Hot on top – Neuse River stripers are suckers for topwater plugs in the year’s hottest months

Ashley King makes a habit of targeting striped bass in the Neuse River near New Bern with topwater plugs.

Striper fishing isn’t a low-light, cool-weather fishery in North Carolina’s Neuse River

New Bern is home to some of North Carolina’s richest history, and hungriest stripers. Although commonly cast as a passive player on the summer fishing scene, the striped bass of the Neuse River are jumping at the chance to change their reputation by crushing topwater plugs and other lures when the sun is high and the heat is on.

Capt. D. Ashley King of Keep Casting Charters throws conventional wisdom to the wind and topwater baits to aggressive stripers and redfish for most of his time on the water during the summer.

“I do use other lures, but I find they generally prefer topwaters,” said King, who doesn’t limit this bait to low-light periods and overcast days.

“We’ve got a strong northeast wind today; it’s going to push a lot of water up the river,” King said as he sped away from the Lawson Creek Park boat ramp on the Trent River. The water around New Bern hasn’t any noticeable lunar tide but is subject to wind tides that can cause the water level to fluctuate rapidly.

King loves to fish when rising water completely submerges his favorite stump fields, as it sets up a great scenario for a topwater bite.

“This was a good place yesterday,” King said, idling to a stump field just south of the Neuse River Bridge. “Most of the water we’ll fish today will be between 3 and 4 feet deep, almost within casting distance of the shoreline.”

With the water temperature starting out higher than 80 degrees, this seems shallow for a fish that thrives in cool water, but that’s where the baitfish — primarily mullet — will hold, and the wooden cover makes for excellent ambush feeding for stripers.

“You can use any color you want, as long as it’s chartreuse,” King said, revealing his confidence in brightly colored Rapala Skitter Walks and Zara Super Spook Jrs., topwater baits retrieved in a “walk the dog” style that gives the lure a darting, side-to-side motion.

“I like to work them with a faster cadence for stripers and reds and slower for trout,” he said.

At his second stop, King eased into the mouth of a small creek and began working the shoreline. After 15 or 20 minutes on his trolling motor, he saw a boil behind his bait.

“That’s what I love about topwater; even if the fish doesn’t hook up, I know he’s there,” said King, who missed one strike that followed before connecting on the next one. “When you’re fishing topwater, you’ve got to feel the fish before you set the hook, but that’s easier said than done. Topwater strikes shatter the surface of a placid creek like a hand grenade in the bath tub. However, it’s not unusual for a striper to miss on the first attempt.

“I like to pause the bait for a couple seconds, work it quickly for a few feet, and pause it again,” King said. “If they don’t hit it on the retrieve, they’ll power drive it when it stops.”

King said that sometimes, just working the bait quickly away from the fish, as if the baitfish was fleeing, can elicit a series of rapid-fire strikes from the same or multiple fish until there is a hook up.

After almost a dozen fish and that many misses, the bite cooled down, and King moved downstream, hitting a variety of pockets and points on the river without much success. That led him to switch from fishing the leewars side of structure to the windward side; a stiff breeze was blowing. At the side of a large creek mouth, he started casting to a dilapidated dock and a nearby stump field.

King’s hunch was dead on, as the wind had pushed bait up on the windy bank, and stripers pounded on his topwater plugs. bait pushed up on these windy places and hungry stripers pounce on the plugs, with fish hitting on four of five casts. With the sun well on its way to noon — long past what most fishermen would consider prime striper time — King said he knew another windward spot that might produce, a spot that another fishermen had shared with him.

Upon arrival to a string of old dock pilings across the river, King puts the Power Pole down in 2-foot swells and almost immediately locates a school of stripers holding tight to the pilings, with the biggest two weighing more than 4 ½ pounds.

Joe Ward of Flydaddy Chartrs is another fishermen who has spent a great deal of time fishing in and around New Bern, more than 35 years. And he joins King in his love of catching summer stripers.

