Cumberland Information?

Headed to the lake in a week. Any info on depth and technique for stripers from Beaver to the dam would be much appreciated. Will post reports good or bad when I return. Thanks in advance for any help.

Rich

I can give you GPS coordinates, depth, and time from this morning, and in April that would be good information for 3 weeks. but right now it wouldn't be good info for 3 minutes, schools moving so fast you have a hard time staying on them for more than a few seconds.
bait it staying alive fairly good on the hook so that is a plus.
best advice I can give you is be ready to fish deep, be mobile and use your graph until you cant stare at it any more .
good luck

Thanks stripernut....when you say deep....are we talking 50? 80? And is bait readily available with a cast net?
thanks again for the info.

Rich

[QUOTE=Richmann;571103]Thanks stripernut....when you say deep....are we talking 50? 80? And is bait readily available with a cast net?
thanks again for the info.

Rich[/QUOTE]

focus on the fish at 60-80, you will see a lot of marks on the graph in the 35ish range, dont spend a lot of time on these fish, cats, gar and shorts

[QUOTE=stripernut1;571105]focus on the fish at 60-80, you will see a lot of marks on the graph in the 35ish range, dont spend a lot of time on these fish, cats, gar and shorts[/QUOTE]

Thank you for the information.......it will give me a leg up when I start fishing next week.

For sure, 60 + ft. We tried our luck Saturday morning and struck out / got skunked on stripers but what a beautiful morning it was. Could see them down there for sure but couldn't get any takers. I haven't graduated to catching my own bait so was using shiners.

There are stripers in that upper range. I got a double Saturday at 65 without even trying but couldn't get a sniff at that depth on Sunday and I must have pulled past 100,000 fish. My only hits Sunday came on a triple, all in the 35-40 range. Only got one out of that.

I think there are two issues with fishing that upper range. 1) keeping bait alive. It's just too warm of water for bait to last very long at all. If you are going to fish it with live bait, I think shiners would be the way to go and I would rather pull artificial than use shiners.
2) The bait that can survive up there is the little bitty stuff. I am more of a believer in match the hatch so I think the larger Alewives just look a little odd to the fish. When they are aggressive, they won't care. But when you have a major pressure change like this weekend, I think you have to be on your A game. Again, medium shiners may be the way to go if you are going to use live bait.

I was fast trolling this weekend.

[QUOTE=Richmann;571107]Thank you for the information.......it will give me a leg up when I start fishing next week.[/QUOTE]

In response to your PMs, I'd rather answer the questions about what I did to attract those 35 ft hits here. I have worked to perfect an eight line trolling method that includes a mix of down riggers and slide divers. Slide divers are like dipsy divers but you can set them to pull out to one side or the other with them. The higher number you "dial" them to, the more they swing out to the side of the boat and you can adjust how much line you have out behind the slide diver. You can do a little research on them for the basics. You do not need a bunch of equipment to use them. Just like anything, there are a 1000 little variables. Having said that, I got them, put them on some rods and got fish pretty quick with them. I don't know if that was beginners luck or if I've over thought it since. LMAO.

In my case, I use stacked down riggers to cover deeper water and slide divers to cover more shallow water. I can run two slide divers out each side. Someone that wanted to use just slide divers could go with three on each side, with two running pretty much behind the boat.

We've had several discussions on them here in the past. You can search and find some good info. When I say I've worked to perfect, that is a little over stated. I probably fast troll six to 10 times a year or so.

Thank you for your willingness to share information 🎣👍

Rich