Veteran guide Gus Gustafson knows favored underwater routes of Lake Norman stripers, which gives him an advantage in trying to locate these tough-to-catch fish.
In 1963 the formation of Cowans Ford Dam resulted in a Duke Power Company lake nearly as large as the other 10 lakes on the Catawba River combined.
At 32,500 acres, Lake Norman ranked as the largest body of fresh water in North Carolina and appropriately became known as the “inland sea.”When Norman was stocked with striped bass, the lake offered a great opportunity to anglers but also a challenging task. Locating an open-water fish such as striped bass along 520 miles of shoreline requires more than pot luck.
“Norman can be a very intimidating impoundment for the occasional angler,” said Gus Gustafson, a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed captain and striper guide at Norman who owes much of his livelihood to the immensity of the lake. “Fishermen need an understanding of where the fish go, or they’re at a disadvantage.”
Unfortunately, stripers aren’t homebodies as are many other freshwater species. They may move from one end of the lake to the other to satisfy their need for forage and cool, oxygenated water. Or maybe it’s just because they’re originally a saltwater anadromous species, made to roam coastlines from Maine to South Carolina.
Worse yet, Norman doesn’t house an abundant number of stripers.
The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission stocks about 162,000 striper fingerlings a year, but many never grow into adulthood.
“About 16,000 to 20,000 striper fingerlings survive each year,” Gustafson said. “Norman ends up with about a fish per acre which is much less than other striper waters, such as South Carolina’s Lake Murray.
“At Murray, striper fishermen can have a good day even if they don’t know the lake because there’s an overflow of stripers to numerous spots, not just specific places.
“There’s no overflow of fish at Norman. Fishermen have to be at the ‘A’ spot to catch fish. Norman fishermen have to be better than average fishermen because there are less fish per acre. It can get discouraging.”
To catch stripers at Norman, Gustafson said fishermen can hire a guide or learn to find fish on their own.
To locate fish, Gustafson said anglers must know the seasonal movements of stripers.
“In the summer, stripers move to deep water that’s cool and oxygenated,” he said. “In the fall, they move closer to the bank and follow bait into the coves. As the weather gets colder, the fish move back out.
“At Norman, we have two hot holes, the Marshall Steam Station below the Highway 150 bridge and the McGuire Nuclear Station near Cowans Ford Dam.
“During the winter, these two hot-water discharges draw the forage and the stripers. The colder the weather, the better the hot holes.
“In the spring, the fish move shallow again, and the cycle starts over.”
Gustafson said these seasonal movements serve as a starting point for finding fish, but the real key to success is understanding the means by which stripers make their way through the lake.
To help fishermen visualize the movement of stripers, Gustafson draws an analogy to the movement of traffic along a highway.
“Think of the main river channel running through Norman as Interstate 40 and stripers as traffic along the highway,” Gustafson said. “The traffic is always on the move like the stripers at Norman, and like highway traffic, the fish are moving pretty fast.
“Stripers aren’t easy to catch if they’re on the move.
“Just as a highway has roads crossing the main road called junctions or intersections, the main river channel of Norman has ‘roads’ cutting across it in the way of creeks and tributaries.
“And what happens when traffic comes to a major intersection on the highway with its ramps, fast food restaurants, and bridges? Traffic slows down because there are a lot of stopping places and cars can go in any number of directions.
“The same thing happens with stripers when they come to underwater intersections along the main river. They slow down. Creeks meeting creeks or creeks meeting the main river channel are like stopping places to fish. At these places, they often take time to eat before they continue on their journey.
“Just as traffic comes and goes at these places, so do stripers. You have a better chance of catching fish coming and going at these rest stops.
“And what happens when a road is full of curves? The traffic slows down. The more curves in the road, the slower the traffic. The same happens with stripers. That’s why river and channel bends and junctions and humps are good places to fish. Stripers slow down or ‘hold’ at these places.”
Norman also houses actual roads under the water, roads left intact when the lake was filled.
“Old road beds are excellent places to find fish,” Gustafson said. “But not just any road bed. The straight and flat ones aren’t much good because they have no stopping places.
“Look for uneven roads with ditches and crowns formed by the remains of bridges. Stripers don’t know the difference between ditches and creek channels. They’re both the same to fish.”
