Jigging a parachute jig and pork rind on 150 feet of wire line resulted in this fine spring striper. Photo by Milt Rosko.

My mom's lilacs were in full bloom and there was a light offshore breeze that resulted in a placid ocean. A clear sky and bright sun pushed the mercury into the mid-60s. Collectively, it was just a perfect spring day. And it is a day I vividly remember, for as a 17-year-old lad, I was leisurely trolling 100 yards off the beach, where gentle rollers tumbled onto the sand.

The pair of Calcutta cane rods in the rod holders thumped with a steady rhythm, a telltale sign that the Drone spoon and big wooden Russo subsurface swimming plugs were running properly, each sent to work deep with a pair of trolling sinkers.

I had been up before dawn, so the movement of the boat and the warmth of the sun had me feeling drowsy, with my head weaving and bobbing. Suddenly, the screaming ratchet of a Penn Surfmaster reel brought me back to alertness, as line peeled from the spool. It was a struggle just getting the rod out of the holder. After what seemed like an eternity, the striper on the other end finally slowed down.

I lifted back slowly and applied some pressure, but the striper was having no part of giving in. It took off on another line consuming run. Steady pressure eventually prevailed, and the big fish was alongside, gaffed and brought aboard with the Drone spoon clenched in its jaw. It was the biggest fish I'd ever seen, let alone caught. The shapely, fat striper weighed 42 1/2 pounds back at dockside, one of four I landed that day, fully 60 years ago!

While many anglers will watch the weather reports, look at tide charts and check the moon stage in anticipation of the annual spring striper run, I've found the most reliable indicator that it's time to get out the striper gear is when the lilacs bloom. Quite unscientific, to be sure, but for all of these many years it's worked for me, so I'm not about to stop believing.

Each spring, I'm surprised that so few anglers realize that spring striper fishing differs markedly from the fall fishery. In the fall, myriad schools of forage exit bays, rivers and estuaries, including mullet, bay anchovies, peanut bunker, spearing, herring and shad, to mention but a few. Most of these baitfish school on the surface as they migrate to winter quarters. During this time, there is great visual surface activity with stripers raiding the schools from below as gulls, terns and gannets attack from above.

Quite the contrary, during the spring, the ocean most often is peaceful, with nary a sign of small forage. Instead, adult forage species move northward, and in turn return to bays and rivers, where they spawn, with the fry providing the exciting surface action you'll be experiencing in the fall.