Stripers On The Run
Cold weather means good striper fishing and there are a variety of ways to catch them in the winter. These tips will point you in the right direction where you fish.
After Santee Cooper Lake was dammed in the 1940s, stripers trapped upstream of the dam became landlocked. From that, biologists discovered striped bass could survive and even thrive in freshwater. Since then, they have been stocked in most suitable lakes.
Stripers grow big and fight hard. They are fun to catch but it takes skills to hook them consistently. On lakes through-out the nation, fishermen and especially striper guides have developed specific techniques for catching fish. Winter is a good time to use these methods to catch them.
Planer Boards
Jim Farmer (http://castawaybaits.com) developed a planer board that met his needs and sells it. He wanted a board that did not interfere with the fight when a fish was hooked, was reversible so it could be changed to either side of the boat and was highly visible.
“Planer boards allow you to get bait out from the boat in a controlled method,“ Jim said. You can put up to ten boards trailing baits out to cover an area over 100 feet wide as you troll. This allows you to cover a lot of water.
You can troll live bait or artificials. Jim says he sets the bait to follow the board from three feet behind it to the length behind the board that is almost as deep as the water you are trolling. If the line is longer than the depth of the water, you are more likely to get hung up while trolling.
Artificials that work best are lures that do not pull a lot on the boat and possibly trip it. Bucktails and shallow running plugs like jerkbaits work well. If you need to get your bait down deep, other methods work better.
When you get a bite the board trips and slides easily on the line, much like a slip bobber. A stopper placed a couple feet above the hook stops the board from interfering with the hook and fish.
When trolling shorelines of rivers and lakes put a couple of boards on the bank side of the boat. One should be running a bait in just a couple of feet of water, another a little further out. When you get to the end of a section of bank holding fish you can turn the boat, reverse the boards and go back down the productive area.
Planer boards also allow you to troll very slowly, important with live bait. Moving at one mile per hour will keep the boards at their maximum spread and not kill the bait like moving faster will.
Shallow Trolling
Captain Dave Willard (http://crockettrocketstriperfishing.com/) has guided for stripers for many years. He says big stripers love cold water and often get right on the bank in a couple feet of water this time of year. He uses either planer boards or flat lines live bait to reach those fish without spooking them.
Good electronics are critical for finding stripers year-round. In the winter Dave constantly watches his electronics. If he is finding all the fish deep he fishes for them. But if fish, especially big one, are not showing up deep he goes to points and banks and trolls.
With his boat in eight to ten feet of water, he flatlines a lively baitfish and maneuvers the boat around points and along banks so the bait trails in the shallows. A planer board will let you keep your boat further from the bank, especially important on a gently sloping bank, but may spook very shallow fish.
When in eight to ten feet of water he likes to flatline a live bait behind the boat, too, especially when fish are showing up under the boat. Nose hooking the bait and trolling it slowly with your trolling motor lets the bait move around and does not kill it.
The old saying “big baits for big fish” usually applies to striper fishing but there are exceptions. He does have a big baitfish native to the waters he is fishing behind the boat. Big bait like blueback herring, gizzard shad, skipjack herring and others all work. But he will also try a small bait like a live threadfin shad to see if the big fish want a small bite to eat. He tries to “match the hatch” and offer the fish the size food they are eating.
Shallow trolling also works when the stripers are suspended over deep water. This time of year it is not unusual to see the fish suspended down a few feet from the surface even when the bottom is 100 feet deep. Freelining a live bait with no weight or a very small sinker to get it down a few feet deeper works on these fish.
Captain Dave says you may have to cover a lot of water to find feeding fish, but when you do you can catch several. When you catch one go back over the same area until you don’t get any bites.
Deep Trolling
When stripers are deep it can be hard to get a bait down to them and present it in a way to get them to hit. You can sit on top of them and jig a spoon or drop a live bait to them, but you may spook them, and you don’t cover much water doing this to find stripers that are open water, nomadic fish.
