Guys, I’ve always wondered about those stripers that run up from the depths to look at the downrigger weights. I seen fish on my graph run up from well below the downrigger weight, sometime more than 100 feet, just to look at it and go right back down. I thought it might be cool to try and video this as well as hook up with a fish during one of those times when the fish are feeding on a school of bait and there is a lot of action with a good sized school of fish. I have also run the weight through huge schools of bluebacks and shad and I’m anxious to see if I can video that. That’s why I created the Downrigger Cam. My wife gave me a GoPro Hero for Xmas so if I loose this baby in the trees there will be trouble at the Cast Away household. Stay tuned next week for more info and hopefully some good videos with the camera. Here are a couple on the design and low drag testing at the Cast Away Testing facility.
Well guys, We’re pretty deep into the trolling season and I’ve had a blast so far. I’ve been able to get on the water more this summer than summers in the past. The stripers on the south end of the lake have been around in big numbers and I’ve learned a lot from all of these fishing trips. Here are a few observations that have made this summer more productive for me:
1. The use of flourocarbon for my leaders have made a big difference. More specifically, I’ve been using Bass Pro XPS flourocarbon in 17lb and 20lb. I use the 17lb on the downrigger rigs and 20lb on the leadcore rigs. I’ve compared my 20lb Big Game to the flouro several times this year and the flouro out produced the mono by more than 3 to 1. A good 30-40 foot flouro leader makes all the difference, but it’s more costly than mono.
2. Tackle selections have been very important. I’ve been running several different jigs and trying to outsmart these fish when they get leary of the leadcore and a certain jig. I’ve had good luck with a 6 inch pearl w/blue highlights shad body on a 2 ounce shad head in the same pearl w/blue highlights. That combination has become my go to bait for these summer stripers. I’m convinced that this profile resembles a large Blueback Herring and that’s what the bigger stripers are keying on. It’s a no brainer with this jig, everytime we’ve put it on we’ve caught fish. When the fish get weary of the shad bait, I put on a 2 ounce bucktail troller to give them something different and it usually fools them for another hook up or two.
3. Getting the baits to the right area to get bit. It changes from year to year but this year the 30-35 range has been the most productive this year. I’ve been using 2 ounce and heavier jig heads to get the bait lower. Another tactic that has been successful is loading my Diawa 57lc with 12 colors of leadcore. Cortland sells a 200 yd spool of 27lb leadcore and my 57’s will hold 12 colors so I’ve been able to work the baits deeper running more colors. There are good fish to be caught trolling your baits deeper but it comes with a cost. There are a lot of trees in Lanier so I’ve been working the river channel and some deep flats with the longer leadcore to keep from hanging it in the trees.
4. In my opinion you have to train yourself to think 100 yards behind the boat to be a successful troller. If you can’t get your baits over or through the fish it’s probably not going to work well. I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep your baits in line with the fish you mark and know where your baits are in relation to your graph. On my graph it’s pretty easy. When I’m trolling over water 100 ft deep or deeper the range of my screen on my graph is around 100 yards from right to left when scrolling. That means when the fish get to the end of the scrolling screen on my graph, my baits should be close to running through or over the fish I marked. If I keep my boat in a straight line, I can just about call when a fish is going to hit the jig. To me that is pretty cool to be able to anticipate a strike.
Those are a few tips and crib notes to help with your trolling this summer. Here are a few videos of some recent trips:
I hadn’t been on the lake since last Friday and things had changed considerably for trolling. In the days that I missed, the weather had cooled along with surface temps. The surface temps dropped 5 degrees and the fish went deep with the rising barometer. They had me stumped for awhile but yesterday the 12th we finally figured out a pattern that worked. We hit em with the downriggers early and caught a couple, and then threw the leadcore at em. The key was to get the heavy stuff down to them.
I had the pleasure of fishing with a couple of fellow veterans and we had a blast. Jamie and Eric Both caught fish with Alex working the deck hand duties. Here’s a little video of our trip on the 12th.
The pattern is getting stronger now for trolling. Our trips are seeing more fish per hour than in previous weeks and overall the numbers have been very good this year. There are loose schools of stripers up further north where most of the fleet of guides have been and there are a lot of singles and double lurking around bait in the thermocline over very deep water, relating to the river channel. The most prevelent baits have been the new Fire Shad Custom Troller and the big shad bodies with 1 ounce and ounce and a half shad head jigs. Here’s some videos of our recent trips:
I got out this morning to try a couple of new jigs and try and locate some new fish to work on. I started out up north around the six mile area and worked my way south. I caught 2 smaller fish up north and then worked the Bald Ridge area, then over to the dam. I found a few fish suspended over deep water and was able to pick off a few more before finding more fish at the mouth of Shoal Creek and getting a nice fish or two. Most of the fish came off of the blue shad heads and pearl blue shad body and my new Fire Shad troller in a 1 ounce size. I ran up to 9 colors back. Here’s a couple of videos from today.
Late last summer I took Alex out on a trolling trip and it was one of those slow days. I promised Alex we’d get out again on my nickel, so today was the day. We caught fish from about 8 am till a little after lunch. I think we ended up with 8-10 nice stripers and 11 nice spots. We started out with 1 ounce Custom Trollers on leadcore and caught a couple of nice fish then we switched over to my 1 and a half and two ounce big shad head swimbaits when the sun got higher and caught most of our fish. I was using a couple of new colors today that made the difference in the shad head trollers. I used a hand poured pearl with blue highlighted swimbait and a blue pearl colored swimbait. They were loving them colors. Needless to say, we had a blast. Thanks for the company Alex! Here’s a video of some of the action.
