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Guys I tried night fishing for stripers Saturday, my first attempt. I threw redfins and slivers but I could use some tips. Do you like using a blacklight? Should I put out some live bait (shad/shiners)on freelines or downlines? Also any one fish with lanterns anymore?Those fancy green floating lights? All the night tips you can pass on would be great, favorite flashlights etc.
No lights of any kind. Find black shale banks where you hear bait moving and toss your favorite bait right ON the bank, then slowly work it back. Most strikes come on the first 3-4 cranks of the reel. Bite can be right after dark, or may not start till 3AM. The more you go, the more you'll get a better handle on those things. Some nights they want topwater, some nights subsurface, some nights a rattle, some nights r/w, some nights chrome. It is easier to fish with confidence once you start hearing fish blow-up, but it doesn't mean they AREN'T there.
My first striper trip was nearly a bust. Took my teenaged son and plan to stay the entire night. It was late May and we went mainlake mid-lake area. Fished for bass till dark then threw our arms off till midnight. Not a fish to be had(or heard). Tied up to the bank and we went to sleep. About 2:30 I was awakened by a large Zara Spook that landed at the back of my boat. I asked the guy how things were going and he stated he had just lost one of his biggest fish ever not 50 yards from where were moored. He said the fish (and bait) had come up around 1 and fishing was good. Shaking the cobwebs from my slumber I got things going and landed 4 in the next 30 minutes or so and lost 6 others. By 4AM the lake was again totally quiet and fishing was over. The next night I took a buddy back and he used the Long A bomber that I had used the previous night. He fished the back of the boat and he landed 8, while I only landed 2 using a different bait. We lost another 10-12 fish that night. Fish were "ON" from 1 to 3:30. Believe me, if I can ANYBODY CAN!!!
Fishincreek pretty much gave you the low down. I like to keep my boat parrallel to the bank. Make casts parrallel to the bank. Try several lures: red fin, sliver, diving crank, jig. Mix it up until you find what they want. The only light I use is a head lamp. I'll turn it on to tie a line, unhook a fish, etc. The ones with the red bulb will give you plenty of light for that, but want kill your night vision.
Don't dispare. April can be an inconsistant month. Things are usually more consistant by May.
Andrew
Thanks for the quick answers guys and keep the info coming. I wondered about sleeping in the boat, it is not as easy to stay up all night as it was twenty years ago. Any good sleeping/boat camping tips? And the light thing, I thought you were required to keep an "anchor" light on.
I have tried my luck at night fishing a few times. I fish by myself so I don't go at night that often but I wanted to give it a try. So I went out and purchased an extra battery, quartz underwater light 12 dc type, and a green florescent type underwater light 12 v dc type, and two propane lanterns for my boat. My boat is small, 16ft, and I have to watch where I put everything. Cords can get in the way.
I was able to draw in a lot of shad to my underwater lights. So the lights will draw in the fish.
The trick is to be in a spot where there are game fish along with the shad.
One of the other fishing forums that I read has guys that go out at night in groups of boats. They fish for crappie a lot at night and do very well. They use lanterns hanging off the boat.
I am thinking out loud here: I think that a lot more fish go into the shallow water at night. That's where some of the food is found. And I have watched the Indiana DNR Fishery Biologists conducting electroshocking fish surveys at night and they always follow the shoreline and don't sample the deeper mid lake areas with the shock boat. They use nets for the deeper water areas.
Also I use to scuba dive a lot when I was in my late teens and though my mid 30's. We dove a few times at night in the area lakes and strip pits. I remember swimming underwater in the pits where the visibility at night during the hot summer months was better. I saw lots of bass hanging along the edge of the weed line. Most seemed to be asleep and would not move until I got very close to them. Then they would wake up and swim away quickly. This weed line was in about 10ft of water. The weeds could not grow much deeper on these steep banks that went from 1ft to 30ft quickly. But then again this was a strip pit up in Loogootee, IN. What I should have been looking for was the prey species that bass feed on like crayfish. I have seen lots of crayfish on lake bottoms while diving in 5 acres size lakes. I dove this one lake in the middle of the day and was swimming along the muddy bottom in about 15 ft of water out in the very middle of the lake. I saw a lot of crayfish fleeing my view as I swam along the bottom. Visibility was just a few feet and my face mask was only about 1 to 2ft above the bottom. Most of what I saw were just puffs of mud left after the crayfish flipped away. I wish that my scuba diving friends back in those days had more interest in biology like me. We could have worked together to discover more information on where the fish were located at various times of the day. I did observe large bass suspended in deep water while diving in a Rock Quarry in KY years ago. Celurium springs is a now flooded out rock quarry. Back when I dove it there was still a building out in the middle of the quarry. Most of the building was underwater in about 50ft of water. The bass were hanging in and around the flooded parts of this building. That was a great dive. We dove that quarry two or three times before we found out it was off limits. Today it's cleaned up and is a diving resort. But when we dove it back in 1973 it was just a abandoned rock quarry with lots of trash surrounding the area. But the water clarity was the best I have seen in inland waters. Only the Florida Keys had better water visibility IMHO. I use to also dive in the Ohio River and visibility there is almost ZERO. Could not see too many fish in the River. LOL
So setup next to shallow water where it's close to deep water. Underwater submerged islands that have their tops within 5 to 10ftof the surface would be good. Main lake points or secondary bay's points would also be a good spot to try some night fishing. Maybe a string of boats anchored along different depths of a long point would be best to locate where the fish feed at night.
[quote=roberte68;293568]Guys I tried night fishing for stripers Saturday, my first attempt. I threw redfins and slivers but I could use some tips. Do you like using a blacklight? Should I put out some live bait (shad/shiners)on freelines or downlines? Also any one fish with lanterns anymore?Those fancy green floating lights? All the night tips you can pass on would be great, favorite flashlights etc.[/quote]