Winter Striper Fishing

This past year I decided to pick up fishing again and use my boat (for the first time) in the fall and winter. After several months of fishing at varying times of day, trying to understand the relationship between water temperatures, feeding habits, and the solar and lunar effects, I can honestly say that I have made some progress in the arena of Striper fishing on Lake Travis. I began attempting Stripers January. I had been fishing in a little cut that never produced anything but a few Largemouths, some White Bass, and a couple of Crappie and almost always a Channel or Blue Catfish. It always seemed like a nice "protected" place to fish and hoped it would turn up a few lunkers, but it never did.

I decided to go to deeper water and deploy a new Humminbird 343c. The fish finder is so awesome! It takes the guess work out of where the fish are, or where they aren't. Being able to definitively see where they are hanging out and what depth is such a great asset; now all you have to do is plug in bait type and presentation, and a little patience.

At the end of January, the day that I caught my first Striper, this photo shows what the environment looked like. What you are looking at is a 200KHz narrow band (right under the boat). While a finder cannot tell you what type of fish it is pinging, it can reveal some interesting if not notable details. For instance, these fish are most likely at that depth due to temperature or supporting oxygen levels. In this photo, I had the depth finder "sensitivity" set to the lowest level. What that does is remove a lot of the clutter that can appear from the surface all the way down to the bottom. What you are left with is just fish and the disturbance they are making; you can also tell if (a) fish is making an ascent or has made a decent. According to the fishing reports, Striped Bass have pretty much been slow all winter, but have been biting somewhere between 25-40 feet. According to this photo, there are no big fish above 68 feet, this means the fish have to be persuaded up. I have tried to fish at their level, but I never get bites - it seems you just have to wait for one or two to get hungry. Eventually one did, a 22" male.