Lake Gaston Anglers change face of winter Striper fishing in Chesapeake Bay
Jan 25, 2021 16:01:06 GMT
Post by GhostComanche©® on Jan 25, 2021 16:01:06 GMT
Lake Gaston Anglers change face of winter Striper fishing in Chesapeake Bay
by Bill Cochran at the Roanoke Times | December 20, 2007
You just don’t keep throwing 40-pound plus Chesapeake Bay striped bass onto the scales at Chris’ Bait and Tackle Shop without the locals taking notice.
That’s what Tim Nugent and his buddies began doing this time of the year about a half-dozen years ago.
“Week after week he would consistently catch these big fish and we couldn’t figure out what he was doing,” said Chris Snook, who, along with husband, Mark, operates the popular tackle shop on the southern end of the Eastern Shore.
Snook is no slough herself when it comes to striper fishing. But when Nugent first showed up it was an unusually cold winter and trollers like Snook were having their share of bad days. Yet, Nugent and his buddies never seemed to fail.
The mystery grew even deeper when the tackle shop gang noted that Nugent and his pals had rods on their boats that contained oversized bobbers.
“Finally, we decided we needed to find out what they were doing,” said Snook. “We cornered them and picked their brains.”
What they were doing was simply fishing for saltwater striped bass much like they fished for freshwater stripers back home at Lake Gaston along the Virginia-North Carolina border. They were drifting bait under bobbers. On the Chesapeake Bay, they substituted eels for the baitfish they used at 20,000-acre Gaston.
Knowledgeable anglers have known for decades that eels are a popular food for stripers. The snake-like critters slither down from freshwater tributaries of the Bay where stripers gobble them up. They have proven to be a productive bait when dunked around pilings of the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Rhodes bridge tunnels. But drifting them under bobbers in open water where stripers are suspended? That was something different for an area where trolling had been king.
Once onto the new method, Chris and Mark tested it with help from local guides, Capt. Jack Eudy and Capt. Jim Jenrette. “All of us were seeing great results,” said Chris Snook.
Other anglers were noticing. Questions were being asked. There was no way you could hide those bright orange and chartreuse bobbers, much less the big stripers coming to the scales.
A new fishing technique was born and it has spread like wildfire. On a weekend this time of the year, several hundred boats can be seen floating eels from just north of Cape Charles southward past Kiptopeke State Park to the tip of Fisherman’s Island. On a good day, as many as 1,500 eels will go out the door of Chris’s Bait and Tackle Shop, along with scores of bobbers and other components.
“It is an easy way to fish; most anyone can go out there and catch fish,” said Chris Snook. There can be long waits between bites, but that wasn’t a problem earlier this month when I talked to Snook. That morning her boat had hooked 18 stripers.
She gave me a tally of the citation catches taken during a string of recent days: “A 67.6 (pounder), a 63.3, 15 over 50 pounds, 70 fish over 40 and 15 releases.” This didn’t count a 50-pounder being weighed as we talked. More than 90 percent of the citations were eel catches. “We are definitely catching a better class fish,” she said.
I heard about the method a couple years ago and vowed I would try it. I hooked up with Capt. Jack Brady earlier this month and our boat quickly caught three stripers that were in the 30- and 40-pound class (see last week’s Cochran column). It was strange to catch fish that size employing much the same technique I’d use while fishing for bluegills with my granddaughter, Kalei, in our farm pond. The difference: big tackle and big fish.
The line beneath the bobber or balloon can be adjusted to fish different depths. Normally the depths range from about 8 to 18 feet, even when fishing over 80 feet of water. Chris Snook recommends a hefty 8/0 or 10/0 hook, but Jack Brady prefers a 5/0, believing it offer better hooking ability. A weight, such as an egg or inline sinker, helps get the eel to the hoped-for depth.
Detailed information on rigging an eel can be found at Chris’ Bait and Tackle Shop, where pre-tied rigs are available, and in a feature article of the January issue of Saltwater Magazine.
The biggest challenge is dealing with the eels, which is a bit like handling snakes. They can squirt out of your hand like a cake of wet soap. Drop one onto the bottom of the boat and you are in for a chase. At a cost of $1.50 to $2, you don’t lose many.
Brady likes to find stripers on his locater before dropping the baits. The floats are stripped out maybe 100 feet behind the boat. As a rule, no one has to inform you when you get a bite. Stripers normally inhale the eel on the run and the fight is on.
This fishery has become so productive anglers have to hope that catch-and-release will be practiced for the good of the species.