I got out early this morning with a few very special guests; Legendary Outdoor writer Don Baldwin, his son-in-law Kevin and granddaughter Madison joined me for a early morning troll on Lanier. There was a very pleasant morning bite before the traffic invaded the lake. We were able to manage a few fish, mostly stripers and all were caught while trolling. We caught fish on a Blueback color pattern, chartruese over white and plain white, all 1 ounce and one and a half. Here’s a little video from this morning.
Well, it’s here. Winter is upon us and the striper bite is picking up after a transitional period. Fish are popping on top and feeding below the surface. This is the time of year stripers work together to feed on the massive schools of bait scattered throughout the lake.
I expect a great winter fishing season for stripers with the water levels way down and dropping. With the levels being down, the stripers will be more concentrated in areas throughout the lake. The bait will be less scattered due to the decline of shoreline and structure for bait to move around in.
My tackle strategy this winter is pretty simple. My winter set-up consists of a minimum of 4 planer boards with an assortment of bait. I will weight and freeline bluebacks, gizzards, threadfin and trout. I’ll freeline the biggest trout and gizzards I can find on ballons or straight out the back at least 100 feet. I’ll also run a small gizzard right behind the boat to swim back and forth, this is called a transom bait and is very effective to pick up a striper or two close to the boat. Sometimes a bait will use the shelter of being around a boat to get away from a hungry striper. Stripers know this and they will not hesitate to come right up to the back of the boat for a quick meal.
I vary the distance of my baits behind my planer boards, but if I’m fishing very shallow water my rule of thumb is the average distance of the bait behind the board is about the same distance as the depth unless I’m using bluebacks as they like to stay near the surface and the don’t usually stray to the bottom like a gizzard or trout. I aways make sure I put out a variety of bait sizes and slowly transition the majority of my baits to what is working the best for me.
I also run 4 downlines with varied baits and various depths. Don’t get stuck on one depth. Your shallower or lighter downline baits should go out the back and your heavier weighted baits in the front of the boat and the depths should be varied until you find a good pattern to stay with.
I’m probably going to have 3 types of artificial tied on. First is some kind of topwater bait. That usually varies acording to what’s laying around the boat. Second is a small bucktail. Winter stripers usually key on the smaller stuff so I use a 3/8 to 1/2 ounce bucktail and thirdly, some kind of jig that I can cast a long way or do some verical jigging. Two years ago we were fishing a big tournament in the middle of winter and ran across a big school of fish. They didn’t hit the downines or planer and freelines so after two passes on the fish I dropped a little verical jig on them and imediately hooked up with a white bass. Dropped back down in them again with the same result. I’m glad I had the little jig tied on or we may have wasted more precious tournament time on those fish. On another occasion my partner broke out a little Flex-it spoon when he saw a few big hybrids surface. As soon as the spoon hit the water one of the big hybrids slammed the jig and that fish won us a top 5 finish 4 years ago in the Striped Bass National Championship landing a 9 pound hybrid with minutes left in the tournament. sometimes a little casting jig can really save the day.
That’s a little bit about my tackle. As far as my fishing strategy, it’s simple in the winter; find the bait and you’ll find the fish. Not every school of bait will hold fish but if you find a creek that has a good concentration of bait, the fish won’t be far away. I like fishing bends in the river if I’m river fishing or fishing a narrow lake in the winter. I also like pulling points and creek channels in the lakes. Sometimes pulling your big baits right down the center of a creek channel will net a big fish. You have to be patient but there’s usually a big striper or two cruising just below the surface or deeper in the channel waiting to greet bait on the way in or out of the creek.
Watch the birds!!! Fast moving groups of gulls headed in one direction and diving or circling gull indicate fish. Loons are a good indicator of bait. Loons are generally working around the lake looking for bait to eat while gulls are more like opportunists sitting around waiting on the fish do the work for them so they can dive in and get a free meal.
Enjoy the winter striper fishing!
Jim
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.
I got out with Glenn who contacted me about riding along for a leadcore and downrigger instructional trip out. I needed to test some tackle and invited him to climb aboard. The day started slow but we were able to find a few fish here and there. We marked a lot of fish eating bait over deeper water from Bald Ridge to Six Mile. We were able to find our fish in the same places I’ve been finding them for the past two weeks. This time they were a little reluctant to hit the jigs. We finally got a call from a buddy I made some big swimbait for and he said they had caught 2 on the big 7 inch swim bait. Glenn and I tied on a 2 ounce Shad Head jig and 7 inch swim Bait body in a Blueback pattern and we had a fish within minutes of dropping the bait back. We also caught 2 nice fish on a chartreuse color. We caught 2 fish on the downriggers, one on a 1 and a half ounce Monster Bucktail in a Cast Away Blueback pattern. The fish we were marking were very very deep which made it tough to troll them up. We were letting out 9 colors of leadcore with a 2 ounce jig in the river channel. That was the ticket to get the bait deep enough.
Here’s a little video of the trip.
