Poplar Creek Stripers

 

I decided to make an exploratory trip this evening to see if the rockfish were pushing minnows up on the shallow flats up the clinch turning into a subsequent surface bite.  I called on my comrades Ethan and Ian to check it out with me.  We launched at Food City and ran up to Dead Mans cove to get bait - one or two throws and we were in business. We graphed a couple of spots along the way heading up stream, but didn't find any fish.  I thought that it might be worth a look at the mouth of Poplar Creek since its always a good idea to check major thoroughfares (areas where moving baitfish have the possibility of getting corralled).  We stopped outside the mouth of Poplar Creek and the first drop resulted in a beast.  From then on it was on like Donkey Kong! We boated several nice fish all in the 10 to 15 pound range, the best being Ian's. He really mopped up tonight - I think he had 5 by himself.

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