Lake Norman striper fishing heats up now

Striped bass are starting to return to their summer haunts at Lake Norman, and fishing success is rising along with temperatures.

“It’s been balls to the wall recently,” said Capt. Craig Price of Denver (704-996-0946, www.fishonlakenorman.com), a local guide. “Striper fishing has been as good as it has all spring.”

Warm weather and lots of rain have followed on the heels of a relatively cool spring and triggered the recent hotter-than-normal striped bass bite.

“”We’ve had a really radical rise in the water temperature, up to the 80-degree barrier, and a bunch of rain that’s dumping baitfish out of the creeks toward the old river channel,” Price said. “Stripers are following the baitfish and getting on their summer pattern.”

Price remains a dedicated live-bait angler, using herring and shad to catch stripers in 25 to 50 feet of water.

“We’ve caught some small fish but also some of the nicest stripers for Lake Norman you’ll see, running in the 7- to 8-pound range, which is big for this lake,” he said.

Price knows several locations that hold fish during summer, and he uses a trolling motor and lead weighted Carolina rigs to drag live baits in front of these fish.

“You see those guys pulling artificial lures up and down the lake, they’re just looking to run across a school of stripers accidentally,” he said. “But slow-trolling 1/2 to 1 mph like I do you don’t cover a lot of ground, so I go places I know should hold fish.”

Price often chooses free lines or rigs baitfish with split lead shots early in the morning and slow trolls near points at creek channels, then when the sun rises, he moves to deeper water and uses heavier weights, as much as 3 ounces.

“Baitfish and stripers use the river and creek channels as highways, but baitfish orient on some type of structure and that’s where the stripers will be,” Price said. “I fish small, concentrated areas and the fish will either be there or they won’t. But they’ll be there at some time.”

In addition to stripers, Price said he also catches blue and channel catfish in the same areas and often runs across a school of spotted bass.

“Once they put herring in the lake, spots from 1 to 3 pounds started acting like stripers,” he said. “They school and swim offshore now. I can’t tell anymore if the arcs I see on my fish-finder are stripers or spotted bass.”