In early spring, small, resident striped bass are the first stripers to bite in Raritan Bay and in the Sandy Hook area. Anglers mostly dunk clams or sandworms to hook these young fish. But by the end of April or early May, menhaden start schooling the waters, and trophy-sized, migrating stripers soon follow, and feed on the bunker. Time to catch a wall hanger, and also time to switch baits. Bunker chunking, or fishing large pieces of fresh bunker, is the name of the game.

Here’s an outline of every aspect of bunker chunking for striped bass, from getting the bait to locating the stripers to catching them. By offering this outline, I’ll end up explaining small details that in the past have given me a slight advantage over the “other guys.”

Getting the Bunker Baits

There are three basic methods.

1. Buy it fresh from a local tackle shop
2. Snag it with weighted treble hooks
3. Castnet it – the preferred method

Once you have your bait, take some steps to keep it in prime condition.  We keep 50 or 60 alive and then ice down another 50 or 60 in saltwater ice.

Finding the Right Spot

Now that we have our bait, let’s find our spot.  We look for any kind of structure, such as rocks, mussel beds and drop offs, areas that typically hold fish, and then we anchor where the fish are in relation to the structure.  We start our chunking by throwing small pieces of bunker up tide.  We never throw heads over, because heads are the hook bait of choice for us when chunking for big fish.

Be sure to cut the bunker on an angle, from the top and back of the head to the vent on the bottom of the fish, making sure to keep the entrails inside.  We use 8/0 Gamakatsu Octopus circle hooks, sticking the point up through the bottom jaw and out through the top jaw.  This helps keep the bait from spinning when the current is strong. It also prevents other unnatural presentations, like flared gills if the head were hooked from the back or from the side that’s cut. We remove the tail from the other cut, and hook that bait in front of the dorsal fin, sticking the point through the meat side and up through the skin.

Rigging Up

We use 15 to 20 inches of 50-pound Gamma fluorocarbon leader snelled to the 8/0 Gamakatsu. If the current is strong, we use an even shorter leader to help keep the bait on the bottom, so it doesn’t spin. Big fish are on the bottom, so don’t hesitate to lay the chunk there. The leader is attached to a Spro 130-pound swivel.  We use a sinker-slide on the main line,