Stripers are a great winter target for paddlers

The author shows off a 25-pound Lake Hartwell striper, his best-ever from a kayak, on a cold, January day.

Cold weather doesn’t stop these popular gamefish

The striped bass has a long, colorful history, both as a commercial and recreational resource. From the booming commercial fishery in the Northeast in the late 1800s, stripers were transported across the country from New England’s coastal waters to the waters off California, the idea being reproduction of the burgeoning commercial fishery.

Although California’s fishery has never equaled New England’s, striped bass have been caught from just south of the Mexican border to British Columbia’s Barkley Sound. Along the way, they moved into some of California’s freshwater systems. Fluctuating water levels provided passage to and from O’Neill Forebay, San Luis Reservoir and Millerton Lake via San Francisco Bay.

To that end, a 67 1/2-pound fish caught in 1992 from O’Neill Forebay still stands as the freshwater world-record striper.

Stripers feed, no matter how cold

Anglers should never underestimate what stripers will eat, and how they will continue to feed as the water gets colder and colder. A trip years back that produced my personal best kayak striper cemented those two thoughts.

Brad Knight, a Hobie pro staff member from Belton, S.C., and I decided a balmy 9-degree January day with water temperatures in the upper 30s would be perfect conditions to chase striped bass in Lake Hartwell. Knight deployed two umbrella rigs behind his paddlecraft and paddled up to 2 1/2 mph to elicit a bite. He wound up with several chunky hybrid stripers that day.

My plan was to mimic the yearling, threadfin shad dying off in the back of a creek by slow-trolling two 1/8-ounce crappie jigs piggy-backed with live crappie minnows. I was using 10-foot crappie rods and 8-pound line. My reasoning was to match the hatch and see if I could fool a striper.

Big striper takes the bait

On the third pass across a bend in a creek channel, one of my rods bent double and started peeling drag; I was helpless to stop it. But the beauty of fighting large fish with light tackle from a kayak is the boat becomes part of the drag system. I was treated to something like a controlled sleigh ride.

What happened next was more providence than skill. With the spool almost empty, the striper, searching for something to wrap the line around, sought the shelter of a boat dock. Fortunately for me, most of Hartwell’s floating boat docks have no pillars extending to the bottom. This dock was also devoid of cover underneath.

The striper wallowed under the dock, and I managed to salvage my line and gain ground above the fish. A couple of short but tiresome runs brought him to the boat.

The big striper pegged my scales at 25 pounds before I released it. It was the only fish I caught that day, but it was a day to remember.

About Phillip Gentry 815 Articles
Phillip Gentry of Waterloo, S.C., is an avid outdoorsman and said if it swims, flies, hops or crawls, he's usually not too far behind.