Stripers & New Friends

Stuart Row brought a friend of his along today as we headed out and attempted to get him hooked up with a nice striper, a fish he had never caught before. Dave is quite the accomplished fly fisherman, but apparently has done much lake fishing for stripers. We started at the barge tie up on the southwest side of Long Island. Stuart caught a pair of nice rockfish right off the bat, and missed another - but then the bite shut down.  We moved up to the top of the island to try the southern most drop off near the Osprey nest, but no stripers were showing up on the graph.  Earlier, when we were getting bait, I got a nice batch of threadfins that I just could stand to throw out, and man am I ever glad I didn't.  Since we were up near the Osprey nest I decided to rig up my Stradic 3000/7' St. Croix rig with a live bait Carolina rig - 1st pitch laid a perfect 3" yellow tail up on the shallow flat next to the big stump that sits at the base of the Osprey next and no sooner had it entered the water and wham! a beautiful 4.5# smallmouth crushed it.  It was a fantastic fight on that lighter tackle.  I caught another smaller smallmouth (~1.5#) on the very next cast. We then moved down around the east side of the island and Dave finally got to experience the ferocious fight of a rockfish.

Dualin' Stripers

A first for Dave

4.5# Bronzeback

Stripers and Storms with the Rows

Stuart Row and his brother Rob and his son went with me up to Long Island this afternoon to see if we could catch a striper.  The bite has cooled off considerably since a couple of days ago.  We started near the barge tie up and found a few fish on the graph, missed a fish or two right away but didn't boat anything.  Next we went up to the top side of the island and fished the west drop off.  Rob hooked up with a nice 14# rockfish as shown in the picture.  At about 4:00 p.m. Luke hooked up with us and we ran and picked him up at the Windy Hill ramp.  shortly after we picked up Luke a pretty nasty storm blew up and it started lightening - I think the Row's saw more lightening than they care too and we ended up running them back to the boat launch for the end of their trip.  Good ole Luke and I decided to take our chances and see if we could find some more fish. We got another batch of bait in the Center Farm cove and as I was throwing the 10' Cracker in 19' of water I caught a 5# largemouth.  We went back up to the west side of Long Island and I ended up catching a 20# blue cat. If you notice I'm soaking wet in the picture, that's because when I got the cat in it started flippin' around on the deck and knocked my Costas in the water and I had to dive in to save them. It was a real clown show for the boats fishing the island.                                          

More Long Island Striper Mania

Scott, Ethan, Ian, and I went back to Long Island again tonight for some more striper action.  We caught several nice fish again - not quite the bite as the night before but the fish were definitely there. The surface water temperature is in the low 80s. Here is Scott with a nice 14# rockfish.

Stripers

Scott, Ethan, Ian, Dylan Holt, and I went rockfishing up around Long Island. We caught several in the 8 to 15 pound range on nice gizzards.

Long Island Stripers

Ethan, Ian, Dylan Holt and i went up to Long Island to see if the rockfish had moved in yet. We fished the southwest side near the barge tie up and concentrated on the drop off into the channel as it runs NNW. We caught several nice stripers in the 10 to 15 lb range.

Watts Bar Crappie

Scott, Ethan, Ian, and I went crappie fishing on Watts Bar today. We launched out of Bell Cove and fished Angler's Cove. We fished with grubs (smoke, shad, and chartreuse), with floats about 3 to 4' deep. The map below shows where we caught the crappie in the order of our progression. We caught a couple of keepers off spots #1 and #2 within the first few minutes of starting the day. Spot #3 was the real hot spot of the day - we probably caught 5 or 6 keepers of the pylons of this dock. It has great depth (~6') and numerous double pylons, so it's like a monstrous stake bed. Spot #4 was a downed tree that held a few fish and spot #5 marks where Scott caught the big fish of the day (on a shad rap) trolling across the open water heading back out of the cove. Spot #6 is the one to remember, it is about 10 new bamboo brush piles that someone placed about 25 yards from the dock shown in the map below. We caught a few crappie here, but when the lake is up 3 - 5' these will not be visible but will definitely be worth checking out for bass and crappie. Over all we kept 11 crappie, and fried them up this evening.

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

Springtime White Bass

I went up the Emory River this afternoon to check and see if the white bass were making their spring run up the river to spawn. I started about 1:00 p.m. and drove the boat as far as I could up the river to the shoals (~1 mile up from the launch at Flour Mill Flats). I used 1/8 ounce lead head with a mister twister chartreuse grub double rigged. I hit several spots picking up one white bass every now and then, but never finding good numbers of fish stacked up in one area. By 2:30 p.m. I had 10, but still couldn't find any concentrations of fish. I figured they just weren't up the river in large numbers yet and was considering loading up and heading down to Watts Bar to crappie fish. As I was firing up and heading down river to the ramp, I saw one more spot I thought I would give a try - it was a stretch of sandy shoreline with down timber. I picked up a nice fish right away, then another, then another, before I knew it I had 30 fish off two down trees in 20' of shoreline. The boat was in about 10' of water and I was casting all the way up to the bank slowly bringing it back. The graph was showing a pretty sharp drop off from ~4.5' to 10' with a great concentration of fish on the drop. Over the next two hours I proceeded to catch fish pretty much constantly, many two at a time. Many of the fish were males, discharging sperm all over my boat, and the others were females stuffed with eggs - its obvious these fish are in the height of their spawn.  I kept the best 4 white bass (14 - 16") for our next fish fry. Kimberly had just gotten home from a spring break cruise with Alex's family so I had to leave earlier than I normally would but I wound up with at total of 101 white bass for the day. I guess they have decided to make their spring run...