Gustafson said a lake contour map becomes an indispensable tool to find underwater intersections, road beds, channel and creek bends and other stopping places, such as points and high spots.
When these places are found in conjunction with forage, they’ll likely hold stripers.
Gustafson said a depth-finder is also essential for finding these places and for seeing forage and striped bass. If fishermen don’t know what their depth-finders are showing them, they’re not going to catch many fish.
To this end, Gustafson recommends turning off fish symbols, beeps, and fish-color identifications. These electronic trappings may indicate fish where there aren’t any.
“Have you ever seen fish and heard beeps on your depth-finder but can’t get any fish to bite?” he said. “You always seem to find fish with those things, and those beeps just drive me nuts. Turn all that stuff off.”
Gustafson said those fish symbols and beeps may not be fish at all but rather sound echoes of air bubbles, leaves, turtles or other things, all of which get depicted as fish symbols or various fish colors by these units.
The best indicators of fish, Gustafson said, are arches that resemble inverted Vs on the unit’s screen. Fishermen must learn to interpret these arches.
“Many fishermen think the longer the arch, the bigger the fish,” he said. “That’s not true. Thickness relates to density. The thicker the arch, the bigger the fish.”
Once fishermen recognize fish arches, the position of the arches indicate if the fish are likely to bite or not.
“When you see arches on the bottom of your screen, those fish are inactive,” Gustafson said. “They’re not going to bite. It’s as if your boat is passing over their bed room.
“The higher the arch is off the bottom, the more active the fish. It’s as if they’re in the kitchen or dining room and ready to eat.”
Being able to read images of forage is equally important.
Cloud- or ball-like images represent pods of baitfish. For baitfish, there’s safety in numbers. Shapes remaining intact indicate the baitfish feel secure from predators.
“Baitfish bunch up for safety,” Gustafson said. “Huddled together, they appear as one big fish to keep predators away. Predators may pick off single baitfish along the edges.”
If the pods of baitfish suddenly disperse and resemble bowls of spaghetti or fireworks on the screen, then the baitfish are under attack.
“That’s when it’s going to happen,” Gustafson said. “You’ve found feeding fish.”
Baitfish also group together on the sides of points and drops for security. With points or drops to their backs, they can’t get hit from behind.
“In reality, they’ve cornered themselves,” Gustafson said. “Now they’re more susceptible to hungry predators like stripers, and stripers become more susceptible to fishermen’s baits.”
Gustafson said anglers should fish their baits at depths above the fish arches on their screens.
“Stripers look up for bait, not down,” he said. “They may hit a bait on its way down, but once it gets below them, they won’t go down after it.”
Another way of finding fishing spots at Norman is to observe other fishermen.
“Go out early on a Saturday or Sunday and leave your tackle at home,” Gustafson said. “If there’s a striper tournament going on, all the better.
“Look for striper boats trolling with planer boards or with big fishing rods. If a guy is standing up, he’s usually a bass fisherman; if he’s sitting down, he’s usually a striper fisherman.
“Bring your map and make notes about where the boats are and what the fishermen are doing. Patterns might emerge that will help you find fish the next time you go out.”
Winter and May are two of Gustafson’s favorite times for catching stripers because the fish are easier to find.
In the winter, if the fish haven’t been drawn to the hot holes, Mother Nature provides its own fish finders in the form of diving birds.
When birds start diving madly towards the water, they’re feeding on forage driven to the top by the hungry stripers below. Any bait tossed into the area may get clobbered by a feeding striper.
During January, Gustafson and Craig Price, a licensed captain and guide who assists Gustafson, employed “jump-fishing,” which means jumped from spot to spot in pursuit of diving birds to catch stripers.
Trolling prohibits jumping from place to place, so Gustafson preferred to cast into feeding fish with Berry’s white Flex-It-Spoons. The 3/8-ounce spoon can be thrown long distances into the wind, a critical factor in jump-fishing.
A big motor can drive stripers away if it comes too close to the diving birds. Sometimes, the boat itself frightens the birds away but not necessarily the fish.
