April 25, striper slam!

I love fishing in the rain… There is never anyone else out on the water and the fishing is usually outstanding. Today was no exception… Mike, Justin and I left the ramp at 5:15 in a light rain. The water had warmed to 54 and with the cloud cover overnight had stayed that warm. We made the run to the first spot, dodging a couple of logs along the way. Justing hooked up first on a Houdini Shad. It’s always nice to get the skunk out of the boat right off the bat…

 As it got light out, we could see herring dimpling the surface all around us and following our lures back to the boat. I hooked up a couple of times with small fish, we never bothered to take the camera out. On the second drift, Mike hooked a decent fish on a Houdini Shad. This one was a better fish. I forgot how good a screaming drag could sound…

It may have been the next cast that he hooke up again, I can’t remember…

On the 3rd drift, all hell broke lose. There were fish all over the place at one point, we had a triple header going. I got mine to the boat first, another keeper and quickly released it so I could grab the camera for the other two fish.

On almost every cast, we had herring following our lures and trying to mate with them. On more than one occassion, my lure came back with herring scales on the hooks. I finally ended up snagging one on a Revolution Shad.

That spot seemed to die off after 7:30 so we started heading south checking other spots as we went. Justin hooked up with another nice fish on the Bass Harasser…

The rain got heavier and more steady. It kept the water nice and flat so it was easy to spot surface activity from a distance. As we fished along another flat, we saw herring getting knocked into the air by stripers about 1/4 mile away. It’s an amazing sight to behold. The stripers work together to push the bait into shallow water and then slap them with their tails to stun them. They turn and inhale the herring in the blink of an eye. We made our way in that direction on the trolling motor and got within range. We all had fish on in no time. It was raining too hard to take the camera out. They were all about the same size as the fish before. Healthy and real fat! We fished for less than 5 hours and boated 15 fish. There were only 2 or 3 stripers that were not keepers. It seemed to take forever, but they are finally here.

The weather looks like it’s going to be about the same tomorrow. I’ll be back at by 5 am with Justin again. Stay tuned…