The night fishing for striped bass at Lake Hartwell has been almost too good of late.”I’ve had some customers get aggravated,” said longtime guide Buster Green. “With some people it’s all about catching a limit. But there’s another type of customer who wants to get away from the telephone and relax.”
It’s hard to relax when you’re catching 30 or more striped bass in an hour.
“One night we caught 42 fish in 58 minutes — and that was only in about 31 minutes of actual fishing time,” Green said.
Green, a 26-year Hartwell guide who runs Buster Green’s Guide Service (864-277-2463), said the striped bass bite has been good throughout the late summer, and he expects it to continue for another few weeks.
“When you’ve got the bright sun and the hot water and a lot of boat traffic, the stripers bury up in the trees down deep,” Green said. “When night comes, they’re ready to feed all night.”
Green typically hits the water around 8 p.m.; he’s usually home by midnight, seldom without having witnessed each client fill their 10-fish limit. The stripers haven’t been super-sized, with most fish running in the 3- to 4-pound range, but with action aplenty and no minimum size limit, the nights are seldom boring.
Green recommends 20-pound-test line on a sinker rig with a 1 1/2-ounce sinker and an 18- to 20-inch leader. Blueback herring is the bait of choice, and Green typically fishes several feet off the bottom in 30 to 50 feet of water.
“It’ll start to dwindle down as it cools off, but right now the fishing’s really too fast,” he said. “If I had my way, one guy would catch a fish, you’d re-bait, then someone would catch another a short time later. It’d be nice to have a trip last three or four hours, at least.”
Be the first to comment