Earning Your Stripes

March on Badin Lake can mean great action on striped bass.

In 1944, a newly married Marine Corps pilot was ferrying a Navy B-25 Bomber from a munitions supply station in Ohio to Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station.

The pilot and his co-pilot were delayed by weather and forced to land at Morris Field in Charlotte. The airmen spent the night in the pilot’s hometown of Palmerville on the banks of what is now called Badin Lake, allowing the pilot a few hours of precious family time with his bride.

The next morning, the plane circled Palmer Mountain in a pre-arranged signal to let the pilot’s wife know he was headed on to Cherry Point rather than back to Charlotte. On the third circuit of the mountain, the plane made a sputtering sound, followed by a loud explosion. The plane crashed into the lake. The bride never saw the plane nor its occupants again.

Badin Lake was built on the Yadkin River in 1917 by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). It covered 5,350 acres, with 115 miles of shoreline and a maximum depth of 190 feet. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy designated 43,000 acres of Montgomery, Randolph and Davidson counties as the Uwharrie National Forest. A large part of Badin Lake’s shoreline adjoins the national forest, which serves to enhance the lake’s beauty.

Along with its history and natural beauty, fishing is another of the many appeals of Badin Lake — especially fishing for striped bass in March. Henry Sikes of Lexington should know. Sikes grew up around Badin and went on to earn a reputation as a formidable tournament angler for both inland striped bass and king mackerel along the coast.

“Depending on the water temperatures, stripers may already be on the move up the lake in March, heading towards Tuckertown Dam, or (they) are staging on main-lake points getting ready to make their move,” said Sikes. “Rainfall dictates a lot of the movement, and when the water temps reach the mid-60s, they start moving.”

Sikes said that striped bass will feed heavily before and during their upriver spawning migration. Because of their feeding habits, Sikes has a strong preference for trolling live baits along the edges of main-lake points, targeting underwater bottom structure in search of willing stripers.

His favorite place to find stripers is along the western bank of the lake between Palmer Mountain and Graveyard Island, near a small community called Palmerville.

“The distance between Palmer Mountain and Graveyard Island is about two miles,” he said, “and this area is chuck full of bumps and humps, rockpiles and underwater islands. The main Yadkin River channel also runs to the east of this area, giving the fish a good stopover point on their way up the river. It’s prime striper habitat.”

Sikes and his striper fishing outfit, Team Last Chance, have earned a formidable reputation for top finishes in tournaments across the country, and freelining live baits is how they got there. His live bait of choice is a 6- to 10-inch gizzard shad. Sikes doesn’t have to look far to find shad for bait, getting all he needs by throwing a cast net in the backs of a couple of creeks the night before or just before he heads out fishing.

“Badin has a ton of bait in it, and it’s real easy to get,” he said. “I’ll go to the back of Lane’s Chapel or Garr Creek, and (I) can fill my bait tank in just a couple of throws. Otherwise, I can make a trip up behind Tuckertown, and I can keep it alive in my bait tank for several days ’til I get ready to use it.”

Sikes uses a Minn Kota trolling motor with an auto-pilot feature that lets him set the course and speed at around one mph and pretty much forget about it until he has to turn around and go back. Off each side of the boat, he deploys up to five rods outfitted with bright orange Offshore planer boards to spread the baits out away from the boat and over the tops of the shallow structure where Badin’s stripers are lurking.

“We use the boards on each side of the boat and one bait under a balloon rig way back behind us, while another gizzard is just freelined about 50 yards straight back,” he said.

The setup is pretty standard for striper fishing: medium-heavy Ugly Stik casting rods outfitted with Garcia 6500 or 7000 baitcast reels. A 6-foot length of Yozuri fluorocarbon leader is tied to the main 20-pound test line via a barrel swivel, and a 5/0 Gamakatsu wide gap shiner hook is added to the business end of the line. On occasion, a split shot will be added to the 50-foot freeline to get one bait a little deeper.

“Ideally, we want the boat in 15 to 20 feet of water and our baits running up along the shallows anywhere from 10 feet to six inches,” Sikes said. “That puts baits on the other side of the boat, suspended out toward deeper water. Most of the time, the bite comes on the shallow side or on the balloon rig that might be as much as 200 feet back.”

Sikes said he relies more on his local knowledge of the lake’s bottom than he does finding fish on his graph. He admits he uses his electronics more to gauge water temperature, depth and speed than to actually see fish. He feels the cone angle only reflects what is beneath the boat, and he expects to catch fish holding on structure up to 40 yards off the side of the boat — another reason he doesn’t use weights on his freelines.

“If I run the baits up on a hump that I expect to hold fish, sometimes I’ll shut the trolling motor off and just let the bait sit out there,” he said. “A lot of times that bait will pop up on the surface or skip across the water trying to get out of there. That’s usually followed by a big swirl and a rod bending double.”

While Sikes trolls live baits on the western bank of Badin this month, you’re more likely to find guide Jerry Hill working the opposite shore with artificials. Hill, who’s from Denton, prefers to troll artificials year-round and said he can catch numbers of Badin stripers this month with a bait that he makes himself — a Jerry’s Homemade Bucktail jig.

“I like to troll around the islands at the mouth of Glady’s Fork and up in Buffalo Creek, Machine Creek and out in front of ‘Fishtales’ on Reynolds Creek,” said Hill who also guides for striped bass on High Rock Lake. “I’ll target suspended stripers in 12 to 15 feet of water and troll my jigs off of downrigger balls to get to them.”

Hill said that stripers will feed up at at this time of year just before they go into false spawning mode, and he said they’ll eat like crazy. He suggests that fishermen get on the lake early, because he’s found that Badin’s stripers are more active at first light than any other time of day. He’s also found that cloudy, rainy days will keep them feeding up into the day. He offers a valuable tip for newcomers to the lake who may have trouble locating fish.

“Watch for the birds: seagulls, loons and terns,” he said. “If the birds are just sitting around on the water, there’s probably stripers and bait under them that are too deep for the birds to get at.

“Early in the morning, when the fish push the bait up close to the surface, you’ll see birds diving and wheeling and picking off baitfish. That’s a dead giveaway — you can see the birds from a long way off. The fish are right below them.”