When Tar Heel anglers think about striped bass fishing during May, they rarely zone in on Jordan Lake near Pittsboro.
The lake’s only 13,900 acres (unlike Kerr’s 50,000 acres or Norman’s 40,000) in size and the water’s relatively shallow. Only a few really deep spots exist near the dam.
So that’s not prime striper habitat, but for some reason the fish seem to be doing extremely well. The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission started stocking stripers and hybrids (striper/white bass mix) fish in the lake during 1996 (35,000 each species) but dropped the hybrid stocking in 2000 after fears the downstream (Cape Fear River) gene pool might be altered. After 2000, the WRC combined the numbers, placing 70,000 stripers in Jordan lake annually.
“That’s probably one reason the striper fishing’s been so good in recent years,” said guide Troy Roberson (919-656-1887, www.striper-sniper.com). “May and June are pretty good months on the lake because the water temperature has probably got to the mid-70s or 80s, and the fish are becoming more active.”
The false spawn up the Haw River arm of Jordan has finished and “stripers get schooled up and cruise the lake, looking for bait schools of shad.”
Roberson uses big threadfin and small gizzard shad (4- to 6-inches long) as baits.
“It’s a pretty standard rig I use — a Carolina rig with a 2-ounce egg sinker and a 1-0 hook,” he said. “We use a trolling motor to drift baits down from 12- to 18-feet deep.”
The daily limit is four stripers per person that must be at least 20 inches in length.
“We’ve caught some fish upwards of 18 pounds,” said Roberson, who fishes from a 19-foot Key West Bay Boat.
Roberson, 36, has a regular job as a public safety officer for the nearby town of Pittsboro. He’s in his seventh year as a guide.
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