I fished yesterday afternoon, Thursday the 19th and zero’ed for the day. Just before dark I found some stripers back in the creek but they were feeding on small threadfins so the trout I pulled behind the planer boards didn’t work well. I figured they may hit a trout early in the morning if they stayed in the general area so my plan was to hit the same area at first light. I left my dock just before 7am and motored up the creek at first light. After getting a spread out I started marking a few big arches in less than 20 feet of water and I knew the stripers were still there. It didn’t take long till the trout on a freelined balloon started getting very nervous. I was pulling the trout on a balloon about 150-200 feet behind the boat at the time. I picked up the rod out of the rod holder and pulled the bail lever back to free spool. The striper chased the trout around the balloon and soon my thumb and rod tip felt the striper nail the trout and at the same time the balloon took off skimming across the water. I threw the bail lever forward and set the hook on my first striper of the morning, a healthy 15 pounder. It was a nice way to start the morning. I decided to pull boards to the back of the creek so I got as far back as 49 degree water temps and 7 feet of water when I turned around. The back of the creek was like the land that time forgot. Plenty of run down docks and summer homes and it seemed every tree had a few turkey buzzards hanging around. It was like a scene out of “Apocalypse Now”. I kept thinking spears and arrows were going to start flying out of the tree line so I turned around. I went through a dry spell for several hours but I checked another area we had been catching some nice fish further out in the creek and found the big arches on the graph again. Another striper started chasing the balloon bait again in shallow water and after a game of cat and mouse with the striper, I set the hook on him and the fight was on. Just as quick, the fight was off and the striper was gone. I had turned the video camera on early in the cat and mouse game and I had some great footage of a big striper chasing and slapping the trout before he inhaled it. I was holding the rod and talking to the camera as I set the hook on him. It would have made a great video along with the first striper footage I had from my early dawn striper. The camera ran out of memory and I had to dump the videos I had so I could video the next fish.

I made a big circle back to the same area I had marked the arches. I gotta tell you, I can really tell the difference between a big striper directly under the boat in 20 feet of water, and your run of the mill spotted bass swimming to and fro. The big arches looked like they were just dripping with electronic static because of the high sensitivity on my graph in shallow water. It looked like 3 bigger fish just off the bottom in 20 feet of water so I figured I still had a shot at the other two. This pass I aimed the right planer board at the same area and just as the trout passed over the big stripers I saw a big boil where the trout should have been and the planer board rocketed across the water. That’s when I grabbed the rod and reached back to turn on the camera. Here’s what happened next: