Lake Murray stripers still piling up at night

Capt. Ben Lee and his wife, Anne, show off a double-handful of Lake Murray striped bass.

Two of the rods toward the stern of Capt. Ben Lee’s pontoon boat hadn’t jumped around in quite a while. Lee looked at the fisherman charged with keeping an eye on them and said, “I can assure you, if you’re not getting bit, your cricket’s gone.”

Reeled in a moment later, Lee’s guess was correct, as a bare hook came over the railing. A minute or two later, with a new “cricket” – Lee’s pet name for a blueback herring – hooked through the back, the rod was bucking, its tip almost buried below the surface of Lake Murray, with a feisty striped bass attached to the business end.

Lee, a former pro bass fisherman who operates Capt. Ben’s Reel Adventures, guides striper fishermen on nighttime trips at Lake Murray from June through August. His trips last about 3-1/2 hours, and there’s almost no downtime, with stripers inhaling baits every minute or two.

This past Tuesday night, a 3-hour trip produced about 60 stripers, seven of which were keepers longer than Lake Murray’s 20-inch minimum. Anchored a couple of miles upstream from the dam, along the edge of the old river channel, Lee had baits staggered between 40 and 60 feet deep, tempting the stripers that cruise the channel or hang above the tops of the trees that were left standing when the reservoir was impounded.

“We’ll start out in June farther up the lake, and we’ll work toward the dam as the summer progresses,” said Lee (803-996-2948), a former bass pro who lives in Lexington. “I’ll fish all the way through August; when I get to where the bait won’t live down there that’s when I quit and go deer hunting.”

Lee uses Shakespeare striper rods with soft tips, necessary to keep a striper from ripping a herring off the hook when the two first meet. On Tuesday night, Lee went through eight dozen herring for five dozen stripers. On a half-dozen occasions, anglers had multiple fish on at the same time, leaving Lee scurrying around the boat, netting a fish, releasing a fish, rebaiting a hook, netting another fish.

“The most I had was eight stripers on at the same time out of 10 rods out,” he said. “When they bite, they don’t bite in unison.

“We’ve been catching most of our fish down about 50 or 60 feet, but the last few times out, we’ve caught some of our better fish 40 feet deep.”