Reports from 2004

October 11- The bite is decent right now, but still no bustin' of any size. I've talked to several buddies who've got into them bustin' but the frenzies are not consistently happening enough to count on.

October 9-10 Went out scouting and spanked the stripers. No busting fish, but we just jigged on the fast moving schools. Live bait wasn't even necessary. Most of the schools were small and compact, but extremely hungry. This is one of the schools that we got into.

September: sorry for the lack of reports. I've been slammed ...I'll start posting more in October when I have some more time.

Here's some pics from a family weekend of fishing last week.

Hey, gotta take tha fam fishin' too! Awesome weekend of fishing. These pictures were scanned from my brothers 35mm so they're kinda crappy.

All released

10.5lbs on the Boga. Caught on a monster gizzard on a float rod.

My brother with a 9 lber from an alewife.

My cousin with a 1 lber .....HA!

10+ lb on the boga. Can't remember the exact weight, but it was over 10lbs.

My brother with a nice 13lber

Durn green fish! My brother again- he was slaying the bass on carolina rigs down 20-25 feet deep.

August 31 - Went out yesterday to try and track down these lost schools. Luckily we found them. Here's an interesting sonar reading (zoomed in) with explanations.

caption 1. This is the lead sinker on one of my downlines.
caption 2. This is my big gizzard on a 3 foot leader from the sinker.
caption 3. Smack! This is the point of impact when a striper nails the gizzard but didn't get hooked.
caption 4. This is the new position of the sinker after the striper pulled on the free-spooled clicker for a couple of feet before letting it go.

We caught right many within an hour, most on flukes though ironically. (Jigged and casted)

If ya'll are out there, look in deeper water and more south for the stripers and save me a couple!

Be safe this weekend!

August 19-30 Great fishing up to the last couple of days. The fish are transitioning to their early fall pattern. The stripers are moving to deeper water following the bait which is moving from the shallows to the more open waters.

August 6 - 18 The water has cleared up with alot of great action in the evenings on big gizzards. Not as much luck on alewives, flukes and artificials. In one outing we caught a 15lb, 12lb, 11lb among other smaller fish. The fish are still in the same spots that they've been at for the past month and a half. Pretty strange. It must be the lower than normal water temps that we're so lucky to have. I should have plenty of pictures to post in the next week or so.

August 2 - 5 The recent rains has plagued us with some muddy water so alot of the stripers have been pushed out of some of their current spots. Look for the schools to be in deeper water and they have been really associating with the trees lately. Highlight of the week: 12lb striper on 12lb test on an ultralight spinning rod. Sorry for the lack of pictures, digital camera is out of commission for awhile. But here are some unbelievable sonar readings. Click each for a full screen view.

Really Active Stripers

Stripers coming out of the trees

Jackpot school

"Money School"

July 15 - August 1. Inconsistent action. The stripers are there, but just not eating on a planned basis. We did have several outstanding outings where the stripers actually did what they were supposed to do. This time of the year, I seek out locations that are holding good amounts of suspended bait, and wait for the stripers to show up as in the following sonar reading. We hit the biggest school that I've seen all year this week, and I posted a graphic of the tail-end of it in my sonar readings section.

July 13 - 15 Pretty hot action right now. Still scattered fish in the mornings and schooled by the afternoon. Alot of jiggin' and castin' action.

July 6 -12 The bite has picked back up finally. There are some very large schools of stripers that are roving from the bridge to Bernards. In the AM hours the schools break up and have been feeding on the new alewife hatch from main channel points to the backs of coves/creeks. By late in the day the stripers school up again in deep water. We have done much better lately at dusk rather than dawn. A well placed fluke will do just as good as live bait. Seen some busting lately too.....

June 20 - July 5 The summer is here and so is the traffic. The water temps are heading toward the high 80s and is making the fishing pretty tough. Alewives have been the bait of choice and are relatively easy to catch at night, but during the day we've had to catch them in 30 feet of water, which isn't an easy task. The stripers are still schooled up tight and seem to be moving to the lower end of the lake. Trolling has been producing some good numbers.

June 15 -20 The stripers are schooled up pretty tight and still scattered throughout the entire lake. Its payed off lately to seek out the schools instead of just setting up on a good point. Big alewives and gizzards are still key. The fish are suspendend in deep water and are also on main channel points. The boat traffic absolutely terrible by 11am on weekends now.

