Striper Jumps video 9/29

[peter]

I posted in another heading and found same thing PETER did found lots of fish in 30-40' and very active fish but they just laughed at my bait. Only caught 1 on live bait in morning in 2 days. Got lucky one morning with a set of jumps and landed a few,but was only jumps I saw in mornings by Beaver mouth. All other fish were caught in the evening. Had a fun time in the jumps but the morning bite was very slow. Saw guides catching them pulling umbrella or jigs down 35-40’. I don't have down riggers and my umbrellas only run 19' on their own so never got any takers on that as well. If down rigging in the range they are in, you can catch them but they were small but live bait wasn't happening. All the bellies I cut open to see what was in them were all little shad no big ones so could be why they won’t hit live bait. I marked a lot and what seemed to be active fish but no takers. I can watch them on the screen come up and look at bait over and over but would not take the bait just look and go on.

Have not seen any 30 pounders being brought in but I marked the biggest fish I have ever marked on Cumberland Sat morning. It was huge, I mean 5 times the size of the usual big stripers. Big enough that it could have been a log but it was moving. I am not kidding you it was very large both Raymarine 12” screen and HDS10 marked it you could see it very clearly and it was massive. When I first marked it, the fish was 10’ off bottom so I doubled backed and seen it on bottom so thought it must have been a log but then it moved up in column then back down. Dropped live bait on it and camped out but it came up twice to bait and back down then moved on. I don't know if it was a big cat or an enormous striper but it was no 30 or 40lb fish I can promise you that.

Seems like crappie minnows would have been the bait of choice. No kidding. I have never tried them but read it in the Striper Bible (Setev Douglas). That is not the books title.

Ask Stripernut1 about a recent huge fish a couple weeks ago. Bent a 5/0 hook (I think).. as it continued East

[stripernut1]

i hooked a fish, or more likely a submarine, a couple of weeks ago on a 10in gizzard, i followed (i wont say fight because i was never enough of an equal opponent in this meeting) this thing for 35 minutes and approximately 100 yards. it was never a "screaming drag" event but just a steady hard pull. and after 35 minutes the rod just bounced up and i figured the leader broke, nope, a 5/0 2xstrong owner mutu circle hook was "twisted" sideways, it wasnt straightened in the normal sense, it was as if you took a pair of pliers and bent the hook out sideways.
i have been lucky enough to be on the winning end of some pretty big fish in both freshwater and saltwater, and whatever this was......was very large in body mass because there was no bearing down on this fish to try to turn it, the fish was just too heavy.
i told peter where the event took place the day it happened, and from justins post i think we are pretty close in proximity to each other.
also the fish i hooked was laying directly on the bottom, and there were no other blips on the screen, just the "log" on the bottom......the log that swam over 100 yards.

oh well, something to ponder while bored in the deerstand lol

[peter]

After I read Stripernut1 post. I happened to turn around in my shop and spot my Pen 4/0 reel (collecting dust) attached to what is basically a baseball bat with some gigantic treble hooks that I was using several years ago at oil rigs in the Gulf.

...my imagination....!!!

Isn't fishin a blast.

[JUSTINHALL]

I second the beast then because it was there. I fish saltwater a lot and use the same boat, same fish finders and have never marked a fish even in the ocean of that size. Even sharks that I catch up to 200lbs don't mark on the screen like that. Some will call bs on this but it is a beast whatever it is. In Destin I rarely fish over 90' usually 75-90' and this was marked in 60' so its not that much difference in depth of the usual ocean floor.
Hopefully we shall meet again whether he takes the bait or if I even mark it again, if its a cat I believe it would stay in the same area.
If you twist a large Owner circle that isn't easy. I was breaking a lot of 5 & 6/0 Gamagatsu circle hooks on groupers and red snapper so switched to Owner and have not broken a single one since, so I know it is a very strong hook.