I just started striper fishing Clarke Hill Lake. Today made my 3rd time targeting these fish. I'm eager to learn what I can while the crappie aint doing much on my home lake (Russell) right now. Tactics I've been using is fishing the deeper holes and slow trowing downlines with live herring on them. First trip I got lucky and landed one weighing 19 lbs
. Me and my son fish together and the first two times I went atleast one of us has had an opportunity for a pretty big fish. Problem is the crappy equipment (not crappie
) we have been using trying to catch these fish. I've been working pretty hard and fast getting geared up with a couple outfits apiece to solve some of our problems with equipment or just plain too undersized equipment. Now I'm looking to pick up a few striper rods for heavier fish and we'll be set.
Looks like for now, the best bites we're getting is 4-8' off the bottom, and as mentioned, a very slow troll. Problem is we're only catching very few fish.
This morning I went solo since my son was working and I was off
. I went back to the hole we've both caught a decent fish at. While slow trolling I marked about a dozen (what looked like) big fish on the graph. Even had one come up and look at the bait and turn deep again. No bites in the holes so I moved to another area. In this spot the water was generally 25' but then I trolled over a hole where the water dropped another 10' and started marking fish. Started getting bit about 8' off the bottom. Could see the fish on the finder come up to the baits and the rods go back down. That was pretty cool!
Anyway, these were small fish (1-2 lbs trying to swallow large herring
) but still glad to be catching SOMETHING. (It surprised me how even the smaller fish can put up such a fight too.) A friend here on crappie.com told me to save a few small ones and fry the fillets like you would crappie after removing the red meat and they'd suprise me so I kept the 7 small fish I caught. During thge morning I pulled a 5 lber. or so to the top and when I reached for the net that fish made a run and off he came right beside the boat. And you guess it, had one fish to bury the rod down into the water and under the boat and before I could get it out of the rod holder the crappy baitcasting reel I was using (with one tooth broke off the main gear) hung up, locked the drag and that was over too.
Well, all water under the bridge. Tomorrow is a new day with better equipment ready to go and the sorry stuff throwed on a shelf now.
I do have one question though....maybe two:
. My biggest question is, is there any advice on how you guys go about locating the fish? Do you motor around idling looking for fish on the graph or what? Do you just scout water before or after fishing looking for holes to fish in on your next trip or do you do all that when fishing by just using the trolling motor?
And my last question is (for now anyways
) am I missing a different style of fishing that I should be trying on these fish that I aint using? Right now all I'm doing is pulling downlines with a 1 & 1/2 oz. sinker on them keeping the bait fairly close to the bottom. I'm bumping the trolling motor on low speed just enough to keep the boat "drifting" very slow. Any help or advice would be appreciated.