Did a Striper trip Sat on the Cumberland River. We started before sunup with 10 wt fly rods and big streamers but we were unsuccessful. As the sun got high we decided to mess around with the Skipjack and Sauger. The Sauger bite was on and we landed rough estimate, about 100 of them in about four or five hours. Interestingly I was able to out fish the spin fishermen with my secret Sauger fly on a 7wt sink tip. At first we were casting to them, but after about 3hrs of casting 350 grain nonstop, I decided maybe trolling would work. It worked very well! This is the second or third time I have Sauger fished and I really enjoyed it. One guy who after watching us for a couple of hours came up to the boat and said he had been fishing for Sauger for 30 years and he had never seen anyone catch them on a fly rod before.
Later in the afternoon a large front approached and I told David we should start getting ready for Striper again, this time with bait. We caught skipjack of all sizes and preceded to the Striper hangouts.
First fish came only minutes after we started. It was an 18 Hybrid??? They don’t stock Hybrid in this section but they could/must have locked thru. The rest of the trip was fish after fish after fish and hit after boil after boil!!! All others boated were Stripers in the 20 to 25 pound range. There were two very large fish that we had on but one was able to pull a locked down drag until he got to the bank and broke my 50# like it was string. Another was on and also stripped a huge amount of drag when the hook came unbuttoned. Both were 40 or better.
We were not able to photograph several fish because I left my camera home and was using my emergency cardboard camera (reason for the crappy pics). I am guessing in all we had 10 to 12 Striper all in the 20 pound and up class and two bruisers who won the battle this time!
All fish were released unharmed except 8 Sauger.
Mike
Topic: Cumberland River Striper/Sauger trip (Read 3416 times)