REGULATIONS: The Chesapeake Bay season ends Dec. 31, meaning that after that you must move to the ocean if you want to keep fish or fish catch-and-release in the Bay.
by Bill Cochran at the Roanoke Times | December 20, 2007
You just don’t keep throwing 40-pound plus Chesapeake Bay striped bass onto the scales at Chris’ Bait and Tackle Shop without the locals taking notice.
That’s what Tim Nugent and his buddies began doing this time of the year about a half-dozen years ago.
“Week after week he would consistently catch these big fish and we couldn’t figure out what he was doing,” said Chris Snook, who, along with husband, Mark, operates the popular tackle shop on the southern end of the Eastern Shore.
Snook is no slough herself when it comes to striper fishing. But when Nugent first showed up it was an unusually cold winter and trollers like Snook were having their share of bad days. Yet, Nugent and his buddies never seemed to fail.
The mystery grew even deeper when the tackle shop gang noted that Nugent and his pals had rods on their boats that contained oversized bobbers.
“Finally, we decided we needed to find out what they were doing,” said Snook. “We cornered them and picked their brains.”
What they were doing was simply fishing for saltwater striped bass much like they fished for freshwater stripers back home at Lake Gaston along the Virginia-North Carolina border. They were drifting bait under bobbers. On the Chesapeake Bay, they substituted eels for the baitfish they used at 20,000-acre Gaston.
Knowledgeable anglers have known for decades that eels are a popular food for stripers. The snake-like critters slither down from freshwater tributaries of the Bay where stripers gobble them up. They have proven to be a productive bait when dunked around pilings of the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Rhodes bridge tunnels. But drifting them under bobbers in open water where stripers are suspended? That was something different for an area where trolling had been king.
Once onto the new method, Chris and Mark tested it with help from local guides, Capt. Jack Eudy and Capt. Jim Jenrette. “All of us were seeing great results,” said Chris Snook.
Other anglers were noticing. Questions were being asked. There was no way you could hide those bright orange and chartreuse bobbers, much less the big stripers coming to the scales.
A new fishing technique was born and it has spread like wildfire. On a weekend this time of the year, several hundred boats can be seen floating eels from just north of Cape Charles southward past Kiptopeke State Park to the tip of Fisherman’s Island. On a good day, as many as 1,500 eels will go out the door of Chris’s Bait and Tackle Shop, along with scores of bobbers and other components.
“It is an easy way to fish; most anyone can go out there and catch fish,” said Chris Snook. There can be long waits between bites, but that wasn’t a problem earlier this month when I talked to Snook. That morning her boat had hooked 18 stripers.
She gave me a tally of the citation catches taken during a string of recent days: “A 67.6 (pounder), a 63.3, 15 over 50 pounds, 70 fish over 40 and 15 releases.” This didn’t count a 50-pounder being weighed as we talked. More than 90 percent of the citations were eel catches. “We are definitely catching a better class fish,” she said.
I heard about the method a couple years ago and vowed I would try it. I hooked up with Capt. Jack Brady earlier this month and our boat quickly caught three stripers that were in the 30- and 40-pound class (see last week’s Cochran column). It was strange to catch fish that size employing much the same technique I’d use while fishing for bluegills with my granddaughter, Kalei, in our farm pond. The difference: big tackle and big fish.
The line beneath the bobber or balloon can be adjusted to fish different depths. Normally the depths range from about 8 to 18 feet, even when fishing over 80 feet of water. Chris Snook recommends a hefty 8/0 or 10/0 hook, but Jack Brady prefers a 5/0, believing it offer better hooking ability. A weight, such as an egg or inline sinker, helps get the eel to the hoped-for depth.
Detailed information on rigging an eel can be found at Chris’ Bait and Tackle Shop, where pre-tied rigs are available, and in a feature article of the January issue of Saltwater Magazine.
The biggest challenge is dealing with the eels, which is a bit like handling snakes. They can squirt out of your hand like a cake of wet soap. Drop one onto the bottom of the boat and you are in for a chase. At a cost of $1.50 to $2, you don’t lose many.
Brady likes to find stripers on his locater before dropping the baits. The floats are stripped out maybe 100 feet behind the boat. As a rule, no one has to inform you when you get a bite. Stripers normally inhale the eel on the run and the fight is on.
This fishery has become so productive anglers have to hope that catch-and-release will be practiced for the good of the species.
REGULATIONS: The Chesapeake Bay season ends Dec. 31, meaning that after that you must move to the ocean if you want to keep fish or fish catch-and-release in the Bay.