“Birds don’t like boats and often fly away when they approach,” Gustafson said. “That doesn’t mean the fish have left. Give the area a try before leaving. While the other boats motor off after the birds, you’ll be left alone with the fish.”
Despite temperatures in the lower 40s and a biting northerly wind of 15 to 20 mph, we caught several stripers that morning, including some in the 5- and 6-pound class, respectable fish for Norman where stripers don’t grow big.
“Any striper over 10 pounds is a trophy fish at Norman,” Gustafson said.
Captain Mike Lundy, a well-known striper fisherman from Stony Point, lowers the bar.
“A 9-pound striper is a big striper at Norman,” he said.
To illustrate, at the Jan. 15 Lake Norman Striper Swipers Winter Open, a one-fish tournament, Shane Causby of Lowell, representing Team J&J, beat 77 teams with a striper weighing 6.20 pounds. Only one other 6-pound fish was caught during the event.
Gustafson and I witnessed the 25.1-pound striper caught by Toby Garmon of Huntersville during the Dec. 5 Norman Fishery Alliance tournament, but a fish of that size is indeed a rarity at Norman.
“Garmon’s striper is the biggest I know of that’s been caught in the past 12 months,” Gustafson said.
Gustafson said May is a great month for shallow-water stripers with most of the fish hovering in 7 feet of water or less along points, clay banks, and flats.
“Don’t be afraid to go as shallow as you can go,” Gustafson said. “The fish will be super shallow on cloudy days. Even under bright skies atmid-day, the fish won’t go deeper than 10 feet. They just slide off the edges and tips of points until the sun goes down.”
One tactic for shallow stripers is to troll small planer boards without weights in conjunction with flatlines, using shad and herring for bait.
Once the water temperature gets above 65 degrees, Gustafson uses hardier baits, such as trout (legal at Norman), shiners, or white perch.
Mornings and evenings, always productive times for stripers, become even better in May. Flukes and topwater baits tossed at striper swirls and slaps will catch plenty of fish, especially at night.
“Once the sun fades behind the trees, the flats become covered with stripers,” Gustafson said.
Many Norman anglers fish Cordell Red Fins during spring.
”They rig the bait so it will just wobble across the surface,” Gustafson said. “The lure resembles a big gizzard shad, and stripers love gizzard shad.”
Unlike other striper fishermen, Gustafson doesn’t run up the river in the spring after stripers, though some nice fish are caught that way.
“The majority of fish don’t go above Buffalo Shoals Road,” he said. “Stocked fish, like those at Norman, don’t have as strong an instinct to make spawning runs as those fish that reproduce naturally, such as the stripers in the Roanoke River.”
During times of the year when the fish aren’t shallow, Gustafson said anglers should cover as much of the water column as possible by trolling down lines with different weights and using planer boards and adjustable slip floats.
Once the fish are located, the lines should be reset to run the baits at the preferred depth.
The importance of planer boards shouldn’t be overlooked.
“Planer boards help you extend your range,” Gustafson said. “You’re at a disadvantage if you’re not covering as much water as someone else.
“In national striper tournaments, fishermen practically cover an entire creek by extending their planer boards far beyond their boats.”
Planer boards also should be used to fish near docks.
“Always have one planer board pass close to boat docks,” Gustafson said. “Some of the biggest stripers at Norman have been caught near docks.
“Boat docks sweetened with Christmas trees act as old-age homes for stripers. Big stripers can’t keep up with the smaller ones, so they linger near boat docks for an easy meal.”
Striper equipment need not be extremely expensive Gustafson said.
“The rods and reels for striper fishing aren’t as critical as some people think,” he said. “Any 7- to 9-foot medium-heavy action rod will do as long as it has a soft tip.
“Most anglers don’t do a lot of casting for stripers, so there’s no need for high-priced reels. When I cast, I use 7-foot spinning rods with spinning reels filled with 10-pound-test line.
“Ambassadeur-type reels are popular for trolling.
“If you’re debating about what to put your money in, put it in a reel not a rod. You need a reel with a good drag for stripers.”
Gustafson said once fishermen grasp the concept of how the underwater network of channels and creeks function as roadways and stopping places for these stripers, they can cut Norman or any other large impoundment down to workable size.
Just look for the fish-holding rest stops along the way.