June 5 - 14th, Sorry for the delay in reports. The fishing has really picked up and the bigger stripers are showing up now. Bigger bait is now producing good fish. There has been several busting schools in the main channel but they're a little on the small side. They're hitting all types of live bait methods now: Planers, freelines, downlines, etc. The fish are scattered but hungry.

June 1 - 4 The striper fishing is getting a little better now, and I've been seeing some more schooling. We hit a monster school on Thursday.

May 29 - 31 I didn't have any charters this weekend, but I did ride around to do some looking. The stripers are still split up, a bunch at 10-15 feet and then some schooled at 30 feet and in the trees off points. My brother and cousin came up to do some bass fishing (...darn green fish....) and they wore 'em out on the Shad Taxi.

I'm still seeing alot of bait on the surface, so any day now, the stripers should start busting. I'd say the the action will really heat up this week since the stripers weren't able to eat this weekend because of the traffic. The temps dropped back down to the mid-high 70's.

May 27 - 28 A cold-front came through on Thursday am and pushed the stripers down to 30 feet from 15 feet. Caught a couple, missed a couple, had a nice fish on and the hook pulled, but had a great time with my clients!

"The Doctor" with a pretty SML striper that didn't have the parasite!

May 24 -26 All week had thunderstorms chasing us off the lake. oh well.....tough week....

May 20 - 23 Consistent bite right now. The boat traffic is the only hinderance. The Poker Run was this weekend so it was hard to have any peace and quiet. But we still put a bunch of fish in the boat. The fish are 'stuck' around 10 -15 feet deep. Planers and Freelines are the ticket. We've been keeping stripers lately since the water temps are getting high.

May 16-19 The stripers are moving at an impressive rate up the lake and spreading out. The ticket is to find a major dropoff from 20 feet to 60+ feet and freeline the ledges at the 30 foot mark. The stripers are spreading out as well, but may school up by June like they did last year. Water has heated up to 75 - 77 degrees.

May 14 -15 Alot of small stripers around the areas of the dam. We targeted bigger fish with little success.

May 10-13 The stripers are in full spawn now. Some are spawning in the keys, and alot are spawning at the Dam. The action is intense when the stripers take a break from doing their dance.

May 3-7, The action has picked back up dramatically and is pretty consistent. Good sizes and good numbers each day. The stripers are beginning to hit the BIG BAIT now!

April 27 - May 2, Great fishing one day, sparatic the next... The bite is slow during the high-sun hours. Freelines and planers with alewives are key. We caught a 15lber on a big gizzard, but other than that, no hits on gizzards. The fluke has saved the day on several outings.

April 23 -26 The fishing has really picked back up after a couple of disappointing outings. The fish are scattered throughout the entire lake, but have not moved into the keys yet. I did a weekend scouting trip and caught stripers about every 'good spot' from Indian Pt to the dam.

April 14 -22 Hot weather has suddenly raised the water temps from 50 to 65 degrees. The Alewives are in full spawn mode and the stripers are scattered throughout the lake in small schools. They have not been as active as they should be at this point in the season. I have not seen any obvious movement to the keys yet.

April 11-13 Cold and wet weather has hurt the fishing a little. We've got into some busting stripers and bass each morning and evening, but somewhat tough fishing during the day. We received 2-4 inches of rain this week so be prepared for muddy water and floating debris.

April 9-10, The action continued to slow down this weekend. Pretty disappointing. Some cold, wet weather moved in and hurt the bite. I'll continue to post reports and let everyone know when they start back up.

April 8, The Stripers slowed down a bit for us yesterday, but we did manage to put 18 in the boat. Not nearly as much surface action as the previous 2 days. The birds had a hard time finding the activity. A small front pushed through yesterday evening. Water is almost 55 degrees at Smith Mountain Lake.

April 7, The stripers are still biting great, so I took my dad out for a quick trip. My dad hooked up on his 2nd cast!! He also caught a very nice striper deep on a fluke. My camera batteries decided to die when I turned it on, so I wasn't able to get his mug shot. We totaled 26 stripers, and released every fish in great shape and I hope everyone else is conserving our great fishery.

April 6, The stripers broke loose again, and they're busting everywhere on the lake now. I've talked to people on Blackwater side and the upper Roanoke side and the stripers are pushing the bait up and busting near dusk. We caught 30+ stripers today and 2 monster largemouths. All fish released in great shape. Book an "After Work" trip with the Shad Taxi for $125 and we'll chase these busting stripers until 9-10pm. The water temperatures on Smith Mountain Lake are 51-54 degrees.

