Just want to say- since the water has cooled down to the low 60's, RELEASE THOSE BIGGER FISH IF YOU CAN. We need to get some 30-40 pounders again and they ain't gonna make it if they're in a frying pan. Wait 'till summer to keep these fish, let 'em eat and get fat now, while they can. We finally got our bait situation back to where it needs to be and the stripers are getting fat like they're supposed to be.

Sept 1-21 September started out kinda slow, but its back on now! We've been doing really good in the mornings and evenings pulling bait AND jiggin'! I'm not sure how much longer jiggin' is gonna be good, but hopefully a couple of more weeks until they start busting. Casting for stripers has picked up too. Try the X-rap on long, shallow, clean main channel points in the evenings. We've had equal success on big gizzards and alewives. The best technique lately has been long freelines on planers and floats. I'm still seeing people doing some good with trolling, but I'm a live bait/jiggin/casting guy. We did get a 14.5lber on Sept. 19th which is encouraging that the big boys are getting ready to come up and start feasting.

September report:

The striper fishing slowed down a little during the dog days, but have picked back up since the water temps have cooled significantly. The cooler the water gets, the more active the stripers will be. We've already hit several busting schools in the mornings this month. The schools are breaking up and now we're seeing alot of individual fish. We've actually been catching stripers in shallow water lately.

Overall Summer Report:

This summer has been a great summer with a lot of artifical and live bait action. Most of our success has come from light-tackle jiggin' for stripers with numerous 15+ fish days. The water temps have been on a roller coaster from soaring into the 90's and dropping back down to low 80's. Our thermocline has also been delayed in forming a distinct layer. This has kept the fish on the move and made live bait fishing tough and somedays impossible. The fish started schooling up around early July and have stayed in massive schools until the first week of August. Now I'm starting to see smaller, broken up schools of stripers that are still moving fast.

A couple of my trip reports.

August Reports:

The fish have continued to stay schooled up and eating jigged flukes and big gizzards pretty well. We've had many outings with 15+ striper coming from light tackle jigging. Its a blast if you've never done it.

Great fish AND fisherman

What a catch!

This lil' man grabbed the rod, set the hook, and started winding the fish in while the rest of us weren't even paying attention. Who's the man?

Nice fish jigged up in the afternoon.

Some nice 6-12lb stripers taken on big gizzard bait.

A nice cat caught on gizzard bait.

July 31 - The fishing was a little slow yesterday. Took some clients out in the evening and ended up with 5 from flukes and 2 from gizzards. The fish were still schooled up tight, but just not active and not really hungry.

The water is 86 and stained above the bridge.

We did hang into a nice flathead (I assume) at dusk. He hit a monster gizzard that was bouncin' on the bottom. When my client set the hook it didn't budge or fight, just kept goin' and then the hook pulled.

July 29- Did really good before the showers pushed up on us. Had 5 clients on the boat and we totaled 19 stripers between 6:00 and 7:15. 4 from gizzards on floats and the rest from jigged flukes. My clients were experienced striper fishermen and all were for catch and release, which was great. All but 2 fish were released boatside. We kept 2 that came off bait and took a while to get in.

All fish caught were in the trees and moving in small schools.

The bait is living alot better on the hook now.

July 25 - Pretty tough weekend.
I had some great clients this weekend and had a great time, but the fish just weren't too enthusiastic about biting. We didn't have much trouble finding the schools, but once we were in them, they wouldn't eat much.

Caught 2 10lbers on big gizzards and missed 4 more on gizzard baits, and missed about 5 on alewives. Definitely more misses than what I'd like to report, but traffic and waves made seeing the floats difficult. We jigged up 3 stripers on flukes and missed 2 more.

Good news, my gizzards were lasting a little longer in the water than they have been. You still have to check them every 20 minutes or so. Alewives did fine down 26 feet.

Gizzards downlined at 26 feet on floats were the best technique.

We hit several massive schools and had 8 live bait rods out with 3 people jiggin' flukes in the middle of the school and sometimes we wouldn't even get a tap. Now that tells you the fishin' is tough.

Water is 88-89 degrees, and will be over 90 by tonight. Not good.

Hurry up October.

July 25 - Took some really nice people out last night who never had been striper fishing before and we spanked 'em right from the beginning. Got out on the water at 5:00 and it took 45 minutes of scouting before we found 'em.
Got into a massive school that was 30 feet thick and purdy daggone long. We dropped flukes and had 3 on immediately and it was like that for the next hour or so. They wouldn't stay still so we were constantly crankin' up and trying to follow them.
I dropped some moneymakers down into the schools but they'd rather have the flukes. I didn't have any alewives so I can't vouch for them. The gizzards would die or get pretty stressed out within 10-15 minutes of being dropped down 18-26 feet. Plus, if you've got bait out then its a pain to pull 'em in so you can follow the schools.

highlight of the evening: client was casting out to breaking fish, and on the retrieve, a 14lber hit so hard that it ripped the reel from the brackets on the rod and he had to reel it in the hardway.

