330 
Fishery Bulletin 107(3) 
Figure 1 
(A) Spawning areas and northern range of U.S. Atlantic coast striped bass ( Morone 
saxatilis ), the latter of which represents the largest scale by which recaptures were 
grouped (Massachusetts, MA). The box delineates the Great Marsh (GM). Asterisks 
show major spawning areas. (B) The Great Marsh in northern Massachusetts consists 
of the Merrimack, Parker, Rowley, Ipswich, and Essex river estuaries and represents 
the smaller scale by which recaptures were grouped. The arrangement of estuaries in 
the Great Marsh served as the basis for random model 2 (RM-2). 
acteristics of migrants are known, regional patterns of 
coastal migration related to the use of specific summer 
areas by individual fish have not been identified. 
Migratory fish that are present in non-natal estuar- 
ies during the nonbreeding (summer, fall) and nonover- 
wintering seasons are most likely feeding. Although the 
migratory stock of striped bass is widely distributed 
throughout New England in summer, the specific feed- 
ing areas for individual fish are not known. Migratory 
striped bass can stay and forage in a specific estu- 
ary that they encounter during migration or they may 
continue to move along, feeding in multiple estuaries 
for short periods. They also may either return to the 
site where they spent the previous summer or choose 
a different site each year from the many estuaries 
they encounter. We tested whether striped bass found 
in Massachusetts estuaries in summer migrated, how 
long they stayed in the non-natal estuaries where they 
were tagged, whether observed spatial patterns differed 
from the predictions of random models, whether fish 
returned to the same area over multiple years, and 
whether fishing effort alone could explain the recapture 
pattern. 
Materials and methods 
From June 1999 through November 2000, 1939 striped 
bass (3-5 yr old, predominately the 1996 year class) 
were tagged with internal anchor tags. All fish (mean 
total length [TL] = 442 mm, standard error [SE]=7.0 mm; 
mean wet weight=0.91 kg, SE = 0.05 kg) were caught, 
tagged, and immediately released along the Massachu- 
setts coast, excluding Cape Cod (Fig. 1A). The specific 
estuary in which fish were tagged and released, date 
of tagging, total length, wet weight, and tag number of 
fish were recorded. Several tagging (Parker, Rowley, and 
Essex river estuaries) and recapture sites (Merrimack 
and Ipswich river estuaries; Fig. IB) are part of the 
Great Marsh barrier beach dune and salt marsh estuary 
that includes 10,117 ha of contiguous salt marsh on the 
North Shore of Massachusetts. 
In 1999-2007, anglers voluntarily returned tags with 
recapture data to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 
(USFWS) Cooperative Striped Bass Tagging Program. 
These recapture data included tag number, recapture 
date, recapture location (state, town), and approximate 
size of fish. Because the anchor tag was removed as 
