Scout'nStripers
Senior Member
I fished 4 days last week and finished the week with a club tournament yesterday. Early in the week we were doing well on the cranks and jigs for staging fish but then later in the week it was shakey heads and shallow cranks on docks and looking for shallow spawning fish. Over the past few weeks I've started watching the surface a lot more in anticipation of an early spring topwater bass bite. Last year in late March I was on a pretty good topwater bite for big stripers and bass that lasted a couple weeks so I've been wondering if that's going to come back around.
By Thursday we were seeing and catching some surfacing fish out on points in the creek early in the morning but it was a lot of small fish. We were also seeing a lot of bluebacks swimming on the surface, creating wakes and getting nailed by bass and stripers. Our primary objective was to find shallow spawning fish around docks and the backs of pockets on tournament day but we caught a couple nice fish on topwater Saturday so we decided to start the tournament fishing topwater on points. Our plan was to spend a couple hours on topwater then hit the shallow stuff but with the wind we had yesterday it was perfect for creating the chop we needed for a good topwater bite across points. We found a few points that had the perfect little chop on the water and with the extended cloud cover we milked out the topwater bite till almost noon and we were culling by 10am. We only spent a couple hours on docks but we never upgraded off the shallow stuff. I think a lot of the shallow fish pulled out because of the front that had just past and the cooler temps.
We ended up with 11 something in weight and all of our keepers came on topwater. The bass didn't like the vixen so I broke out my old trusty emerald popper which caught us two of our biggest and a smaller kicker. My partner had a walking bait and caught a pretty decent keeper and a smaller keeper with it. We didn't get any real big fish but we had a couple nice ones. The bass were wise to the big clunky bone vixen but the stripers once again like it. Although we didn't target stripers, I did see a few big ones close to the shore and I'm probably going to get after them this week.
Right now there are a lot of tactics that will work to catch fish but if the wind kicks up a little across a point the bass and stripers will be a lot easier to fool and I'm probably going to be throwing some topwater. We didn't take many pictures over the past few days but I did want to get a picture of my first official topwater striper of 2016.
By Thursday we were seeing and catching some surfacing fish out on points in the creek early in the morning but it was a lot of small fish. We were also seeing a lot of bluebacks swimming on the surface, creating wakes and getting nailed by bass and stripers. Our primary objective was to find shallow spawning fish around docks and the backs of pockets on tournament day but we caught a couple nice fish on topwater Saturday so we decided to start the tournament fishing topwater on points. Our plan was to spend a couple hours on topwater then hit the shallow stuff but with the wind we had yesterday it was perfect for creating the chop we needed for a good topwater bite across points. We found a few points that had the perfect little chop on the water and with the extended cloud cover we milked out the topwater bite till almost noon and we were culling by 10am. We only spent a couple hours on docks but we never upgraded off the shallow stuff. I think a lot of the shallow fish pulled out because of the front that had just past and the cooler temps.
We ended up with 11 something in weight and all of our keepers came on topwater. The bass didn't like the vixen so I broke out my old trusty emerald popper which caught us two of our biggest and a smaller kicker. My partner had a walking bait and caught a pretty decent keeper and a smaller keeper with it. We didn't get any real big fish but we had a couple nice ones. The bass were wise to the big clunky bone vixen but the stripers once again like it. Although we didn't target stripers, I did see a few big ones close to the shore and I'm probably going to get after them this week.
Right now there are a lot of tactics that will work to catch fish but if the wind kicks up a little across a point the bass and stripers will be a lot easier to fool and I'm probably going to be throwing some topwater. We didn't take many pictures over the past few days but I did want to get a picture of my first official topwater striper of 2016.
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