Summer striped bass fishing is in full swing at Kerr Reservoir.The size of the fish remains generally smaller for trolled lures than in the past, but during some days the striper bite can be excellent.
However, a couple of other techniques — jigging or livebait fishing — can produce more consistent results (and bigger fish) but may require one caveat: spending a lot of time riding the lake looking at a fish-finder and searching out schools of baitfish and larger blips that show gamefish mixed underneath bait schools.
Kerr Lake anglers use live threadfin and gizzard shad, sometimes even frozen shad, but a recent influx of blueback herring has provided another bait source rockfish favor.
“I like jigging for stripers,” said Shane Massey of Henderson, who was fishing for Kerr Lake stripers during a small wildcat tournament the second weekend of July. “It takes some runnin’ around the lake to find fish, and sometimes you’ll have a lot of marks (blips) on your screen, and sometimes you have to spend quite a bit of time runnin’ and lookin’. But when you find the fish, it’s just a matter of dropping a lure down to the bottom and jigging it up, then letting it fall.”
The day before the tournament, while searching for likely spots, Massey caught four stripers in an hour that weighed from 4 to 8 pounds. And that is a typical size these days.
“But there are bigger stripers in the lake,” he said. “Last week a guy caught a 20-pounder. And the day I caught four, I had a fish hit a jigging spoon and he turned the boat sideways 90 degrees before he broke me off.”
Massey said that could have been a big catfish, but cats don’t as a rule attack jigging spoons.
There’s a trick to jigging for stripers at Kerr that anglers need to know. After allowing the spoon (a heavy-weighed spoon of 3 ounces) to drop to the bottom (from 20 to 40 feet of water is the normal depth stripers are found in summer), lift the rod about 4 to 5 feet, then keep the line taut as the lure falls. Don’t allow any slack in the line as it falls. If nothing bites, lift up the lure again, let it drop with a tight line and repeat the process several times.
Stripers almost always hit spoons or bucktails, the favorite two jigging lures at Kerr, while they fall. A slack line won’t allow the angler to feel the hit in most cases while a taut line means a quick upward rod snap will set the hook quickly.
Massey’s favorite spots to check for deep summer Kerr stripers include near Palmer’s Point (close to the Kerr Dam), across the lake on the south side of the Staunton river near the river ledges, then each cove on the west side of Nutbush Creek, the surmerged railroad trestle at Little Nutbush and the trestle near Satterwhite Point in Big Nutbush Creek. Baitfish seem to gather at the slopes of the trestle in both creeks, attracting stripers.
Live-bait anglers usually try the same places, but set up drifts across likely structure or use their trolling motors to maneuver their boats through a school of baitfish they see on depth-finders from 20- to 40-feet deep.
“We’ve had some cool water because of recent rain, but when the (surface) temperature hits about 85 degrees, the stripers will gather in deep holes,” Massey said. “That’s when they’re easier to find; they gang up at those places and there’ll usually be some baitfish there, too.”
Carolina-rigged terminal tackle with a live shad or piece of cut herring is a favorite bait setup. Two-ounce barrel weights with one, two or three dropper hooks above separated by 1 foot and chunk baits on circle hooks are favorite bait sets as well. Or try jigging. Either should work equally well.
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