Silver Flashes in Shallow Water: Striped Bass on the Feed

The amazing striped bass

On a quiet morning on the flats of Long Island, we witnessed a remarkable and rarely documented striped bass feeding behavior known as "flashing", when a fish turns sideways in shallow water, exposing its silver flanks as it scoops bait along with sand off the bottom. As far as I know, this specific behavior has never been documented in such visual detail before.

Since the bass ignored all our presentations, we started to speculate about what they were actually feeding on, but we couldn’t see any visible bait in the water. So the next morning, we returned to the same flat at low tide and began scooping up sand by hand. Sure enough, we found the answer, sand eels, buried just beneath the surface.

What was truly remarkable was to see that the bass chose to ignore the large, visible, and abundant bait balls of sand eels. Instead, they carefully picked off individual eels buried in the sand, one at a time.

It was very cool to watch them use this incredibly efficient feeding method, either waiting for the current to reveal the buried eels or actively detecting and scooping them from beneath the sand.

The bass would take mouthfuls of sand, then expel it through their gills, sifting out the prey in the process.

Some were still alive, others already dead, but all hidden from sight the day before.

The following short video reel was posted on Instagram and it shows the striped bass in action during this feeding behavior which lasted the entire tide. I plan on making a full video of this cool action in the near future so keep an eye for an update.

Tight lines and hope you find some bass on the flats, sight fishing is the best!

Sergio

Capturing this behavior on video and stills was an extraordinary experience, something rarely recorded.