Hickory Sunday

Went to hickory Sunday to try a little striper fishing. Fished hard for about 4 hours and never got a bite. Buddy was also fishing there and fished most of the day for two small ones. Bite was not there, but the lake looked the best of any lake I have been on in a month. Main lake looked great. Coves were a little muddy or stained, but not too bad. Was nice to see a lake almost back to normal. Of course until we get the heavy rain Wednesday. Water temp was about 47 and the coves were full of shad. Also marked tons of fish. Wish I had brought my crappie stuff to give them a try.

The stripers have been remarkably hard for me to catch this year, and alot of others have had the same issue. We don't know what's going on but hickory is no longer the striper lake it used to be. Your time would be better spent on Rhodhiss.

I haven’t fished hickory much in the past few years but I think we have caught two the last three trips. Three years ago we were catching 4 or 5 nice ones per trip.

So you've noticed the slowdown as well... people have floated two different views, that either the state has slowed down on striper stocking, or that the white perch have overpopulated and destroyed much of the shad population, thus hurting the stripers. I don't know which one is true, but I have been killing white perch in large quantities on hickory, since so few people fish for them and they appear to be mostly stunted now.

But I still mark huge schools of shad. Rinks is slam full right now, but you are right on the perch. You can easily catch over 100 and may have 10 or so really nice ones. I took a buddy and his two kids about a year ago and we kept over 130 that day. He wanted to have a big fish fry so we hooked him up. lol. Tillery is getting the same way. Tons of perch but small now.

Well I guess we'll never know what went wrong with the stripers over the past two years, but those perch are a menace now. They were so thick in rink damn that we were catching them on plain gold hooks. We are frying as many as we can but that will never put a dent in their population.