However, Captain King does admit that occasionally you will find a large pod of bait, and when you do, you need to camp out on the bait until the fish begin feeding.

GEAR AND TACTICS
Anglers wishing to pursue trophy striped bass in the spring on the bay will find that a traditional spinning setup with a bait runner on it works great. Bait-casting reels work well too. It is most important to get a quality reel capable of handling the runs of a fish up to 40 or 50 pounds and one that will spool a ready amount of 20-pound line on it. Captain King uses mono line when bait-fishing due to the cost.

"If the lines get tangled and some cutting is involved, the cost of replacing and respooling your reel will be a whole lot less than if you use braided line," he commented.

He uses medium to medium-heavy rods 6 1/2 to 7 feet in length to play in the trophy fish. Circle hooks of the appropriate size are often employed on his boat. He chooses the size of hook depending on the size of the bait he is using. For larger baits such as croaker, he advises that anglers use an 8/0 or 9/0 hook.

Fishing with live bait in the lower part of the bay during the spring is good, but the window of opportunity is short with a two-week season. If the weather is very warm, the fish will leave before the season really gets going. However, if the spring is cooler than normal, the fishing may remain quite good for the entire time.

One of his favorite ways to fish for striped bass is to use eels. Eels are a favorite food of striped bass and Captain King has perfected his method of using eels to entice monster striped bass. He uses up to eight rods, rigged a variety of ways so that at any given time he has baits at a variety of depths in the water column. Their rigging varies from a slip-bobber and free-lining an eel out to fishing the bottom with a heavy sinker. These rods are set around the boat graduated by the depth they are covering. The ingenious system takes fish even when other boats nearby are coming up empty-handed.

Captain King marks fish on the finder near an ambush site and then sets out his baits as he drifts through the area. He noted that a pair of anglers could use six to eight rods effectively without too much difficulty while drifting.

When asked what constitutes a good ambush site for striped bass, he listed the criteria as simply a place where the fish can hold near cover and whack a meal as it passes by. Any structure that allows a striper to hide and inhale a baitfish easily will work.