March 22-30 About the same report as last week, except the water temps are mid to low 50's. We've had more luck seeing busting stripers this week. The stripers are corraling the bait into main channel coves and busting them when the light is low. Released every striper in great shape.

March 16-21 Great action in the mornings and evenings by using a combination of live bait and artificials. It has been extremely windy this week which makes it hard to effectively pull planers and floats. The water temps are nearing the 50 degree mark and the water is muddy in the upper portions of the lake. Flukes are the artificial bait of choice and both big gizzards and alewives are the live bait of choice. We released every fish in great shape.

March 8-15 Sorry about the the delay in the reports. Been fishing too much! The stripers finally broke loose yesterday and we got into some great action pulling bait and casting to busting and blitzing stripers. The water temps have come up to almost 50 degrees and there's bait everywhere on the surface in the main channel. The stripers are not schooled up, but in groups of 3-4 and extremely active and moving fast. We caught the most on flukes/white jig heads, where we retrieved them with an erratic motion about 10 feet below the surface. We found most of the stripers concentrating on Rip Rapped points.

March 3-7 The bite is inconsistent right now. The fish are where they are supposed to be, but some have been staging a little too deep and have been a little less active than they should be at this time of the year. One day the fish are in 10 foot of water, the next they're 40 feet deep. Regardless, we got into some decent fish by fishing big bait in the trees, 30 feet down. If the weather will steady, the bite should be more predictable. I will post some new recordings this week.

March 1 and 2 - Finally. The stripers are starting to "show-off" now. By that I mean that the stripers are stalking our Planer board baits and then slapping them out of the water, or playing with the bait before eating them, etc. This morning I had 6 or 7 shad knocked off of the hooks. Pretty Exciting fishing...

February 24-29- Evening trips are doing better than the mornings now. Planer boards are still on fire, but tough because of all the floating debris in the water. Its been great weather the past couple of days and the stripers are increasingly becoming more active.

February 19-23 The stripers have moved higher in the water column and are hitting good early and late in the day. Free-lined planer boards are the key.

Alewife

Sunrise on Smith Mountain.

An average Smith Mountain Lake striper.

February 16-18 The stripers that have been schooled up in deep water are breaking into smaller schools now. There are individual fish showing up in the shallower water too. Most of the fish that are active are in the 18-30 foot range and the schooling fish are down around 45-60 feet. It has been an absolute text-book winter for the cold weather bite, many 30+ fish days, and hopefully the spring bite will happen as it should with the stripers cruising the banks looking for bait throughout the day. The water temps are 38-40 degrees now. The weather has been getting warmer lately and will slowly increase the water temps to the point where the stripers will follow the bait to the creeks.

February 9-15, this week the stripers started to slowly come back into the creeks which are starting to clear up. The gizzards are also moving back into some of the creeks that are still muddy. The action was somewhat inconsistent with the changing weather. We pulled planer boards with free-lines mostly since we've been seeing alot of fish up high in the water column (15-18 feet) The water temps are generally from 35-40 degrees.

Pulling planers boards during the snow storms.

This is what we call a "Money-Maker" gizzard shad.

This is a "Monster" gizzard shad.

February 7- Too windy for an enjoyable day of striper fishing. Some family members and I went out anyway, just to confirm the windy weather. Yep, it was windy.

February 1- A beautiful day on the lake, with not even a slight breeze. We got into the stripers right off the bat, and we jigged spoons to replicate the day that we had yesterday. Simply awesome day of fishing.

January 31- A great day for striper fishing on Smith Mountain Lake. We went out at 11:00am and we had to check 6 different spots before we found active stripers. So it pays off now to keep moving until you find them. The fish are moving fast around certain landmarks and if you can find the specific landmarks, you're in business. We caught a ton of stripers on spoons, and we lost about 5 or 6 spoons in trees, since the stripers wouldn't come out of it. We had a bunch of multiple hook-ups, like in this picture.

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I recorded some pretty interesting sonar readings too.

January 25- It was bad weather on Smith Mounatin lake today with snow and ice so I just went out by myself to do some scouting. I found the birds working a secondary point at 7:30am with the stripers pushing shad up on the rip rap. The stripers were only active for about an hour though. I marked alot of stripers suspended and inactive in deep water.The wind and snow cut my scouting trip short.

January 24- The striper fishing action on Smith Mountain Lake has started back up. An impending snow storm was coming in later in the evening and we decided to fish in the afternoon to take advantage of the front coming in. The stripers started biting at 2:00 and never stopped. We came in around 5:30. The stripers are starting to break up into smaller schools and individuals now and are associating with soft bottomed humps. The desired depth was 35 feet for active fish. The hopkins spoon is the ticket. Most of the stripers have mud all over them from feeding on the bottom. I recorded some new sonar readings that were pretty interesting and if they turn out, I'll post them.

