Techniques for Catching Striped Bass

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Neither was very much fun. Hope to never do again...without beer.

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We will have plenty of beer.

Striped bass love bream. If you can catch some and turn them into live bait you may have some luck.

In the CA Delta I typically throw topwater in the morning up against grass. Throw large swim baits throughout the day, clouser minnows on the fly with sinking line and sometimes jig them on bottom with Hopkins spoons.

The large paddle tail swim baits are usually 6.5" and various colors. Nothing fancy, just a larger jighead and experiment with different colors.

If you fly fish, this is a really fun way to catch them. You keep stripping the line until you hook up. If they're big enough they'll take all that line back from you and put you back on the reel. You want sinking line because the striper are usually on bottom so that line helps get you fly down to them.

Jigging is pretty damn effective when they're not actively feeding. Once you get on top of a school, run the spoon to bottom and just bounce it up and down but always hit bottom with it. It will irritate the fire out of you because they'll pop it repeatedly without "taking" it.

And...they are the type of fish to kill their prey and then come back and get it. So it you're running a topwater or swim bait and it gets blown up....kill it and let it rest. Half the time they'll come back for it.

Have fun with it. A 10lb striper hits and fights like a 10lb redfish.

Grew up fishing for them in the tailraces below the dams on the TN River(Pickwick, wheeler, Wilson.) The hotter the weather, the better the fishing because they would stack up in the tailrace to take advantage of the cold water coming in. Throw a gizzard shad with a saltwater-sized weight in the boils below the dam and hang on. There are 40lb fish routinely caught there. You had to run the engine on the boat to maintain position, so one would fish while the other drove. Hook a fish, drift down while landing him and then switch positions. Much closer to saltwater fishing than anything else in TN, N MS, N AL.

ETA: Pretty much like this, although I can't hear the audio.

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