want from your fishing though. If you want a chance at good numbers of seriously scrappy fish which you can handle on exactly the sort of rods, reels and lures we fish with at home, plus you don’t want any crowds of anglers on the best spots, well then that’s a lot of what striped bass fishing in Canada is about. It seems like this really rather large Prince Edward Island on the east coast of Canada is a rather special place. I might not be coming home!

It’s actually a touch daunting how much water there is out here, indeed we are merely scratching the surface of the striped bass fishing on PEI as it’s known. On our first afternoon/evening we met up with such a nice local striper junkie who very kindly had us along for some fishing. He’s a hell of an angler and he took us to what were essentially coldwater sand flats where we nailed a bunch of fish in very skinny water and under big blue skies. Goddam it was a blast, and it was so cool to get to spend some time with a local angler and understand his extreme passion for these magnificent fish.

You know how much I love our bass back home, but pound for pound I have got to give it to these stripers with what looks like slightly larger tails and therefore more strength and speed. They pull hard for a start, but when they want a surface lure, they are way, way more aggressive than our bass. Some of the hits are insane, indeed a fish that looked easily 15lb plus smashed right over my surface lure this morning but didn’t hook up. My heart which I must obviously keep half an eye on missed a few beats I can assure you!

You can make so much commotion with the Savage Gear Slap Walker 135, the striped bass are loving it!

I haven’t got the time to go on and on here, but there will be plenty more to come. We are only two days and a bit into our trip so there’s lots more fishing to do and places to explore. I am really pleased that I haven’t yet found myself wishing that I had brought specific bits of fishing tackle that I hadn’t brought with me for this trip - check here for the gear I have with me out here. This Savage Gear SGS5 9’ 12-46g 4-piece travel rod is incredible. I can put so much hurt on the fish and I haven’t yet donated a single inch of braid to a Canadian striped bass. I know it’s the rules out here that you can only use single barbless hooks, but I am loving them on my surface lures. Stripers smash the lures so hard they often miss and come again and again before hooking up, and once they are on these fantastic 4/0 Mustad Kaiju single hooks, they are properly on. We have also had a heap of fish on various soft plastics, but I am rather glad I brought some soft plastic glue to repair them because stripers enjoy ripping plastics to pieces! Plenty more to come, this is some awesome fishing out here and we are spending most of our time on the water giggling away like a couple of infants……………

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