The June New Moon. Dark nights, big tides, giant stripers. This week saw good stripers taken from Maryland to Maine, with a strong showing for surfcasters, who found big bass feeding within casting distance of the beach all throughout the Northeast.

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While the biggest bass in the Chesapeake Bay are in the upper 20-inch range, there are still over-slot stripers feeding in the Maryland and Delaware surf.

Most of the big stripers in the southern half of New Jersey are cruising north near the 3-Mile Line. There are more big stripers off Northern New Jersey, but even those seem to be thinning out, with eel trolling being the most effective method, and most of the fish flirting with the 3-mile line, beyond which, targeting striped bass is prohibited.

There are monster stripers feeding on bunker along the South Shore, with plenty of big bass on the North Shore as well.  As summer temperatures settle in over the next week, look for the fish to keep pushing east before settling at Montauk or Block Island.

Warming waters and more big baitfish arriving has kicked the fishing up a notch at the river mouths in Connecticut. 

More big stripers moved in as warming waters push stripers from New York and New Jersey into Rhode Island waters.

Schools of bass continue to move through Cape Cod waters, with fish settling into the rips from Vineyard Sound to Monomoy, and spreading up along the back side of the Cape.

Big schools of bunker and bringing big stripers to the South Shore, Boston Harbor, and the North Shore.

Plentiful bait and bass to 45 inches in Maine and New Hampshire should be just the start of the best part of the striper season at the northernmost part of the migration.