Captain Mack Farr (http://www.captmacks.com) likes deep trolling for them. Two methods let you get your bait down to the level they are holding and allows you to cover a lot of water. Leadcore line on your reel requires less equipment and is simpler, but downriggers also work.
Spool up a heavy saltwater reel with leadcore line. It comes in 15, 18, 27, 36 and 45-pound test. For striper fishing in lakes and rivers, 27 pound is a good choice. The line is nylon coated for strength and the lead core makes it go down deep.
Leadcore line is color coded, with a change of color every 30 feet, so you can know exactly how much line you have out. Captain Mack ties a 30-foot 15-pound test fluorocarbon leader to the leadcore. A lighter leader will break if you get hung, keeping you from losing the more expensive leadcore, and is less likely to spook the fish.
You must find the depth the bait and stripers are holding with your electronics. You need to troll your bait just over the fish since stripers will come up a little to take a bait but seldom go down to it.
A depth of 30 feet is fairly common this time of year, and balls of baitfish are critical. Watch for loons diving on bait to find the right area then use your electronics to locate the specific area and depth. You can experiment with different weights of line and baits to find the depth your rig runs. Captain Mack says a good rule of thumb is letting out 300 feet of line, nine colors plus your leader, with a one-ounce bucktail tipped with a baitfish, will get the bait down about 30 feet when trolled at two miles per hour.
A big bucktail with a live or dead five to six-inch baitfish is Captain Mack’s choice of baits. You can troll crankbaits, too, and they will dive a little deeper, or a jerkbait type plug to run a little less deep but with more flash and action.
Downriggers are heavy weighs that are lowered on a cable. The weight has clip to hold your line and releases when fish hits. You can troll a variety of baits behind the downrigger ball and it will keep them at an exact depth.
Electric wenches on downriggers help you get the cable up quickly while fighting a fish but they are more expensive than hand cranked ones. If you have several downriggers out you take a chance on the striper tangling in the cables while fighting it, even with electric wenches.
Casting
Bill Carey (http://www.striperexpress.com/) guides for stripers but uses only artificial baits, and casting them is his preferred method of fishing. His go-to bait is a chartreuse or white one half to one-ounce Road Runner underspin with a nine-inch white worm trailer. He says this is his big fish bait. Bill also casts 5.5-inch Zoom Flukes and four-inch Sassy Shad plastics on one half to one-ounce jig heads.
He runs structure like ditches, creek channels, humps and main lake points. The best ones are shallow areas that drop quickly into deep water. Stripers will push baitfish up on these kinds of places and hem them up to feed.
Find that kind of structure and make long casts across it, keeping your boat out in deep water and casting up to the shallow areas. Reel at different speeds to control the depth your bait is running. Stripers may want your bait just under the surface all the way down to the bottom, to try all different depths until they show you what they want.
Bill says big stripers are much like big bucks, they are loners. Big ones might run in a small group of two or three, but they are not usually in big schools. When you catch one big one, make repeated casts to the same area.
Always watch for birds diving and surface activity. Even in the winter, keep a big pencil popper tied on and cast it to any activity you see. Also try it over the structure, even if you don’t see active fish.
These methods will help you catch stripers this time of year.
Sidebar:
When the water warms stripers tend to go deep, holding just above the thermocline under baitfish where there is enough oxygen and the water is cool. You need good electronics to locate the bait and stripers. Trolling bucktails a few feet above the depth the fish are holding will get them to hit. Trolling faster in warmer water is more likely to get bites.
Getting a bait down deep and trolling it fast means either leadcore line or downriggers. Both allow you to troll faster without losing depth control. The fish are likely to be holding over deep humps and creek channels in hot weather so concentrate on those areas and find bait and stripers on your electronics.
Line twist is a problem when you troll fast. A good barrel swivel in front of your bait will help prevent it. Also make sure your bait is not twirling in the water by dropping it over the side at the speed you are trolling and watching it.
Tipping your bucktail with a live or dead baitfish always helps get bites but can cause more trouble with line twist. Nose hook the baitfish and be careful to put it on straight, so it does not twist.