Well, this morning was interesting. I was suppose to meet a couple of friends at the ramp this morning to go out in their boat and try a little trolling. I hadn’t heard from them by 9 am so I decided to drive on down to the lake and wait for the call. As I pulled up to the ramp I saw a small school of larger stripers just having a blast busting bait on top; And right out in front of the ramp no less! I jumped out of the truck and grabbed the rod I had in the back. I had a bucktail tied on and thought maybe I could catch one on my spinning gear from the dock. By the time I got the rod out and headed to the dock, they were moving back out. I got to the dock and just couldn’t get that 1/2 ounce bucktail out far enough to get at the school. None the less, it was a great site to see the stripers up on top. My buddy pulled up in his boat to pick me up and said they had just caught a nice 15 pounder on a freelined herring straight out the back. That was another good sign. Catching fish on freelines means that planer boards will probably work also. We set out to try some trolling and hit a few spots where I’d been catching them on leadcore and downriggers. We tied up a couple of bucktail trollers and tried a few areas that held fish down deep. We had 1 taker that came unbuttoned. He hit the Blueback troller hard and peeled about 50 feet and let go. We checked a few other areas and went back to where they had caught the 15 pounder earlier. The fish had moved on. After a couple of hours of looking and trolling the leadcore I headed back to the house. It sounds to me like there was an early bite and the leadcore trolling has slowed a bit. The water temp was 81-82. I don’t expect those temps to hold much longer with a stronger front coming through in a couple of days. Hopefully by late next week, there will be even more topwater and cooler water temps.