Week long fishing trip

[shadowfisher]

While classmates were deep in their studies, the three of us friends struggled keeping our GPA's afloat; although our canoe had no trouble floating! The lake had the majority of our attention and focus. Since then we have graduated, literally and figuratively, to bigger and better things. Even though we now live in Charlotte, Clarksville and Richmond, we reconvene several times a year with my fish/ski to catch fish. The last few years stripers have been our focus, and has not disappointed. This year we saved our vacation days and are taking an entire week to fish and camp on Smith Mountain lake. We will be there January 2-7th.

We are most concerned with finding bait. Does anyone sell or would be willing to sell bait if we hit a wall? also is there a cb radio station fishermen tune into and communicate about schools they find? We are open to any and all advice. We have been enjoying all of the forum posts and are excited to maybe even see some of you all out there next week.

Tight Lines!

[mwardncsu]

Sale of alewife or shad Is illegal in Va. You can purchase shiners / minnows if anyone has them this time of year - jumbo minnows can work well.

I'll leave the "focus on the strippers" comment to others

[shadowfisher]

Thanks mward! I did not realize that was illegal. Good to know!
Ha! I changed that word to stripers. I'm not sure my wife would approve if such lake activities. Thanks

[mwardncsu]

There is still some old-school VHF radio usage by a few guys but not many - I forget the channel several of them use - it's mostly cell phone / text message communication now. Where are you guys staying on the lake - that may help folks steer you a bit.... there has been a decent jigging bite going on mornings and then just before dark - can be hit or miss depending on the day but the gulls will usually help you find the way

[jt]

ShadowFisher, you need to learn how to catch alewives. If you simply hang a lamp on the water right after it gets dark, 10 feet of water or deeper you will have a tremendous amount of bait gathered in between 30 minutes and 1 hour, best to wait about an hour so a lot of them will gather. At that point you can throw a 10 or 12 foot net to catch anywhere between 100 plus bait. Right now in the area around the state park there are some monster alewives 5 to 6 inches. They are mixed in with the regular Alewives which can range between two and a half to four and a half inches. I just caught four decent sized stripers yesterday, 2 in the morning and 2 at Sunset. Largest was 28 and a half inches and weight 8 pounds and 10 ounces. Caught them on down lines about 20 feet deep and I was trolling slowly in 35 feet of water close to the state park.
Once you catch the bait the trick is going to be to keep it alive, do you all have a boat? Do you have access to a dock? I can give you all the info that you need, I will be at the lake until Tuesday, send a message if you need some help

[shadowfisher]

Thank you all so much for the help! We are learning a lot from the forum and you all in preparation for our trip.

We do have a boat! Older Blue "vision" Fish/ski with a 150 Merc. Say hi if you see us!

We are camping at the Aarowhead campsites. It's on the south end of the lake. I believe that gives us access to a dock, but we have only ever camped at the state park. Its new territory for us.

Thank you JT! Sounds like you had a great day. We have an underwater LED light we hope could function as you described. Thank you! We will give that a try our first night there. We have a 10ft Castnet.

I have a few Bucktails but I was curious was colors you all have found work best on sml and what else you would recommend jigging with.