Yeah, its a good fishing report, but its still kinda hard to find the fish, and find active fish.

Here's a school from yesterday evening:

July 18 - Look below, 'nuff said

July 11 - Took some clients fishing for an evening charter and ended up with 15-20 stripers, all around 6-8lbs. Had to search for about an hour but we finally found them. Caught 3 on alewives, but the rest came from jigged and casted flukes. Might start leaving the bait at home for a while.
We got on them around 6:45pm and they quit feeding around 8:30pm. My clients kept 3 that we got on bait and released the ones that we caught from casting or jigging, since they were already on the surface or only 15 feet deep.

I've also heard about some really good catches around the dam and convergence.

My rule of thumb for summer time releasing is if they're above 20 feet, then they're able to be released successfully, but if you're hauling them in from 40+ feet deep or fighting them from a long float or planer board line, then it will be necessary to keep 'em.

July 08 - Awesome.
It's always good fishing when the remnants of a hurricane or tropical storm blows through. I got out on the water around 6:30pm and stayed till about 8:00 and caught fish non stop throwing flukes at main channel points. Highlight of the evening was a fat 14lber on the first cast. At 8, the wind really picked up and the fish seemed to quit feeding.

Saturday July 2nd - Fish misc roanoke areas for scattered fish. Only had 2 good runs and that was it. We fished from Halesford to Beaverdam. Traffic was bad by 9:00am. We used big alewives and 5-6 gizzards. Hard to keep gizzards alive if they're deeper than 15 -17 feet now. Had to keep changing alot.

Sunday July 3rd - Took some clients down to Gills Creek to fish around the Gman and Jimbo. (Thanks for reports from JD, Gman, Jimbo and Travis) Had 2 young boys on the boat who had never caught anything bigger than a bluegill. Got 3 in the boat and missed about 6-7. Had pretty good action throughout the morning until traffic got up at 10:00. Hit 1 good school out in the deeper water (55 feet) and got 2 out of it.

Monday July 4th - Took the family cruising up river from Indian Point to Beaverdam. Hit 2 monster schools at dark and jigged up 5 in about 10 minutes. 2 nice fish that were long and skinny, and 3 average 6-7lbers. All on sparkle flukes bounced on the bottom.

The thermocline is still above 18 feet and using gizzards are pretty tough right now as they'll die within minutes. I would recommend skipping trying to get gizzards until the thermo sinks some. Alewives fished deep 25-40 feet did great.
There's some isolated schools at the dam, between Halesford and Beaverdam and some in Gills. Good luck finding them from halesford to Beaverdam.....they're moving fast and there's no rhyme or reason to 'em.

Gizzards are still coming to my lights at night, and during the day the alewives are gizzards are still easily caught in tight coves.

June 23

Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday the fish were on fire. Busting everywhere, jiggin' 'em up, catching 'em on bait, etc.
Tuesday and Wednesday, NADA. We were constantly in schools but for some reason, they just wouldn't eat. Used all sizes of gizzards and alewives. I might switch to trolling for the next couple of days.

The gizzards and alewives are schooled right now during the day and you can get them in 18-20 feet of water in tight coves.

This doesn't happen often at Smith Mountain Lake....Gizzards, thousands of perfect money-makers coming to the lights at night. Not Alewives..... Gizzards.

June 20

The bite finally came back this weekend. Since the cooler weather came through and pushed the water temps back down to 77 instead of 85, the fish are been really active in the early mornings. I went out Friday evening to take my brother green-fishin' and did REALLY good with alot of decent sized green'uns but while we were fishin' I marked alot of stripers. So then, Saturday morning we went out at the sunrise and caught a bunch before 7:45am and then they slowed down. On sunday I went out by myself and got 7 before 7:30 and then they slowed down.

They were hitting alewives and gizzards, but 5-6 inch moneymakers were really doing really well on freelines and planers. Nothing on downlines or downlined floats. The big alewives are finally coming back to the light and I was getting a good number of 5-6 inch ales.

For casting, we found it better to back way off of the shore and cast toward it but about 15-20 yards from it. They were not on the banks, but associating with points that were 18-20 feet deep.

No biggun's, just 6-8lbers with one 11lber. Oh, and a ton of channel cats and 1 catfish that may be a Blue cat, or a white cat, I couldn't tell, but I took a picture of it.
All fished released boatside, after a quick fight.

