With late spring-like weather spreading over the state a month earlier than usual during March, higher-than-normal water temperatures apparently triggered striped bass false migration runs in many piedmont rivers.
The migration attempts are false because stripers have only two rivers (Dan and Roanoke) inside North Carolina long enough to successfully hatch fertilized eggs — yet rockfish are hard-wired to make whoopee anyway each spring no matter where they are.
At the Yadkin chain of lakes, stripers headed upstream this week (April 8-14) before a spring cold front dropped down from the north and shut off the run and the bite.
“We’ve been fishing Badin (Lake) and had good success this week,” said Lexington guide Maynard Edwards (Yadkin Lakes Guide Service, 336-249-6782, www.extremefishingconcepts.com). “The reason is probably because the season is basically early because of hot weather.”
Most of the stripers at High Rock Lake already have gone up river to attempt to spawn.
“But at Badin the stripers can’t go any farther than the Tuckertown Dam,” Edwards said. “Plus, the water’s a little cooler at Badin, so the fish are staging on the main part of the river.”
The 59-year-old Central Davidson high school computer-science teacher said he fishes “humps and other places stripers stop on their way up the river. When they’re like that and get together in a relatively small area, you can work on ’em pretty good.”
Edwards said stripers are easy to spot on his depth-finder, but he also looks for diving birds.
“They dive on shad the stripers push to the surface,” he said.
His main fishing technique combines drifting and slow trolling that Edwards calls “strolling,” which is moving the boat about 1 to 1.5 mph by using his trolling motor.
“We’re fishing artificial lures — 4-inch swim baits with grub jigheads in chartreuse-green, white and bright yellow that some people call lemon,” he said. “But color doesn’t really seem to make much difference to the fish.”
He pulls umbrella rigs and Alabama rigs loaded with either curly-tail or paddle-tail soft-plastic lures.
“Because of the speed (slow) everybody thinks you’re pulling live baits but you’re not,” said Edwards who’s been strolling these lures in 8 to 16 feet of water.
Last Monday was his best day.
“We put in at 7:30 (a.m.) and got off the lake at 12:30 p.m. and so that’s 4 1/2 hours of fishing time and we caught 10 stripers, kept four, lost a bunch, plus three hybrids and 15 largemouth bass from 4 to 5 pounds,” he said. “The stripers were from 3 to 5 pounds, on average.
“We also caught some big white perch and white bass. We caught a little bit of everything.”
Edwards said the mid-week cool snap shut down the bite, but by the weekend temperatures should start climbing again (projected into the 80-degree range), and striper fishing should heat up again along the Yadkin.
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