After watching too many spawning-size striped bass gaffed in Raritan Bay during the unprecedented summer bite there in 2014, I wasn't too confident about whether the Hudson River stock would once again provide us with striper fishng much better than most other coastal states. Fortunately, with N.Y. still protecting those bass due to concerns over PCB contamination, the Hudson linesiders came through for us with flying colors. The Raritan Bay spring fishery didn't get off to a good start as there were few early schoolies to be caught clamming in the back of the bay -- but an abundance of bunkers eventually led to fine action with larger bass. When I fished the bay along with Nellie Greer of Bethlehem Pa. on Chuck Many's Ty Man out of Gateway Marina in Highlands on May 4 we ended up with a release total of 50 stripers up to a 34-pounder plus two of the just-arriving bluefish.  Those blues complicated the striper fishing, and when we fished the bay two weeks later it was a problem to release only 13 bass among the hordes of choppers from Ty Man. The blues were then a problem for all in the Manhattan Cup on May 15, though I was fortunate to release stripers of 32 and 38 1/2 inches fork length while fishing aboard Tom Adami's Just Enough from Great Kills in a contest where I'd rarely had any luck with stripers on the boats I was assigned to over the years. The Hudson River came through on my birthday trip despite a forecast of rain and northeast winds. Many ran up there on June 1 and quickly marked fish that we anchored on to chunk bunkers. The Ty Man total for Many, Greer, Greg Prestosh from Pa., and I was 27 stripers up to 28 pounds with only seven blues. While there was flooding in Newark, we never had more than drizzle a few miles away. The biggest surprise of the early summer was the discovery of a body of exceptionally large stripers off the mouth of the bay. Capt. Vinnie Vetere, of Katfish Charters in Great Kills, was one of the first to discover those bass that provided him with his first 60-pounder while another 60 was boated and several anglers also broke into the 50-pound club by being at the right spot when those bass turned on to live bunkers briefly around dusk. During the one evening I fished there with Ty Man, Many weighed and released a 44-pounder for me before reeling in his 43-pounder -- and then it was over. Though the summer striped bass fishery in Raritan Bay wasn't up to the previous year's standards, Many always managed at least schoolies -- and usually some large bass as the Hudson River stock bailed us out after another spotty ocean fishery on bunker schools with the coastal migrants.  The fall fishery started off in mid-October with big bass under bunker schools along the Shore such as we had wished for in the spring when it was usually lots of bunkers but few bass. Many anglers had their best striper days ever as those coastal migrants fattened up for their long journey to spawning grounds in Delaware and Chesapeake bays -- often hitting popping and swimming plugs or shad lures as well as live bunkers. That didn't mean the Hudson River stock wasn't also storing up fat for the winter. There was some great action on live bunkers in the back of Raritan Bay all the way back to the Outerbridge Crossing where one afternoon there were bunkers flipping from one side to the other and every one snagged was quickly inhaled by a large bass. That set up fishing for the Hi-Mar Striper Club 40-hour Tournament on Oct. 24-25 when I joined Many and his crew (Greer, Dave Donahue of Readington, and Matt Calabria from Hazlet) on Ty Man to fish both the river and bay to win with a two-bass total of 71.6 pounds -- both of which were released after the weigh-in. On Nov. 5-6, the same crew stayed in the Hudson to fish the Staten Island Big Bass Shootout where we released 175 stripers up to the winning 31 1/4-pounder that was also released. It took some time for the school striper run to develop. On Nov. 18, Capt. Hans Kaspersetz and I ran down the beach with Sheri Berri from Baker's Marina on the Bay in Highlands after a northeaster only to find not a thing for Joe Blaze and Dave Cheli from Brielle before a call from the Sea Hunter out of Atlantic Highlands got us into a massive showing of birds diving over stripers up to 31 inches feeding on peanut bunkers off Atlantic Beach. Those fish didn't get to the Shore quickly, and we were worried that the lack of sand eels would result in them moving on. Fortunately, the peanuts held them -- and swim shads became the hot fall lure. Bluefish were also abundant during the schoolie casting, and I got a big surprise on Dec. 5 when a 26-inch, 7-pound long-out-of-season fluke hit my Tsunami shad off Ocean County. Instead of leaving quickly, big blues got even more aggressive as sea herring showed up in December. Casting pencil poppers to jumbo blues off Sandy Hook on December 12 with Mark Roy on his Century 31 from Raritan Marina was a rare thrill. Though those fish seemed to disappear, there was an even more unusual end to the year when surfcasters got into a blitz of both stripers and big blues in Ocean County after Christmas. I'll have another look back at 2015 next Friday.