Posted by Trollin4Striper on July 17, 2002 at 23:26:33:
Fellow striper fishermen,
I found this board last night and have read alot of great information here. You guys seem to know what you're talking about and it is evident that you really love the sport of fishing for stripers. I am new to striper fishing and can use all the help I can get!
I have a 21’ pontoon boat that I fish off of and I live about 3 miles from Lake Lanier so that is the only lake I have tried yet. As some of you may know, Lake Lanier is a tough lake to fish because of all the boat traffic that shows up after the sun rises. I am determined though and don’t mind getting up early to go fish and usually fish alone.
I really like trolling but have not had any luck with it since last fall when I caught a 12 lb. Striper on a crankbait that I was trolling. I have tried using live blueback herring, but it seems they don’t live long after sending them down 25 or 30 feet. I’ve also tried using umbrella rigs and have lost 4 of them to date due to hang-ups on the bottom. I bought one of the umbrella rig retrievers but its tough to use it when you are alone on the boat with no one to control where you drift. Trolling anything else is tough without a downrigger because you just can’t get deep enough to get to the fish. I wouldn’t mind getting a downrigger, but I don’t know where I’d mount it if I had one!
This brings me to my question for the experts here ( and I’ll tell you how I came up with this idea also)…
Today I was killing time at a Wal-Mart near Pensacola, FL. and I saw some saltwater crankbaits for sale there. These crankbaits were really more like big jerkbaits with a long bill on them and the package said they would dive 20-30 feet deep. I got to thinking that only a big fish would go after one of these lures (which would be great to catch) but I didn’t think I wanted to target only large fish. Then I wondered what would happen if I attached a barrel-swivel to the rear o-ring of the lure and put a leader on it and attached a bucktail jig or roadrunner to it. My thinking was that this would get the lure down to where the fish hang out this time of year and maybe the larger bait coming by first would interest the fish enough to take the jig when it came by. Has anyone here tried anything like that and if so, how did it work? Even if you haven’t tried it, what do you think of the idea?
I’m going to try it in the next week or so and I’ll let you all know how it turned out. At least with a lure like this, if I run across shallower water( on the fishfinder) I can always stop and let the lure rise to the top so that it doesn’t get hung up on the bottom.
In the meantime, if anyone who is an avid striper fisherman but doesn’t have a boat or something, wants to fish with me on Lanier, let me know and we can get together and try to figure out a way to catch these beauties. As I said, I usually go by myself but sometimes my father-in-law goes (when its not too hot).
Take care all and good luck at the lakes!
Trollin