VolsFan24
Well-known member
One of the best days of fishing I have ever had! We boated around 20 stripers and 10 smallies. Smallest striper was around 5-6 lbs, biggest had to be close to 20 lb. and most were in the 8-12 lb range. Biggest smallie was a fat 20". All we did was follow the birds and there was the bait and there were the fish. Most were caught drifting shiners but we did manage a smallie with a sammy, 3-4 stripers on a hair swim jig, and a couple more stripers on a jerkbait. They were relating to a hump and were stacked in 17-22 fow. Then the birds would move off to a point about 100 yards away and they were around 30-35 fow. Then they would move another 100 yards between 2 points in a little cove also about 17-22 fow. Then back to the hump. We moved between those 3 stops constantly following the birds and we absolutely killed it. There were a decent number of other boats out there because its hard to ignore 2-3 packs of 20-30 birds each just busting.
I lost what looked like a 6ish lb smallie. I was using 6 lb mono and a 6ft medium rod. Had a small kink in the line and once she went airborn the line snapped. I was so mad. But proceeded to land the biggest striper of the day on that light tackle. Took me a good 10-15 min. My buddy Jeff caught a smallie half way through the battle. The fish were so aggressive that at one point we literally had 3 fish on and only 2 people to handle the rods. Haha. What a sight that was. Lost one of them because I was handling a good 10-12 striper while my buddy had another 10 lber or so and then the 3rd rod goes down and I now have 2 rods completely bent over in each hand. Haha. I loved it. The fish on the lighter tackle broke off, but it was awesome. We had at least 3-4 successful double ups and a couple where we lost 1 of them.
All fish were released successfully. Not one went belly up. We did only weight 1 striper because we wanted to get them back in the water ASAP. It was 10 lb on the dot. So Im basing my weights according to that one. Took a bunch of pics and here are a couple. Our graph looked like that about 50% of the time. The other times it was full of bait fish.
I lost what looked like a 6ish lb smallie. I was using 6 lb mono and a 6ft medium rod. Had a small kink in the line and once she went airborn the line snapped. I was so mad. But proceeded to land the biggest striper of the day on that light tackle. Took me a good 10-15 min. My buddy Jeff caught a smallie half way through the battle. The fish were so aggressive that at one point we literally had 3 fish on and only 2 people to handle the rods. Haha. What a sight that was. Lost one of them because I was handling a good 10-12 striper while my buddy had another 10 lber or so and then the 3rd rod goes down and I now have 2 rods completely bent over in each hand. Haha. I loved it. The fish on the lighter tackle broke off, but it was awesome. We had at least 3-4 successful double ups and a couple where we lost 1 of them.
All fish were released successfully. Not one went belly up. We did only weight 1 striper because we wanted to get them back in the water ASAP. It was 10 lb on the dot. So Im basing my weights according to that one. Took a bunch of pics and here are a couple. Our graph looked like that about 50% of the time. The other times it was full of bait fish.