After working on tackle for the first half of the week I finally got caught up and was able to get out for both Thursday and Friday. On Thursday I got out with David O. David made a tackle purchase a few weeks back and we had been texting and emailing back and forth on tactics and techniques. David sent me a picture early last week of a 23 lber he had caught on a Bleed’n Shad paddletail trolling. He scheduled a instructional trip with me last Thursday and I finally was able to put a face with a name.
We left the dock at around 10 am. The bite had been later in the morning throught mid afternoon. I kinda figured we were going to have a good day. I had checked the barometric pressure earlier and it was hanging around 29.94. From my past experiences, low or falling barometric pressure means good fishing. Here is my philosophy concerning barometric pressure. “The higher the pressure, the lower and slower the fish are in the column (Deeper lathargic fish)”. “The lower the pressure, the higher and more active the fish are in the column (Topwater and sub-surface feeding)”. This rule applies to bait as well.
So off we went, heading to our first stop. As we got to the mouth of the creek we marked active fish feeding on balls of threadfin. They were up in the water column, with most of the feeders and bait around the 30ft mark in depth. Perfect for leadcore and downriggers. We put out our leadcore and downriggers and started making passed through the feeding fish. I watched the graph and saw big groups of fish feeding and cutting through the bait balls. I thought it would be cool to get a camera down there and watch the stripers slicing through the bait balls and bigger fish below picking up the scrapes. With feeding fish that high in the column, it wasn’t long till we had our first fish. It was a nice fat 12 lber on the downrigger. We were running big shad head swim baits on the leadcore and monster bucktails on the downriggers. I generally use my downriggers to pull baits deeper in the water column to target the larger stripers. Fishing the river channel is the perfect spot to use this technique because of the lack of structure (no trees). It worked well for us. We marked and caught feeding fish at every stop. They were just very active during this period.
We basically left them biting as I had to get back to work. I attributed the good day to the passing weather disturbance we had. It had rained earlier in the morning before light and the wind kicked up out of the NW and skies were kind of overcast the whole time we were fishing. David and I had a great time and we pretty much mopped up on em. Our best baits were the big Cast Away Shad Head jig in the ounce and a half size, the chartreuse Monster bucktail in the 1 ounce size and we used a big 2 and a half ounce chartreuse chipmunk with a 5 inch paddletail.
Here’s the videos from Thursday.



Friday I was back at it with Keith. Keith is one our Pastor’s right here in Cumming. He wanted to learn a little more about trolling so he and his father-in-law could get out on their own and do a little trolling. We got to the water at around 10 am and quickly found out what a difference a day makes. Everywhere we searched the fish were either very very scattered or down in the trees. They were not in an eating mood. Keith and I searched and trolled and troller and searched for two hours without putting a fish in the boat. We picked up a big magnum spot down by the dam which brightened our spirits for a few minutes. We made a quick shot back up north a mile or two and started searching humps. Sometimes in the summer when stripers are deep, they will cruise the humps and valleys in search of bait. I finally found a small group of fish in a valley that was feeding on a school of bait. We ran the baits over the feeding fish and we were able to pick off a fish on the leadcore with a big chartreuse swimbait. We worked the fish for the next half hour and picked up one more on the leadcore before the fish scattered. As much as we worked the fish we found, we had very little action to show for it. I had to get back to work so we called it a day with 2 stripers on leadcore and 1 big spot. I got a little video of Keith and his fish.