January 17- A nice day to fish, except for the stripers not biting. We tried several points that had been holding fish all week, but the fish never showed up. I talked to some other guys and they said that the fish never showed up on their spots on the 18th either. I'm not sure why this is since the weather was relatively stable with overcast days and rainy nights. For those trips that I rescheduled: I will contact you as soon as the action heats back up on Smith Mountain Lake.

January 14- Another textbook day of winter fishing. It was windy and hard to stay on a specific spot, but we had some great action. My guests hadn't jigged spoons before, and it takes a little practice before you can "see" the bite. When they got the hang of it, the stripers didn't stand a chance. Here's my take on jigging spoons for stripers: 1. Pull the spoon up pretty fast and at a slight angle either way, so that the spoon will flutter back down flatways. Once you get good at it, you don't have to pull it up at an angle, you can just flick your rod at the end of the pull. 2. Let the spoon free fall back down, with a foot or two of slack behind it. Follow this slack with your rod tip. If you let it fall with tension in the line, the spoon will fall in a vertical position and it won't flutter. 3. While you're following the slack with your rodtip, if the line even stops for a second, set the hook. You won't feel the striper hitting the spoon most of the time, so you have to look for the bite. 4. Even experienced "spooners" miss alot of fish, so don't worry about the misses.

After the jigging bite slowed down, we put some bait out and caught a nice largemouth and missed what seemed to be a pretty nice striper. Monster alewives have been the bait of choice lately. Also, when jigging, jig in the timber as well as clean points. The fish are moving right now, so its better to stick on a good point instead of trying to search out a school. The fish are there, don't worry.

January 11- It was only 9 degrees this morning but we caught over 30 stripers in 2 hours. If you don't mind the cold and want some great action on light tackle, now's the time. The water temperature at Smith Mountain is 39-46 degrees and the stripers are seeking out the warmer spots. It was a great day of striper fishing with the stripers doing exactly what was planned. Simply awesome fishing.

January 10- It was 12 degrees while I was netting shad and alewives- it was extremely cold with the net freezing as soon as you pulled it out of the water. Anyway, it was worth it, because we got into some nice fish. We caught 12 stripers and 5 of those were 10, 10, 12, 13 and 16lbs and the rest were 4-8lbs. Most were caught on hopkins spoon. The stripers are hugging to the bottom and its hard to find them by looking for arches on your sonar. This time of the year is when experience and knowledge comes into play instead of luck. Each of the spots that we fished today were the exact same spots that produced well last winter.

January 4- Short striper fishing trip. 4 stripers on alewives 2 on hopkins and 1 on fluke. A front moved in around 11 and and they started rushing the points and then they shut off. All of the stripers were small to average. Everyone I talked to is having similar luck. Just spotty action with not many big stripers.

January 3- Went scouting from the S-Curves to Smith Mountain Dam. Plenty of striper schools around the S-Curves to Bernards, but nothing around the dam. Water is 47-49 degrees in the main channel. The air temperature was 74 degrees!

January 2- It was a pretty nasty morning on Smith Mountain Lake. Rain, wind and cold. The stripers were moving extremely fast in every spot that we fished. Marked active schools all morning but only got 1 striper until 11am and we caught 6 stripers and lost as many more because of multiple hookups. They didn't want the jigs today.

December 31 - Tried the same area as yesterday and caught some nice fish again. The stripers are biting the best before sunrise and if you can stand the cold, you'll catch some nice fish. The stripers were busting bait on the surface until about 7:30am. After 9:00am we didn't get a bite on bait but we missed a couple by jigging spoons on suspended fish in deep water. The birds are finally starting to work a little. I think the winter pattern is on at Smith Mountain Lake.

December 30 - We got out on the water at 6:00am in order to beat a cold front moving in. The bite was on for an hour until the sun came up and the wind and cold weather came through. Ended up with some nice stripers 12-14 lbs caught on monster alewives.

December 25-29 - We went fishing each day for stripers with similar results each day. 1-5 stripers on live bait and 5-10 stripers on jigged spoons each day. The bite has turned off temporarily and the fish are transitioning to deep water patterns. Most of the fish were caught 40 feet deep in 60+ feet of water. The stripers are biting in 20-30 feet water early and late in the day and seem to bite better with no sun at all. Caught several nice stripers after dark on the 29th on alewives.