May 20-June 08

The stripers went to the dam again this year to spawn. We saw some small schools in the keys, but nothing like in the past. The Cedar Keys spawn may be a thing of the past. The first week of June the fish started moving back up the river arms and on the Roanoke side the fish are spread out evenly from the Sportsman to Beaverdam. I haven't seen many huge schools lately and it shouldn't be long until they're schooled up tight and hungry. This year's gizzard and alewive spawn seem to be decent and there's a large number of bait schools on the surface in the channels. Random surface feedings have been spotted, but nothing to count on. Start looking for bigger fish hangin' deep in the trees and the schoolies forming big roving schools.

April 13-25

The fishing has continued to do well, with a good bite early in the morning and late in the evening. The alewives have begun their spawn, but its not in full force yet. We took Alewives and Gizzards with us each day, because they would like one more than the other on random days. Still pulling bait on planers and flatlines. 6 feet behind the planers is the ticket and put your planers right up on the banks. The fish are still spread out over the entire lake. Some of the fish that we're catching already have eggs or pouring milt.

April 8 - 12

This fish maxed out my 30 pound Boga grips, so I'd suspect he was 32-35 pounds. 43-1/2 inches long and extremely healthy with NO parasites. Caught on a monster gizzard. After these shots were taken, the fish was RELEASED in perfect shape.

For the past couple of days, the fish have really turned on after a two week hiatus. The fish are favoring 4-6" gizzards over anysize alewives. Long flatlines have outproduced planers and downlines. The fish are busting but its not easy to hook up with them. Try a rat'l'trap if nothing else works.

March 28- April 7

We had a tremendous amount of rain last weekend which push mud from Hardy all the way to Becky's and Betty's. All of the creeks are muddy but are slowly clearing up. I haven't done good at all lately, with only small fish showing up. There are some individual bustings, but again they're small fish. The big fish will be getting hungry soon and will come up from the bottom. I would start fishing on the bottom and then work your way to the surface while bait fishing to determine the appropriate depth. When its muddy like this, the fish will hug the bottom, but will have to come shallow to eat, because the bait is scattered on the surface now.

March 17 - April 28

The Stripers finally turned on and came to feed in the shallows. The fish moved up to Beaverdam and actually on up to Lynville and Mormans. We had a lot of hot action pulling small alewives up on shoals and points and in shaded banks during the high sun hours. More decent sized fish are showing with several reports of 18-21 pounders. I caught and released a 21 pounder on Friday March 25, along with several other decent fish. If you're fishing and not marking anything, don't worry, they're probably too shallow to mark and put the planers out with 6-10 feet of line behind each. Try varying the lengths because a couple feet can make a huge difference. If the fish are near the surface they'll never see a shad that is 10 feet deep. I've ran bait only 3 feet behind planers when the fish are that high up.

21 Pounder RELEASED

13 Pounder RELEASED

10 Pounder RELEASED

March 10-17

The striper action has slowed down tremendously. Most of the stripers are hanging deep around 45-65 feet deep. The water temps are lower than they normally are for this time of year. I would expect the fishing to be slow until the water temps hit the 50's, right now the water temps range from 42-45 degrees. We have been jiggin up a couple fish each outing from 30-40 feet, but everything that we've caught lately has been on the small side. We did very well trolling Deep Running Redfins, but again, mostly small fish. The stripers are coming to main channel points in the evening, but not in huge numbers. The birds have been diving on big bait balls, but its not been striper-driven.

January thru March 10. The stripers schooled up and stayed generally around the Indian Point area. A whole lotta jiggin' fluke action. It was pretty consistent action every day with chasin' the birds in the morning, jiggin' flukes in the trees during the day and then beatin' the banks in the late afternoon hours. Several 20pounders are showing up and we've caught plenty of 13-16 pounders. We've released EVERY fish, other than a couple of gut-hooked fish, since November.

Quick summary of this winter.

November-December: The major striper schools moved way upriver to the Mormans, Tressles, and Hardy bridge. While the fish were up there, people started catching more and more decent fish from 8-12lbs with some 15 pounders thrown in. (The entire summer and fall, most everyone was catching 6-8 pounders consistently. ) Bait was everywhere up there as well as the rest of the lake. We had a great gizzard and alewife spawn this year. The stripers slowly moved back down to Indian Point by mid December. Late December, the Hopkin's spoon bite was on and it was on big time. For about 2 weeks, it was textbook winter fishing with a good spoon bite in the trees at 30-45 feet deep. We also got into some major bustin' frenzies in Beaver dam. Although generally not many busting stripers this year....