It’s not summertime any more, but don’t tell it to leaping schools of “bunker” passing through our town.
The narrows of the Mill River where it passes under the Chapel Street bridge was the scene the other day of frantic jumping as the bait fish — technically known as Atlantic menhaden and colloquially known as bunker or pogy — swam toward the harbor chased by predator fish snapping at them from below.
Click on the video to watch the bunker, which are silvery when they breach the surface into the sunlight, leap up to try to escape, and splash back down.
Often after these running attacks, fish parts are left floating, morsels that the attacking bass or blue fish have chosen not to eat.
Click here for a story from July 2012, when the bunker were spotted swirling further up the river where Lombard Street crosses between James and East.
The frantic, glittery fish were “schooling” in the thousands as they swam through the narrow spaces between the piers. That made them easy prey for the lunging predators, which prefer deeper water.
There were no fishermen in sight, although the nearby at Mill and Chapel streets, the New Haven Lobster Company, home base of Rich Gambardella, the city’s last active lobsterman, was open for business.
His sign said he was selling lobster and crabs. Not bunker.
