Striper jumps. 3 June 14

[HURRICANEBOB]

FYI. Watch mouth of Beaver, and back into Beaver very first set of walls on right.
Down for a few days, but 3 June, 6-9 pm, big jumps right inside Beaver, and next night just inside Beaver.
Schools were small to start but progressed to large pods. Came up and stayed up. Redfins and Spooks. All fish 26 to 28 inch class.

[Mean Morone]

Hbob, what's the water temp? Seems odd to me that they would come up and stay up for any length of time.

[fishincreek]

Water temp in Indian Tuesday night was 79.

[peter]

Main lake by Jamestown water 78 this past weekend. Fished flats main lake. Fish were biting on boards and down lines from 15' free line to 22' down line very early in probably all depths of water. I focused on 80' water. Some people caught fish with bait a bit deeper but the wind was really blowing Sunday so who knows where their bait was. Bait was easily catchable on the main lake. The drift is clearing and the water is more clear than I have seen it in a long time. There is still some big drift in the Jamestown area which makes night time navigation risky.

[HURRICANEBOB]

Hbob, what's the water temp? Seems odd to me that they would come up and stay up for any length of time.

Surprised me too? But there were there, and water temp was chilly enough to cause shrinkage while skinny dippin early in day

[pintail311]

Thanks for the information, Peter. My fiancé and I are going to Cumberland Thursday- Sunday to try for some stripers and any info we get our hands on is a good deal as we don't want to get skunked! We are on our sophomore year of our fishing boat purchase and have been slowly trying to learn how to efficiently fish bigger water and using new techniques for new species (to us) etc.. Just got back from Lake Ouachita in Arkansas two weeks ago, as we were going to try for stripers there but got on a good walleye bite and pretty much did that the entire time. We did manage to see some very large stripers on some jumps by the dam but we couldn't get them to bite any top water, not interested. We talked to a local there and he said if they are not generating it is very difficult to get them to hit the topwater near the dam.

Last year we had our first opportunity to try for stripers at Lake Cumberland but got dealt the bad weather penalty all week, so it was pretty much a flop. The lake was a mess and water was high, I was lost. We only managed to net a handful of threadfins for bait, but they didn't last long for us since we were dealing with a floating lumber yard nearly everywhere we went. We trolled cranks twice, but had no luck.

My tentative plan was to try and find some bait on the lake and if that didn't pan out was gonna troll large swimbaits, all the while keeping an eye out for some topwater activity. I was also planning on running the river one day or two by Burkesville with possibly the same bait/lure presentations, but not real confident on my bait finding abilities near or on the river. On that note, are you allowed to throw net for bait on the cumberland river? I thought I was told once that you can only throw on feeder creeks/off the main channel.

I am quite familiar with the river up to about 8 miles downriver of the dam, but beyond that will be new to me.

[HURRICANEBOB]

Surprised me too? But there were there, and water temp was chilly enough to cause shrinkage while skinny dippin early in day

Just a follow up with some pics, and I believe you may be able to explore the pic properties for times and dates. When I do that I get 3 Jun around 8 pm

[Duayne]

I've seen a large upswing in Threadfin when catching bait the last few times. Stripers can herd and keep Threadfin on top better than Alewives. I've also had more luck using Threadfins this spring. I would guess there may be an upswing in the Threadfin population, thus more frequent jumps. The Threadfin upswing deal is just a guess..

[mhall]

I've seen a large upswing in Threadfin when catching bait the last few times. Stripers can herd and keep Threadfin on top better than Alewives. I've also had more luck using Threadfins this spring. I would guess there may be an upswing in the Threadfin population, thus more frequent jumps. The Threadfin upswing deal is just a guess..

Some buddies and I were talking about this very thing and I concur with your thinking on this....

[HURRICANEBOB]

I agree. 2010-2011, when the dam was under repair and water down, with warm lake temps, in late June, July, and August there were big jumps around Cemetery Ridge up from Indian Creek.

I think when the water temps are cool, in the 50-to mid 60's, the Alewives are up, but when the water temp gets into the 70+ range they go down to the cooler water and the threadfins are up. Example, hot afternoon, water temps in high 70's and you see threadfin in the back of a creek flippin at the surface.

JMO