My Wife, Son, and I took a week of vacation at our favorite spot…..Norris lake. Low rainfall has the lake way down from summer pool. It is clear as I have ever seen it. My wife asked me if they treated it with Auqua-shade!!! The water quality is excellent, and the stripes still have the run of the lake with good O2 everywhere. Good for the fish, bad for the fishermen. They are still scattered everywhere, and have not schooled back up after the spawn. Finding fish was tough, and when we did find some, they'd be gone by the time we got one of them reeled in. However, we managed a few every evening. We did not fish hard. The only morning we fished, my son and I made a 18 mile trip one way up close to the dam. My wife is getting the hang of this striper fishing. She got the best fish of the trip, and her PB!! She is already wanting to go again in the fall. (I have her right where I want her!!! ) I have to teach her how to net gizzard shad now!!!! Here are some pics of the better fish.

Nice!

Catching big fish & family time all @ the same time......good deal......striperwhisperer!

Looks like fun to me! I went to Norris one time for stripers but the wind kept us off the main lake.

When you going to quit fishing with live bait and use real lures??? :p h.h.

HH,

I still use the riggers to pull jigs, etc to search for fish when I don't know where they are at. Moving up the lake at 3 MPH vs. drifting with live bait lets me cover a lot more ground. I really don't like reeling them in from 150' back. I don't keep many true stripers, and release all I can. This time of year, thats a sure death for a big fish. Also not quite the thrill as one smashing a big shad under the boat, and bending the whole rod down in the water!!! SO, to answer your question……..not any time soon!!!

You troll at only 3 mph? I would think for such a big fish you would be in the 5-6 mph range.

Stripers are new to me but trolling is not and Ive found speeding up will trigger fish into a reaction bite when they are not actively feeding.

If I am reading you post right, in the summer you want to land them quick so they don't exasperate? Do you have to revive them first before releasing? h.h.

Oh, by the way you might as well get use to being the first mate! h.h.

Now that's a lot of filets. Nice Job

RARELY pull the riggers over 3MPH. Big stripers are like me…..fat and lazy, and won't chase much. Smaller schoolies you can't pull fast enough to keep it away from them if they want it.

When fish are inactive, I do the ole "stop and go". The clearer the water, and spookier the fish are, the farther back I pull jigs. Up to 200' back. If I see inactive fish suspended and loafing on the sonar, I will estimate when the baits are close, and throw the kicker into neutral. Depending how deep they are, I count it down to let the baits fall below the fish. I put it back in gear, and goose it up to 3-4 MPH for a short distance. That will trigger them into a short chase, and often a reaction bite.

A big stripe will literally fight to the death. Anything over about 12lbs is really susceptible to stress induced death WHEN IT GETS WARM. The biggest factor is water temperature. The warmer the water, the more susceptible they are. 75 degree surface temp is when you have to start being careful. A lot of other factors come into play, like how they are handled, and how long they are out of the water, etc. Just plan on any fish over 15lb, in 80 degree water not making it. Just because they swim away, don't assume they live. Lots of delayed mortality studies out there where they go to the bottom, and die later unseen. Lactic acid buildup from the fight in their muscle tissue basically cramps them up, and they go to the bottom. Striper HAS to swim to breath. They can not stay stationary for very long at all. This time of year, we catch our legal limit, regardless of whether we release them or not, and quit. Les's big fish died. I tried for over 20 minutes to revive it. However, the longer it was in the 83 degree water, the worse it got. After the 5'th time it came to to the top belly up, I put it in the cooler. The rest went back pissed off. I am confident they were good to go.

Looks like such a great time.

Interesting, thanks for the info. h.h.

Was this last week on Norris? I was there for 2 days!!!

Great job.

Yes it was. AND, I could have used somebody to go out in the mornings with me……...

Great Work Yaz!!

I haven't been on this site for a while. Frankly because I get tired of all the pissin' and moanin' about whose right and wrong. This is the type of post that keeps me coming back. I don't know anything about fishing for stripers. I enjoyed the explanation about trolling and how the temp. affects the fish. We need more posts like this. Looks like an awesome time.

That is an awesome time on the water with family for sure!
Congrats on the great get-away! Great fish and pics, thx for sharing y'all.