
Find and catch summer hybrids and stripers with these tips
Every outdoorsman is motivated by different challenges. Many deer hunters yearn for October mornings during gun season when food plots or bait piles are plentiful on a tract of private land. Others prefer a bow & arrow, public land, and hunting bucks that have seen, heard, and likely smelled every trick in the book.
Striper fishing in September is much closer to the latter scenario. It’s not that the fish are wary from being fished for, but fishing conditions can be the toughest of the year. The water is hot. Suitable water quality is diminished, and catching fish can be challenging.
The two biggest challenges when targeting striped bass and hybrids on any lake or river system in the Carolinas include finding the fish, and getting them to take a hook. Patterning stripers and hybrids requires the angler to have more than a nodding acquaintance with science, particularly chemistry, physics, and of course biology.
Find the thermocline
Late summer is the time to look deep in the main lake basin. This means the main river channel that runs deep through the impounded reservoir. As summertime heats up and water temperatures rise, stratification usually occurs in the waters of most lakes. Lakes will stratify to varying degrees during the heat of summer. The end result is that water temperatures create an unsuitable habitat in the upper column, and natural organic decomposition creates an unsuitable habitat in the lower column. What is left is a band of cool, sufficiently oxygenated water that will hold striped bass. This band is known as the thermocline.

Don’t assume that all lakes establish a thermocline, or that the thermocline follows anything more than a general pattern. Some areas of a reservoir will have a well-defined thermocline, while others will have a shallower or deeper thermocline, and possibly a secondary thermocline from mid-level currents. One way to correctly identify the thermocline is to adjust the sensitivity factor on your sonar unit. The sonar unit will actually mark a distinguishable line where the denser, cool water meets the warmer water. That’s the thermocline. Better still, take note of where the graph is showing bait and stripers. That level, or just above it, is where you want to be fishing anyway.
According to Capt. Mike Lundy, veteran striped bass tournament angler from Statesville, NC, trolling with downriggers is a primary tactic for catching striped bass during the summer. If you are marking fish, but the fish don’t bite on a summer pattern, try changing one variable at a time until you find what works. For instance, the easiest thing to change when trolling with lead core line or deep diving crankbaits is speed. Slow down or speed up, and see which the fish prefer.
“In hot weather, you can troll about as fast as the bait will let you,” said Lundy. “If you’re trolling through fish at 2 mph and aren’t getting bites, try bumping it up to 3 or 3.5 mph. It’s important to know what speed your boat will troll. Some boats have trouble getting down to 2 or 3 mph, and you might have to drag a five gallon bucket or drift sock to maintain a slow speed.”
Switch things up
Another trick is to change the depth of the ball when using downriggers, or the amount of line out if using lead core or deep cranks. A third option is to change color or composition of the bait. Go from white to chartreuse or vice versa, add some flash or take it away. The fourth option is to change lure selection. If you are trolling lead head jigs, switch to wide wobbling crankbaits.
One of the most popular tactics for deep summer stripers is to mark the fish, which usually hold around standing timber or on a major channel edge, and drop a vertical presentation of live bait to them. Live bait, especially blueback herring, a bait highly preferred by stripers, are difficult to keep alive for long at summertime depths.
According to Capt. Mike Gault, a striper fishing guide on South Carolina’s Lake Murray, it’s best to double the number of herring you’d expect to use in the fall or spring when live bait fishing for stripers in the summer.
“This time of year, the surface temps are hot, upper 80s,” he said. “I make it a point to get that bait from my bait tank to the hook and free falling into deep water in less than 10 seconds. It’s a matter of practice. I see too many people not accustomed to handling bait fumble getting it out of the tank, fumble getting it on the hook, maybe even drop it on the floor and then let it sit in hot surface water for several seconds while they get situated. Once the bait gets down to the fish, it might still be alive, but it won’t be lively. Lively is what catches fish.”
Another popular strategy is to position the boat directly on top of fish, but swap a flashy artificial bait for live herring to get a big striped bass or hybrid’s attention. This tactic is often referred to as power reeling.
Get a reaction
Fishing guide Preston Harden of Lake Hartwell’s Bucktail Guide Service is an artificial bait aficionado. He uses this effective presentation for presenting bucktail jigs and extra-large spoons to deep water stripers and hybrids.
“When I mark fish suspended on the graph, I like to drop a heavy, ¾- or 1-ounce bucktail or big spoon straight down through the school and then power reel the bait back up through the fish. This will often elicit a reaction bite,” said the guide. “It’s a really good big fish tactic for summer.”
“It can also be effective when the water gets real hot and the stripers get lethargic,” he said. “When that happens, they often won’t chase a live bait. But if you keep zooming that bucktail or one of the new butterfly jigs with assist hooks right past their nose, they’ll get irritated and hit it.”
Some striper and hybrid anglers opt to skip daytime fishing in the summer and come out at night when it’s more comfortable. Finding bottom feeding fish at night on moderate depth points and humps is a good pattern to try. A good key for determining the proper depth to fish is to watch your sonar unit for baitfish schools. Notice the depth at which baitfish are holding. If this depth is 28 feet, then slide on down the point or hump until the boat is over 32 to 34 feet of water.
Another note about night fishing involves the use of artificial lights to draw bait. Some anglers find it more beneficial first to locate a school of bait during early evening and fish around or near them with no light or only one 12-volt light. The 12-volt light will get noticed by the bait and can help anchor them in that vicinity, and it favors the fisherman in his ability to see the rod tip and detect bites in the dark.
Find the right water
The deepest water in most reservoirs is generally found in the main lake basin, but other viable summer holding spots include the cold, oxygenated waters flowing behind an impounded reservoir. Sometimes this is a long stretch of river, while often it is the headwaters of the next lake in a chain.
For the river angler, the tailrace below a reservoir offers prime refuge for stripers and hybrids. One thing to consider during summertime is that water may be coming from deep in the upper reservoir. This level is likely to be devoid of suitable oxygen levels. For this reason, it takes a short run of tumbling and mixing before the cooler, released water can re-oxygenate.
At times, the best fish holding spots may not be right behind the dam, but rather at fish-holding structure a mile or so below the dam. Additional locations to try will be where intersecting tributary creeks and rivers connect to the area. Depending on the terrain, run-off streams, diversion canals, and underground springs that flow into the main river channel are suitable summertime locations that could hold striped bass. So all of these locales are also worth checking out.
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