1/2/16 Cumberland (mixed bag)

**kybluediver1** · 01-04-2016

Took my oldest two boys for the first trip of the year. Headed to Beaver Creek and planned on targeting smallmouth via artificials from the front of the boat and dragging shiners behind for the boys. Ran up the creek a ways and stopped in a larger cove on a secondary point. Boys caught one Kentucky on that point on a shiner. I caught a dink smallmouth on a jig further in the cove.

Left and hit a main river point. Boys caught a nice 30" class striper on a shiner there. We let it go as we hadn't planned on keeping any fish.

Headed further up the creek and hit a cove that was full of shad close to the bottom in 50' of water. Boys caught a nice 13 lb striper in there. Threw this one in the livewell as it surely was going to die. BTW, All of these fish they caught were on 8lb spinning tackle.

I then caught a catfish on a jigging spoon (go me, lol). Stayed in that cove and decided not to fight it anymore and just target stripes. I stayed toward the back watching my lowrance and every once in a while I would see a school on the bottom. Dropped my jigging spoon on them once and watched them come in and take on the lowrance (very cool). So I managed one of the 6 stripes we caught. When I caught that one, It brought the school up with them. A very large one was right on the fish I was fighting (probably 20 lbs). We kept mine hooked and tried casting for a double but that didn't work. Ended up catching 4 stripes total in that cove. 2 on jigging spoon, 2 on shiners.

Caught one decent smallmouth on shiner later and one last stripe before we left in the next cove over from where we caught the 4. Overall a real fun day even though the bass were uncooperative for us. 7+ lb stripers are a ball to catch on medium action spinning rods. I only caught 3 total fish (1 stripe, 1 dink sm, one catfish) so it was cool watching the boys in action on the other 7 fish.

Stripes were hugging the bottom and in small schools (maybe 7-12 fish from what I could see on the sonar). We just kept a bait in the water and casting jigging spoons to catch them.