So now I have a boat that I have rigged with rod holders, and lucky me, Dad still has 4 Penn rods and reels from all those years ago. New line, a hand full of bucktail jigs, a couple planer boards and a big net and I'm ready to roll! Or so I thought.
I yapped enough about striper that I had my son eager to go, even though he was sick. We hit the lake, found a promising creek arm and started setting lines out just before dark. And then we trolled, and trolled, without a single hit. My son tried sleeping a various positions around the boat while I was still determined to find a fish. I think we finally gave up at 1 or 2 in the morning. This was the first zero.
Okay, back to the drawing board. After reading more and more into how to fish for striper it seemed clear I needed to be fishing with live bait. A net and an underwater light came next at about the same time I found out you can actually anchor and fish under said light. We had never done that years ago but hey, I'm all for lazy easy fishing like that!
Shortly afterward on a Saturday morning I talked my wife into going with me while I tried out my new Helix and cast net. We took the striper rods just in case, but that was a waste of space. I never found anything on the graph that looked to be striper so we didn't even put the rods out. I did find out really quick that the net I had bought was both too small, and sank too slowly. Time for a cast net, take two.... and zero number two.
Time to really get this right. Armed with my 8' net that I actually learned to throw, an underwater light, snacks and drinks for a whole night trip, I again talked my wife into going with me. At the lake a little before dark, I found a promising looking area and threw out the light. It didn't take long and I had bait in the tank and lines down fishing! We trolled as slowly as possible around a main lake point and back into another arm accumulating the biggest ball of bait I had ever seen. We settled into a nice inset and watched the bait swirl, occasionally hearing something big hit the surface right at the edge of the bank. I cast redfins and slivers but never got bit. Neither did the live bait suspended at the bottom of the bait cyclone we created. At around 4am, she was cold, tired, bored and ready to call it a night. See, my wife doesn't like to fish much, she likes to catch. If she's not catching, she's over fishing and ready to do something else. I'm really surprised she lasted as long as she did, since this is now zero number three.
After talking with a guy who had caught fish under a light that weekend, I figured I was just in the wrong place. So with a new area in mind, I was ready to go again. This time I would be by myself as I had now built a reputation. It didn't help that we were on another lake crappie fishing at daylight that morning and now I want to leave out to striper fish at 8 the same night.
Solo I go into the night, quickly finding an area in Wolf that had scattered bait, some good arches on sonar, and the perfect point to anchor over where the breeze would just push me out towards the channel. Bait came quick and lines were in the water. I relaxed and watched the cloud of swirling bait both on the sonar and in the water. A couple of hours passed and I rebaited hooks not realizing I had been fishing with dead bait on some of my lines. I settled back into my comfy spot and then that wonderful sound of line spooling out on a clicker broke the quiet that had finally set in. Even after midnight there were still boats and loud stereos going here and there, as this was Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend.
To be continued...