The 2021 striped bass season is days away. Please check back here weekly for fishing reports and tips and tricks for a successful fishing season. Early season stripers can be hard to find because the water temps are on the colder side the stripers won’t be very active. They will be found feeding mainly in the back bays, mud flats and the rivers that run into the bays. When choosing one of those three locations you want to mainly focus on the water temps in those locations. Back by the Old Fish Factory (The Stink House) marker 126 has a water quality station attached to it where you can water temps every 15 minutes. Here’s the link https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=jctn4. This data can be very helpful to decided where to fish. As I write this the water temps there is 40 degrees, knowing this information I would focus my attention to fishing the rivers and shallow mud flats by these rivers where the water might be a few degrees warmer. The water will be warmest in the bay at low tide and just as the tide states to come in. When looking at the data from the marker it shows that the temperature in the bay fluctuated 2-3 degrees from low to high tide. This is very important because the closer the water is to 50 degrees the more active the fish will be and anything over 50 degrees is defiantly preferring to help increase your chance of catching. With these temperature swings the window to find feeding fish can only be a couple of hours. As the season unfolds, I will be checking the reports of all tackle shops from seaside to AC to give the most accurate reports.