“Most of my clients want something to take home and eat, which means speckled trout, but if I’m fishing for myself this time of year, I’d start with stripers. They’re a hardier fish and strong fighters,” said Ward, who loves the tenacity of a topwater bite. “There’s something about a topwater bait that will make a fish strike when they won’t strike anything else. It aggravates them; they can’t stand it.”

Ward said that a northeast wind and high water are crucial to a topwater bite.

“You don’t want low water; it forces the fish out of the stump fields and into deeper water,” said Ward, who likes the same topwater baits as King. “I’ll often tie on a Skitter Pop or a Chug Bug for my clients, because they are easier to learn how to work. I like a bone color, chrome or chrome and black, and I increase the size of the bait in lower-light conditions to give them a bigger target,” he says.

Ward likes stump fields near main-river points and into the creek mouths, being partial to those near drop-offs.

“You can catch stripers and puppy drum in the same places. I also fish a lot of docks and pilings,” Ward said, noting that stripers will usually stage upstream of the structure rather than behind it, like most fish. “The stripers want first dibs on everything.”

When the southwest winds blow water out and the river’s running low, Ward has another plan. He leaves the stump fields and goes sub-surface to the drop-offs and channel breaks.

“I start at the top and work my way to the bottom, going from topwater to a diving plug like an X-Rap, to jigs and Flukes, said Ward, who frequents the area bridges, and fishes the channel breaks near structure in 10 to 12 feet of water.

“I like Bass Assassin Flukes around the bridges. White, smoke and flake, and chartreuse are good colors for stripers,” said Ward, who fishes them on 1/4- and 3/8-ounce jigheads.

Ward will also fish Flukes on the deep banks of the upper Neuse, a short distance from New Bern.

“We mark them on the electronics and vertical jig for them,” he said.

The aggression of summer stripers can be impressive, even if the fishery is catch-and-release from May through September.  Explosive strikes, double hook-ups, and countless missed strikes are sure to send the heart racing. They are a big draw to the Neuse in cooler months where they are stereotyped to be most catchable. But with eager fish, plenty of shoreline timber and other options, there’s no need to wait!

DESTINATION INFORMATION

HOW TO GET THERE — US 70 runs east-west and US 17 runs north-south, both through New Bern. Lawson Creek Park is a popular access point just off US 70 on Country Club Road on the Trent River; it features two ramps in different areas of the park. Union Point Park Complex is on E. Front St. at the junction of the Trent and Neuse.

WHEN TO GO — Striped bass can be caught near New Bern for much of the year, with April through December being the best times. During the colder months, many stripers retreat to deeper, more-stable water further up the river and creeks. Prime topwater time revolves around adequate rainfall and/or northeast winds that fill the stump fields to a fishable level. The bite can be tough during low water periods. July and August are excellent for topwater fishing, with the action only ramping up when the water cools.

TACKLE/TECHNIQUES — Medium-light, 7-foot rods are ideal for launching plugs paired with 2500-class Shimano spinning or baitcasting reels spooled with 10-pound braid. A leader of 12 to 18 inches of 20-pound fluorocarbon will help when fishing around stumps and other wooden cover. Any topwater plug will work, with Skitter Walks and Super Spook Jrs., the favorites of many guides. Chartreuse, bone and chrome are favored colors, and a rear treble hook dressed in hair or feathers often sweetens the deal. When fishing deeper water or when the water level is down, diving or sinking plugs and soft-plastic Fluke-style lures.

FISHING INFO/GUIDES — Capt. Ashley King, Keep Castin’ Charters, 910-389-4118; Capt. Joe Ward, FlyDaddy Charters, 252-229-4656.  See also Guides and Charters in Classifieds.

ACCOMMODATIONS — Double Tree by Hilton, New Bern, 866-264-5744; Best Western Plus, New Bern, 866-267-9053.

MAPS — Sealake Products LLC., 800-411-0185, www.thegoodspots.com; Captain Segull’s Nautical Sportfishing Charts, 252-288-5918, www.captainsegullcharts.com

About Dusty Wilson 274 Articles
Dusty Wilson of Raleigh, N.C., is a lifelong outdoorsman. He is the manager of Tarheel Nursery in Angier and can be followed on his blog at InsideNCFishing.com.

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