Night Fishing May 31st & June 1st

[striperless]

This is my first report, so please bear with me. Fished from 11:00pm to 1:30am in lower part of the lake. Both nights I found a lot of bait fish and stripers feeding on the bait fish. We threw everything we had but the kitchen sink(would have thrown that if I had one) and tried all different retrieves. We had a total of 3 strikes and no fish caught. After different times through the night it sounded like a war zone around us. Talk about frustration! We used all of the recommended lures plus others. We were using 15lb monofilament on some of the rods and 20lb fluorocarbon on the other. I love fishing SML for stripers, but can only get there once or twice a year. Any insight would be greatly appreciated! Since I don't get to SML much, I review all of your posts to keep me excited! At least most of the reports keep me excited!

[mwardncsu]

I feel your pain - same thing the one night I was able to get out in early May (or late April - forget which it was now). I've been hearing of a lot of night feeding and then lock-jaw fish during the day..... seems like they are getting a mid-night buffet and then not hungry

One tip I've learned on night-fishing - try and position yourself parallel to the bank and VERY close to it - and cast right up on the bank and retrieve parallel - many strikes will come out of a foot of water where the striper are ambushing bait that is spawning on the bank. If you're not hearing the busting, try casting from the bank out into the deep and retrieve - likely the striper are staging waiting for the bait to move up

[fly]

Thanks man, sounds like my night last Sunday

[ghostcomanche©®]

Striperless.....MWard gave some very good advice on the night fishing. but keep this in mind also...

There are some times when you can be surrounded with feeding, busting fish, and not get a bite.
This doesn't mean your doing something wrong, it just means they are not interested in artificials when they are in a big school of shad. If given the opportunity, they will take the shad before an artificial, a lot of the time.

Over the years, this has happened to me many times. I think artificials, many times will work their best, when the stripers actually have less shad to feed on.

My favorite scenerio is when I hear what sounds like just a few stripers on the bank, and just a few flickers of the shad on topwater. What you hear, and what you see near the bank, is not necessarily all the fish around you. Many of the stripers and shad will be deeper in the water, than just right at the edge of the bank. Sometimes it's better to pull off the bank a little, and fish with medium running crankbaits, flukes and bucktails. Many of your feeding stripers, if not tight to the bank, will be feeding at around 8-15 feet of water. The flukes and bucktails will make it easier to fish any depth you want, where a medium running crankbait may only get you to 5-8 feet or so of water (depending on the type of crankbait your using).

[striperless]

Thanks for all of the advice! I did notice with the strikers we caught, there was much less activity.