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If there is a key to Striped Bass behavior, it is found in the relationship
these fish have with their forage base. Find a big cloud of bait on your
electronics or working the surface in striper waters and there is a real
good chance that stripers are cruising around in the immediate area.
If you
can find Striped Bass herding baitfish into pockets or surrounding them in
open water and you or someone else don't spook them by running into them with the
outboard, You will be in for one of the most exciting days of fishing you
will ever experience.
When you get the stripers into feeding mode they will
be quickly joined by others in a spontaneous tail spacking attack. Throw
just about anything with hooks in shad, chrome or white colors into a school
of boiling stripers in a feeding frenzy and it's gonna get busted. But when
the frenzy is over, it's over.
No fish can duplicate a big striper's initial run. You
simply can't stop them at first. During the second run - which
lasts about 25 yards - you may have serious thoughts about cutting the line
to save your gear and arms. If still hooked up by the time a striper goes zipping off
on a third run, you might be able to babble something to your buddy about
grabbing a landing net.
Unlike black bass, which can be quite territorial, stripers are always on
the move using river and creek channels as their hi-ways looking for their forage base that consists primarily of shad.
With
the exception of when stripers are busting baitfish on the surface, you
probably won't see them coming.
It is difficult to predict when and where Striped Bass will show up, and
whether or not they will bite. They will set up routes they use on a regular
basis that may continue for a few weeks just don't count on it. And Stripers are notoriously spooky. The
sound of an outboard motor approaching a surfacing school will usually shut
down a topwater bite quick. But there are times when trolling into a school
with your electric is a very effective way to get hooked up.
Striped bass
are predictably unpredictable.
Those who fish for Striped bass regularly with any degree of passion
appreciate the unpredictable nature of the striper, understanding that
stripers can be more active in cold water than most other species can
produce some fantastic winter fishing.
Don't think for a minute that striper fishing has a high-percentage catch
rate all the time, It doesn't. But if, you can stop a school or be in the
right area and get them into
a feeding frenzy you will end up with three stripers - which is the limit on
most Arkansas waters - on three consecutive casts.
The first thing to keep in mind is that they are a nomadic fish (pelagic)
that can cruise at 7 MPH. That means you won't always find them today where they were
yesterday or even 5 minutes ago. This is why it is important to fish often so you can keep up with
their movements."
The next point is that Striped Bass are biggest schooling
fish in freshwater. They are almost always in a group. "If you catch one, it
is a good bet you can catch more. The key is to place your bait in the spot
where you caught the first one and do it quickly because if there are no
baitfish present the school will move away from the area fast.
Another factor to remember is that current excites or triggers the feeding
instinct in Striped bass it pays to keep up with the generation schedule on
your Striped Bass lake i.
Striped Bass are repelled by strong light and noise. Stripers tend to be more active in
the shallows during periods of low light. On sunny days they will continue
to feed in deep water on the shaded side of banks.
Don't get hung up on the belief that the fish will always be in a certain
location or at a certain depth. If you are not catching them where you
usually fish, change locations. If the bait is located in a different
location than normal this is a good place to start checking. Backflows are
another good place to check. Below power generating dams there often is a
backflow on the opposite bank where the water flows back towards the dam,
this is a good location to check for fish especially if there is bait in the
backflow. Check varied depths by finding bottom then cranking up two turns
for a drift or two. Then three turns of the reel and so on to see if the
fish are suspending. Another trick that often works on suspended fish is
when you get to a bottom change that usually holds fish crank up slowly at
that spot to bring your bait thru any suspended fish.
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