Saturday 10-6

[sharkslayer]

My sons were in a youth bass tournamnet out of Parkway Marina this weekend. That gave the wife and myself the chance to do some striper fishing. We went in out of some coves and creeks on that end of the lake. Started out looking for bait, but really never found the size I wanted, but finally settled on some that were on the small side. Those were in 20 fow. I then rode around trying to mark some fish. I struggled marking any but around noon one of my sons called and said that they were fishing Craddock and that they was some nice size bait in there. I ran up there and found some faily decent size bait. I ran some free and some light lines. We pretty much immediately started catching white bass on the light lines. After about 2 hours we caught a couple decent stripers around 10 pounds. About 30 minutes before we needed to be back at the marina to meet the boys I told the wife I was going to make one more pass near the bank because some shad was getting blown up near the bank. While I was teaching the wife how to run the i-pilot with the remote she tells me that one of the light lines is out to the side of the boat. I pick it up, reel it up and know immediately it was a big fish. This thing came running right to the boat and decides to go right under the boat and is ripping drag. Here I am with half the rod in the water trying to keep from putting to much pressure on him and yelling at the wife to get the trolling motor up. She has no clue how, so I am fighting the fish and explaining to her how to get the motor up. She gets it about 2 feet out of the water and tells me the line is around it. She holds the motor up while I reach down and get the line unwrapped. The fish again goes on a nice little run. Now I can put some pressure on him. I got him near the boat and realized it was real nice. She netted on the 1st swing. I get it in the boat weigh it, put it back in and baby it, but it pretty much took off as soon as I put it back. My biggest striper ever. 35 pounds. It was a great fight and couldn't have done it without the boss lady.

Attachments:

[striperjohn]

Sounds like you had a good day. Glad to hear the big fish are moving. Did you take a picture of the big one?

[sharkslayer]

That is it in my original post. The wife said it looked small in the picture but I didn't want to keep it out long at all. I probably had the fish out of water for no more than 45 seconds. She wanted to take more pics but didn't understand how delicate they are.

[BentRod]

Thanks for the report and release.

[sharkslayer]

Oct 8, 2012 8:13:26 GMT -5 BentRod said:

Thanks for the report and release.

Btw Bentrod, the exact set up that I caught that one on, came from your article. It was on a 2/0 hook.

[BentRod]

Nice. What size bait were you using? I use the 2/0 on small baits. I've been using 5/0 and 6/0 hooks on the bigger gizzards (8"+) I've been using recently. We've caught some about like the one in your picture but all on big baits..nothing on little baits.

[sharkslayer]

It was a peanut. I threw back hundreds of the small bait, but finally had to keep some. I probably caught 10 shad that I could use a 3/0 or bigger hook on. By the time I caught that fish I was out of the bigger bait. I was very surprised when I felt the weight. I did have one shad about 5" that had the tail bitten cleanly off. Any ideas what that could have been?

[seajay]

Sweet report!