David, Mike, Mike and Keith

August 4th, 2009: Sunny and HOT, Water Temperature 85* and Clear.

Since I had a hard time yesterday catching bait I was on the water very early looking for bait. Caught 220 and picked the guys up at High Point at 5:30am. I told them how important it is to deploy the baits exactly like I tell them to and showed them how to do it. I also explained that if they listen to me and do exactly what I say, we should catch 50 Stripers before they shut off which lately has been around 9 o'clock. I looked for about 5 minutes and found a huge school. As it always is on our first set up of the morning everyone is slow and making mistakes, the way I fish is different than what people are accustomed to. We tried to get 10 baits in the water but the fish would not let us, then David threw a 25" fish back in the water. I explained to them that this time of year when the stripers are schooled tightly that if you release that size fish back into the school it alerts the rest of the school and the school will disperse and shut down. I had no sooner said that and the depth finder went blank. These guys were quick learners so we pulled our baits up and went in search of another school. Took about 3 minutes to locate another school, set up on them and caught 7. Lost them, looked for 3 more minutes and found another school and this time the guys were ready, we worked on that school for 25 minutes before 2 guys in a small boat saw us catching fish and pulled up on us, so we gave them that school and went and found another. This school ended up being larger than I thought and everyone hooked up at once, with 27 to 30 inch fish. We had fish going every direction , rods everywhere on the boat, fish all over the floor, then I called the ball, we had our limit in the cooler and had to stop. Not bad timing, we had gone through 200 baits, caught at least 30 keepers and a few non keepers, kept 20 Stripers and released the rest to fight again another day. These guys SPANKED the Stripers this morning , all by 8:15, A GREAT DAY OF FISHING!

I am seeing schools of Stripers positioned and acting like July 1 fish. The lake is still about 1 month behind this year [ One fish was releasing eggs in the livewell]. The month of August should be a great month to fish, unlike past years, I believe the best summer fishing is ahead of us.