I haven’t posted a report here in a while but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been out there wetting a line whenever possible. Summer provided us with some great trolling action for stripers and well as a lot of great bass fishing. The stripers came in and out of the creek all summer and we caught plenty of nice fish with larger shad trollers over the underwater forest at the mouth of the creek. Striper always wait in ambush around the deep water trees and picking a few off provided us with some great entertainment. We also had a lot of fun dropping and jigging stripers with heavy jigs vertically under the boat. When we got bored with the striper fishing we would troll deep diving crankbaits for spotted bass near the bottom on the points of the creek.

We’re now approaching Autumn very quickly and autumn for me means topwater, swim baits, wake baits and bucktails for stripers and bass in the creek. One way to tell what works this time of year for me is to go over my archives and YouTube videos for this time of year. Right now we’re having fun with the topwater bite and a new lure I made for the occasion.
The best pattern for this popper has been to find points in the creeks; the longer the better. I’ve been watching for surfacing fish around points and if I see any surface activity I go up wind of the point and cast the popper down wind for the best results. I try and stay off the trolling motor and just drift. On of the things I like about the new popper is that I can cast it a mile and casting down wind just adds to the distance. We you’re popping the lure back to the boat against the wind you get the maximum surface disruption and that’s what the fish are keying on right now. All the surface commotion mimics the spotted bass chasing, popping and feeding on bluebacks the have pushed up to the surface. Here’s some pictures taken during testing the bait.