Its habitat reaches from the St. Lawrence River in Canada to the St. Johns River in Florida, and from the Swannee River in western Florida to Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, and the open waters of the Atlantic. The migratory behavior of coastal striped bass is more complex than that of most other anadromous fish, which spend most of their adult lives in the ocean but migrate up rivers and streams to spawn. Their seasonal movements depend on their age, sex, degree of maturity and the river in which they were born.
Striped bass appear to be light green, olive, steel blue, brown or black.
They earn their name from the seven or eight continuous stripes that mark their silvery sides, extending from the gills to the tail. Their undersides are usually white or silver, with a brassy iridescence. The recent status of the striped bass fishery in the Chesapeake Bay tells a relative success story, after more than 10 years of steep decline. Commercial landings in Maryland and Virginia portions of the Bay generally increased from the early 1930s, culminating in a record commercial catch in 1973 of 14.7 million pounds. Thereafter the striper harvest fell steadily to 1.7 million pounds by 1983.