December 24 - The stripers have turned off of their fall pattern and have started to go deep. We went out this morning and only ended up with 1 small striper on bait. We had several misses on Flukes but nothing like it has been. I guess the winter pattern has begun.

December 23 - I went out this morning by myself just to test the water. The fish are still biting although the water temps are now in the mid 40's. Caught 7 stripers and 1 bass in 2.5 hours. The fish are a little deeper than they have been, so the deeper timber and points will start to produce better. The bait has moved deeper and now are in the trees too.

December 15-22 Away on Business.

December 13 - The bait was hard to come by in our area so we just used artificials and caught 12 total and lost about 5 more at the boat. All stripers caught on flukes, sassy's, and hopkins spoons. The small bait has moved to the deep parts of the creeks and are holding at 30-40 feet deep. The stripers are active, so it doesn't take much to catch some nice, hard fighting fish. The Water temps are dropping steadily and are 49-50 degrees in the midlake areas.

December 12 Smith Mountain - Beautiful day on Smith Mountain Lake, the wind finally died down and we went out for a quick afternoon trip. We caught 8 stripers jigging flukes on very active schools. The stripers are on the points, 20-30 feet deep. At dusk the stripers came up in a cove that we were fishing and were busting bait until it got completely dark.

December 11 Smith Mountain - Braved the 30-50mph winds today to take some family members fishing. The fish were extremely active and we used the same techniques as outlined below in the other reports. We boated a good number of stripers before we called it a day on account of the wind. The bait of choice today- pearl and chartreuse fluke bodies on 3/4 ounce jig heads on light spinning tackle with 12lb test. We only caught smaller to average stripers today from 4 to 9lbs, but still a blast. There were white caps on Smith Mountain today, so didn't try our spots upriver so we fished the midlake areas. There are fish on all secondary points so you don't have to look long. Good fishing.

December 7 - Another day of wind and cold on Smith Mountain Lake. I went out at 5:30am to catch bait and it was the first day this year that my net was freezing up and water freezing into an inch layer on the bow from bringing the cast net in. Fun stuff…. Anyway, the small bait have left the shallows temporarily until the water temps get higher in the shallows than in deep water. The big gizzards are schooling up in the shallow water areas and if you hit them just right you can get a net full in one throw. Look for them porpoising early in the morning and you can get all you want.
We fished the same pattern as the day before and it worked perfectly. We caught 15 stripers before 9:30am, all nice size stripers. The pattern right now is to find extended points that slope from 20 to 50 feet and are clear of timber. Start at the 20 foot depth and drop your jig to the bottom and jig it for a couple of times and wind up several feet and jig again, and wind up several feet, etc. etc. Slowly drift your boat away from the point until you find active fish. The stripers are hugging to the bottom right now and even my X-15 has a hard time distinguishing fish from the bottom, but after awhile you see the fish by looking for bottoms that are “too soft” and it will be a layer of fish. On multiple occasions we drifted over “too soft” bottoms and after we dropped our jigs, dozens of b-lines came up from the bottom to check out our bait. Also, the stripers are hitting the jig more when you are reeling the jig in rather than jigging, so if you locate a school and can’t get them to hit jigging, just back off the are and cast to spot, let it sink to the bottom, and reel it in with different retrieves.
Today, Flukes were the jig of choice. White jig heads and pearl bodies. We were using light spinning tackle with 12lb test, so the fight is amazing. All stripers released in great shape.

December 6 - An extremely windy day on Smith Mountain Lake, not to mention the cold. We went out fishing anyway and we’re glad we did. The stripers are very active right now and they are in a defined pattern. We were fishing secondary points in major creeks and the stripers are feeding all day long in these areas. We started out live bait fishing, but the wind made that impossible so we switched to jigging and we ended up with close to 20 stripers before 10am. All of the stripers are nice size averaging around 8-9lbs with a couple of 13 pounders mixed in. The fish are fighting like crazy now since the water temps are to their liking – 52 degrees. We used different types of jigs from flukes to grubs to bucktails, but today the stripers preferred the Cabela’s “living eye” plastic jig. These jigs were the greenish tint with a white jig head. These jigs imitate alewives perfectly and have a lot of action. All stripers released

November 28 - We took a party fishing for a post-Thanksgiving trip. We were worried about a Cold Front moving in and we were hoping to get on the stripers before the front pushed through. The front didn't move in until around noon and we caught alot of nice fish from 9am-noon. The wind was blowing hard so we jigged plastics mostly and pulled big live gizzards on floats and planers. The plastics were on fire! We were jigging on points at 30 feet depths and the schools would come through every 10 minutes or so and we all would get one on. All of the stripers caught on plastics were nice 8-12 pounders. We also caught 2 nice stripers at 14 and 15 pounds on huge gizzards. The bigger stripers are showing up on Smith Mountain Lake now and there seems to be a strong class of 13-15 pounders this year. Now for the 30-40 lb stripers...

