I took a family fishing this morning that wanted to catch a mess of stripers. I don't guide for them very often because their preferred bait - live shad - can be hard to come by and I'm usually busy with crappie trips. But I don't mind thinning them out once in a while.

They didn't act like they wanted to get serious early. We missed several light biters and only landed two in the first hour and a half of fishing. But about 8:30 we found a school that was feeding and caught the rest of our limit in about 45-minutes.

As long as stripers have plenty of shad to eat and crappie have plenty of cover to hide in, I don't think stripers really do very much damage to the crappie population but here's 15 that won't be eatin' any more crappie for sure!


I'll find out in the morning how appreciative the crappie are.