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Bunkers -- live, cut or whole -- and their imitations, the bunker spoons, are natural choices for striped bass right now as bunkers are all over Raritan Bay, and on the grounds from Monmouth Beach to the point of Sandy Hook.

By JOHN GEISER
CORRESPONDENT

Striped bass have definite, but unpredictable, preferences in artificials at times, and lately, on the Shrewsbury Rocks, that choice has been the bunker spoon.

Capts. Vern Bryan III and Scott Kulaszewski, Promises Kept, Belmar, found it that way the other day with the party of Ken Mansfield, Lacey; Ken Price, Toms River; and Larry Akins, Bradley Beach, when they hit the bass on the Rocks.

"They were all big fish -- 18 pounds on up to 32 pounds," Bryan said. "You could read them in 25 to 28 feet of water -- solid bass up to within 15 feet of the surface, but they wouldn't hit a jig."

Bunker spoons were another story. The fish nailed the spoons as soon as the metal was trolled near the fish.

"We fished two spoons," Bryan said. "We tried three, but it was too much. We started out at 8 a.m., and were limited out by 10. It was just one bass after another. We were throwing back 18- to 20-pound bass."

Even in the spoons, the fish had a preference. Chartreuse spoons went untouched, but white spoons, with or without a red or black dot, were hit immediately.

While their heaviest bass was a 32-pounder, there were bigger fish there. They had one fish that appeared to be in the 40-pound-or-over bracket throw the spoon only 15 feet from the transom.

Bryan and Kulaszewski found that they had to get the spoons deeper with wire to avoid bluefish. They used 40-pound wire with 10-foot, 50-pound monofilament leaders.

When they cleaned some of the fish, they found they had been feeding on bunkers and small porgies.