The Striper are Fired Up!!

Spencer came out for a return trip and brought his wife. The river had changed a lot in the week since his last trip with the Hickory shad bite pretty much dying out for the season. He said he wanted to get on anything we could catch so we got right to work.

We drifted down the river jigging on schools of white perch and blueback herring, although there were not many white perch to be found. The few that we caught, we kept for bait. The blue back herring are not allowed to be kept so we toss them back.

Early in the drift we hooked into something heavy and Spencer grabbed the rod. The fish would not separate from the bottom and it was a heck of a fight on a medium action spinning rod. Eventually, we brought the fish up to the surface and came face-to-face with a nice size flathead catfish. Congratulations on an awesome catch.

We continued to drift down the river, catching white perch and blueback herring and even had a surprise catch of a tiny channel catfish on a sabiki rod.

We took one of the live perch and cast it near some structure without any weight on it so the fish could swim freely. The white perch swam right up into some structure and was gobbled up right away. Just an hour into the trip and we already had our second flathead catfish among many other species.

We stopped marking schools of bait fish and decided to transition over to striper fishing. We changed over to some lures and started to troll up and down the river. The bite was absolutely on fire and over the course of the next two hours we caught nearly a dozen striper photographed below.

These fish were slamming our lures and pulling drag the entire way to the boat.

Congratulations on an awesome day of fishing. We hope you enjoyed it. See you on the water for the next trip.