November 18-26 Away on Business

November 17 - Great Day for striper fishing on Smith Mountain Lake. Foggy, rainy and no boat traffic except for a bass tournament going on. Caught 5 fish, about average size. Lost 2 monster stripers at the boat with pulled hooks. Saw some nice stripers busting shad in the shallows.

November 16 Smith Mountain Lake - The Stripers turned back on finally at Smith Mountain Lake. At 3:00pm the stripers started getting active and were shooting up from 30 feet to our downlines and floats at 22 feet. We got into a school of really nice stripers with the first two being 15 and 14lbs, which were caught simultaneously. After that we picked 4 more stripers on live bait from 8-10 lbs. The stripers started blitzing the shad in the shallows so we switched to casting and hooked 4 more smaller ones on flukes and missed as many more. All stripers released in great shape- the water temp is 59 degrees.

November 9 -Terrible day to fish. The day after a cold front settles in is never a good day of fishing. No stripers caught. It will take a couple days of steady weather to bring them back from their deep retreats on Smith Mountain Lake.

November 8 - Fished the mid-Smith Mountain lake areas and found several big schools of very active fish. Caught stripers consistently for 4 hours 11am-3pm before they slowed down as the secondary cold front set in.

November 2-7 Away on business

November 1srt - We caught 12 off live bait and then many more by casting to stripers blitzing the bait on the shore. There were few frenzies that were organized and the stripers seemed to blitz certain shorelines repeatedly at random times. The ones we caught on live bait were downlined at 22 feet. All of our stripers were the same generation Smith Mountain Lake stripers at 5-7lbs.

November - A good number of stripers at Smith Mountain Lake have moved uplake to the river area. This includes Tennis Court, Moormans, and the Hardy Bridge areas. The fish in these areas are schooled up tight and moving around rapidly chasing schools of shad. The shad population this year is at least doubled from the past couple of years so there are plenty of spots to fish.

October 30 - An afternoon charter took us to the Tennis Courts were we hit several big schools of stripers. The stripers were schooled about 35 feet deep in the channel and didn't have a problem coming up to our downlines at 20-30 feet. At dusk, we found a good school of busting stripers and caught several on Redfins and Flukes before they went down. Great afternoon of striper fishing on Smith Mountain Lake.

October 26 Smith Mountain Lake - We went out for a quick 2 hour trip of "jump fishing" and fished around Grimes Creek and Beaver Dam area. We hooked up with several smaller stripers but nothing outstanding.

October 25 - My fishing partner Lucas C. and I fished the Fall NSBA tournament at Smith Mountain Lake. The day started out extremely foggy and we had to go 10 miles upriver almost totally by GPS. We decided to only use monster shad in order to filter out any smaller stripers. At first light we had 3 or 4 short runs on downlines and we had a nice striper take a planer for a underwater ride. Around 7am, the fog had lifted and the tournament guys finally made it up lake to our area. All of the traffic spooked the fish that we were set up on and so we moved on to pull planers with big shad on the banks. We had a really nice striper blow up on one but could not get it to take it. From there we moved on to secondary creeks and we caught several small stripers that we felt weren't worthy of weighing in. We should have though, because the winning tournament weight was 12lbs.

October 24 Smith Mountain Lake - We took some clients upriver on Smith Mountain lake to downline some monster shad in submerged trees that have been holding good stripers. At 4:40pm we hooked up with 3 stripers that topped out at 13 and 14 pounds. We caught several small stripers by pulling planer boards up on shallow points. This time of the year, its difficult to troll around in order to locate stripers because they're schooling up at 20 feet and moving fast and cruising the banks. Its better to pick a good location and wait for them to show up at your lines or slow troll your planers near the banks. Since we caught several decent fish my partner and I decided to fish the Fall NSBA tournament which was occurring the next day.

October 23 - We fished S-Curves in which the fish are holding deep off main channel points and submerged islands. We caught several 8 lbers by jigging hopkins spoons 50 ft deep. We then moved on to the coves while the sun lowered. We hooked up with several more on downlined shad.