A funny thing happened to me today. I caught my first striper on Brookville Reservoir in Indiana! It’s a beautiful lake in the steeply hilled southeastern part of the state. It is over 100’ deep in places and has abundant wildlife everywhere you look. Okay, you’re already looking at the picture and laughing at my fish. I know! I know! It wasn’t a big one. Stop laughing! It counts! That’s not even the funny thing that happened to me. Seriously, stop laughing.
I’ve wanted to fish for stripers for years but never got around to it. When my brother-in-law told me that he had learned how to catch them, I was all ears. He and a friend had gone out with a guide and learned the basics. He suggested we meet at Brookville at 6:00 AM Tuesday morning the next week. I was all in! Neither of us had ever caught stripers before. Well actually, Dave had a close encounter on his trip. He had a big one on that bent a 30# swivel snap straight. We were unsure of what we were doing but excited to give it try. We launched his boat, newly outfitted with out-rigged rod holders. Dave had made the mounts himself and the fact that he is a master tool and die maker was self-evident.
We were trolling umbrella rigs at about 2.5 mph. Our rigs had 5 baits on each. They were 3/8 oz jig-heads tipped with paddle tail swimbaits. * It worked! We both caught our first fish! Stop laughing. It was fun and exciting to try a new technique and it worked! But our fish finder was showing big balls of bait fish and lots of big fish 40-60’ down. Lots of them! Out of our reach. We tied on big 1 ½ oz jig heads with big swimbaits 6’ from our rigs. We managed to get down to 20-25’ but that was it. There we were on the cusp of catching the big ones, but just couldn’t get to them. No one mentioned downriggers. One little detail! As if to reflect my mood, it clouded up and rained.
They were so tantalizingly close, but out of reach. The rest of the morning, I kept drooling on Dave's new fish-finder and saying, “Another bait ball, big one, and lots of big fish!” Over and over. Dave finally shoved me away from the helm around noon and told me to quit looking at the stupid screen and do something productive. He grumbled something I didn't quite hear about shorting out electronics while he was wiping down his screen. I ignored his unwarranted outburst and moved on to my next obsession. He’s a bit of a grump with no sympathy for those of us with OFD. Obsessive Fish-finder Disorder. You might remember him from the Canada trip. (See Provisions Disposition) He was the one with the lost bag. He's allowed to be a grump.
So, I sat and obsessively watched the rods and checked my emails. There was one from a new friend I recently met on the afore mentioned fishing trip. He was filming an episode of Frontier Stories for Wild TV at the lodge where we were fishing. He had taken some videos of us arriving at the airport and piling into the van and talking about fishing in northern Manitoba. He was letting me know that we were going to be in Episode 4, The Shield which would be airing in a week! I was super excited. I subscribed to Wild TV while we were texting. He asked if I was in Florida because we had talked about how much I liked fishing there. I told him I was striper fishing in Indiana and attached the picture of me with my first one. Stop laughing.
He replied “Strippers!? Nice!!”. Dave and I had a good laugh at that one and it broke the tension on the boat. I had no idea my new friend was so quick and funny. Being the smarty pants that I am, I replied “No, stripers, as in striped bass. You know. Anadromous fish, born in freshwater, spend most of their life in saltwater, after reaching sexual maturity, return to rivers and bays in the spring to spawn… you know, those stripers! That extra "p" makes a big difference dude!”. He replied, “LOL. Oops!”.
Little details really do make a big difference! Striper, stripper… not the same word spelled differently. You should just believe me…. really. Stop! Don’t Google it! You’ll get trapped in a pornado and your girlfriend will walk in. You’ll wind up having to explain it to her! And that conversation never goes well. “Seriously Sweetums, I was just reading this fishing blog and suddenly all this awful stuff just appeared out of nowhere!” Oh shoot! That reminds me, I left the stripper open in the woodshop. Got to go!
Doc
Footnote:
Umbrella rigs gave me a great idea for a new bullet lure. I’m working on it now and I think it’s going to be a blast. Stay tuned, I’ll post a pic as soon as the prototype is finished. Dave already gave it a name, Full Magazine! We’re going to field test it next month.
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