Fishing For Striped Bass - Finding The Fish With The Outdoor Dream Foundation

Fishing for Stripers & Hybrid Bass – Anderson South Carolina

It’s June 2016 in Anderson South Carolina and the Outdoor Dream foundation is getting ready to take a group of kids fishing for Stripers and Hybrid Bass.

During my stay in Anderson SC I was invited to go out fishing on Lake Hartwell and help locate where the strippers were schooled up, in preparation for this week’s Kids event and the Special Force’s event that the Outdoor Dream Foundation was putting on. Here is a short review and video of what we found.

Areas Of Focus On Lake Hartwell

We started our search in deep water (85 ft), near the mouth of one of the many narrow inlets North of Hwy 85. Here we registered many fish between 35 and 60 feet, but could not get either the Bass or the Stripers to bite. After an hour of continuous adjust of the boat relative to the schooled fish we finally move on to find our next location. Location #1, Many fish no bites!

Heading back to the main part of Lake Hartwell we headed South-West and started to check out the many bays on the shoreline. The Depths of these bays ranged from 40 to 60 feet and in the first bay we strolled into we notice bait fish coming to the surface. Now here the bait fish are most like Herring, which is rare to see. So we dropped 6 rods, 4 rods to a depth of 15 feet and 2 rods straight out the back with no weight. We then maneuvered the boat close to the bait fish and what we saw on the fish locator was incredible. The bait fish expanded a depth of 20 feet to the surface and there were countless numbers of big fish. Within seconds we had hits on every pole and within a few minutes we had pulled in 3 out of 8 strikes. The larges fish was a Striper approximately 6 pounds, so not big, but great action for these young kids that the Outdoor Dream Foundation was getting ready to bring out. Location #2, lots of fish, great biting action.

After the 3 fish we needed to move on and find at least one more spot where these great fighting fish are schooling up. So we head further South-West just past Andersonville Island. Here we spotted many fish on the surface and down 20 feet, so we marked the sport and dropped 6 lines for about 20 minutes. We did not get any hits, but we now had our third fishing spot and headed in for the evening. Location #3, a few fish and no biting action.

Bait Used For Catching Hybrid Bass & Stripers

The bait we used were Blueback Herring, 4 to 5 inches long on 17 lb monofilament line. Four of our poles had a 2 pound weight with a 2 foot monofilament leader and a circle hook. The other two poles were rig up with no weight and just tossed out the back of the boat. The Herring were hooked through the nose, which avoids harming the fish, giving maximum action.

In the Bays we used both the deep rig and the straight-lines off the back of the boat, tossing the straight-lines out as far as we could. The other lines were lowered straight down, off the side of the boat. Our GPS trolling motor then kept us in the area where the Striped Bass (Stripers) and/or Hybrid Bass were schooling.