Matching the hatch this month means going small
Guide Preston Harden loves to throw artificial baits on wind-blown points to catch striped bass on Lake Hartwell. In contrast to guide Mack Farr’s Bomber bite on the lower end of the lake, Harden fishes the upper end of Hartwell, and he fishes during daytime.
Harden said it’s a similar pattern for the fish, and while the fish he and Farr catches are the same size, the baits he uses are smaller.
“I throw a little Fluke on a Scrounger jig head,” said Harden. “Little Fishies, Flukes, small bucktails — the main thing is they need to be real small. I throw such a small Fluke that you can’t even use a baitcaster because I use 15-pound braid with a diameter of 4- (pound), and I can’t throw that on a bait caster. The reason I use such light line is because I’m throwing an 1/8-ounce jig, but I’m catching 20- or 30-pound fish on that. ”
Harden has trouble getting striped bass to eat anything bigger than a threadfin shad until the water warms substantially in April. That’s the reason he downsizes his artificial offerings to match what the fish are eating.
“The fish just pull up on the bank until the middle of the day. Then, the later it gets in the afternoon, sometimes they’ll just swarm points and banks,” said Harden. “They can be out on the main-river points or they can be up in creeks like Coneross and Eighteen Mile or Beaver Dam. You’ve got to sort of look around and fish for them, but, if you know which creeks they wintered over in, that’s where they’re going to show up.”
Be the first to comment