A day on the water with Jeremy

Cloudy and Cold, Water Temperature 62* mid lake and 55* up lake

Jeremy has wanted to learn how to catch fish consistently on the lake and his plan is to go out with me a few times to see what I do. Today was our first day out and I warned him that it was not the perfect day for catching Stripers but it would be the perfect day to see how I react to adverse conditions [water rising a foot, water temp drop 6* in 6 days, stained water and post hurricane]. We set off looking for bait which naturally had moved over a mile and catching enough to get started. We set out a spread of planner boards right where we caught bait pulling shallow flats. I showed him how to set out a couple then he started doing it on his own. We only had a few out when the first Striper hooked up. After going about 40 more yards another Striper hooked up. Since Jeremy did not want to keep any fish we simply kept pulling the same bank trying to establish a pattern. It didn't take long to realize the Stripers would eat on the bank side only in water less than 9 feet deep. He had the board technique down so we went and caught some more bait and headed out to deeper pastures to hunt some schooling fish. We found what we were looking for so I instructed him how not only to put the downlines out but how to put them right in the fishes face. With conditions like they were today if the bait did not hit the Striper in the face they would not react to the bait. I popped some pics on my Lowrance while we were working some of the schools. The top picture is showing some Stripers holding at 20 feet but not many fish on the side scan. The second picture shows our bait coming into a school of Stripers on the left part of the screen just as we caught a fish. The bait was set at 22 feet. The third pic shows a large school of fish out to the left of the boat on my side scan starting right under the boat and for at least 80 feet out to the left. The forth pic shows where I moved to the left and positioned the boat over the school. Naturally we caught fish in all situations. Jeremy left the water today a little bit more knowledgeable and he passed lesson #1 with flying colors and teeth marks on his thumb to help him remember the day.