Well, it didn’t take too long to get our striped bass contest off to a good start. Early this morning at the crack of dawn John Munno, our past 2006 contest winner, hit the waters of the Hudson River in the vicinity of the Rip Van Winkle Bridge and discovered that yes, indeed, the stripers are here. Using herring as bait over a rock-gravel bottom in about 20 feet of water he landed a 34 incher, lost a couple of others that were hooked and then boated the first contest entry of 2010 – a 38 ½ inch beauty. Now, John knows, just as well as we here at the River Basin Sports shop do, that there is no way this fish has a prayer of finishing in the money but it was his first striper outing of 2010 and - the first contest entry of the year is always a premiere accomplishment here. Since it was the first fish to be entered we also threw it on the shop scale and saw it tip the needle at 21 lbs 13 ounces. Fishing action in the Catskill – Stockport area of the river continues to be fair to good. Slightly further south, around Germantown, decent action is also reported. We received a report from the Castleton T-way bridge area of good action there over the weekend with fish up into the low 30 inch mark. And even up in the Albany-Troy area there is decent action with a few stripers reported to be running up to around the 3 foot size although one report from there is that the herring have become a little bit spotty. Our Striped Bass Contest sign-ups concluded with a RECORD number of registrants – 604. As our participants are probably aware - we are paying back 100% of the entry monies as prizes 1 through 6 to the entrants bringing in the top six fish (length). That means that at least $9,060 will go to the winners. Read the entire article here.