South River Topwater Fishing: Holiday Review

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Holiday Review

My youngest daughter Grace had planned on leaving to go back to grad school the morning of the 4th. Luckily, after breakfast, I was able to convince her to stay for a quick outing before leaving. We had not fished over the holiday weekend, so I was thrilled to have her for a few extra hours. Unfortunately, the forecast was for rain and wind all day. When we arrived at the shoal, things were worse than anticipated. It was not raining, but it was downright miserable. I attempted to anchor on "the spot", but the chop pushed me a good 100 yards towards the red marker. Since we did not have a lot of time before conditions were to get really ugly, we had to make due. On literally every cast from that point forward we each boated a fish. I lost count of the number of doubles we had. All the fish were between 20 and 24 inches. We fished well over an hour and then headed in both tired and exhilarated at the same time. I can not stress enough to my readers how good fishing is right now. There is no particular spot. The fish are everywhere. The key is to stay in the shallows. If you watch your depth finder, you can clearly see where the water goes from 6 feet down to 3 feet. Stay in the shallow area and use surface plugs. If you are off the ledge or using a subsurface lure like a spoon or rattle trap, you just will not do as well. These fish are feeding on the surface.

I arrived at the shoal to a picture perfect topwater conditions tonight. The chop was gone and the surface was like a bathtub. High tide was 6:30, so there was little or no tide. Fishing remained "red hot". I did not make a cast tonight that did not result in a boated fish. They were not as big as the past few outings, but I am sure at least 15 were keepers. There were a lot of boats scattered around the shoal. A few of us were doing quite well, but I did see several boats that came and went empty handed. Again, I think the reason they did not have success, is they were fishing the deeper water and using either live bait or swim baits. What works at the point is topwater....period. Most people I talk to are intimidated by surface lures. They should not be. There is no wrong way to work a topwater plug. Just cast it as far as you can and use your rod to move it along the surface in a erratic fashion. Any movement will do. Striped bass will react to the movement..any movement.