Confidence Backed

"Ready to catch 'em?" David Hilton asked as I stepped onto his pontoon boat this morning. "I'm going to wear you boys out!"

Most guides I fish with start the day with at least a few qualifiers, saying the fish "should" bite, or "they bit well yesterday, so we'll see"  Many quickly point out the wind, a high pressure system, a giant tournament that was just on the lake or some or the reason that catching fish might present problems. They like to keep expectations at least a little low so any measure of success seems extra good.

Not David Hilton. At least not today.

He was certain we'd catch a bunch. In fact, he was sufficiently confident in his approach that he was certain we'd start catching fish almost immediately.

The captain was right. We started catching Santee Cooper striped bass almost as soon as we started fishing, and by 10:30, we had caught and released 58 stripers. We tried some catfishing for a while and the wind kicked up in a big way, so we didn't sustain the same torrid pace, but by our best tally we ended up catching 75 stripers and a couple of blue cats.

I learned a lot today and got a bunch of good material for stories, and just as was promised, I'm worn out!

My First Murray Trip & Stripers

Move-in week is going on now at the University of South Carolina, which tells me that my first-ever look at Lake Murray occurred around this time of year, 29 years ago.

I'd been on campus less than a week, maybe only a couple of days, when I met a friend who would become a future roommate. We met at an evening function for freshmen, and soon got talking about fishing. Turns out he was from South Carolina, had a boat on campus and knew a fair amount about Lake Murray fishing, including the fact that the striped bass were schooling most mornings.

So well before dark the following morning we met somewhere on campus, I hopped in his truck, and we headed for Lake Murray. We put in well down the lake and rode to the middle of a big cove on the Lexington side, where he told me we would hang tight and watch for fish busting the surface or birds diving. Just to get it out of my system, I made a couple of casts with one of his rods, each of which was rigged tandem with a chugger and light hair jig. Then I put it down and waited, as he had suggested, in case we needed to make a quick run.

That morning marked the first and last time a striper school has ever come up all around a boat I was in. We didn't have to run anywhere, because fish were busting bait on top in every direction around us. I learned that day (and I've since confirmed several times) that schooling stripers make me forget how to cast a baitcaster.

I missed a couple of hard strikes before hooking up, and we each wrestled a fish from the school before it went down. Details elude me now, but I believe it was true double. Both fish weighed 5 or 6 pounds, although I thought mine weighed twice that when I was fighting it. I believe a couple other schools come up that morning. I can't remember whether we caught any more fish.

I only know that Lake Murray left me with a very good first impression.

Thursday Tips: Find the Thermocline

B.A.SS. Elite Series pro Brian Snowden
with a late-summer largemouth from Table Rock.

By late summer, many lakes and reservoirs around the country have stratified. Oversimplified (to accommodate my own very limited understanding), a cooler layer forms on the bottom, with a warmer layer on top. In-between is a narrow middle ground known as the thermocline, and that layer generally offers the greatest interest to fishermen.

The bottom layer tends to get too low in dissolved oxygen for many sportfish and baitfish. while the top layer commonly gets to warm. Fish move in an out of any of the layers, but they spend the most time in the middle, where both dissolved oxygen levels and temperatures are moderated. Although not exactly a "best of both worlds," the middle layer does offer the "least bad of both worlds" through the hottest days of summer. Even fish that are tolerant of warm water spend quite a bit of time near the thermocline because it holds big concentrations of food.

In lakes that stratify, finding the thermocline with electronics typically isn't difficult. The most obvious clue is that much of the bait and many larger fish will concentrate in the same depth range. Beyond that clue, though, the layers themselves each have a little bit different appearance on most graphs, and the thermocline often is easy to recognize.

If you know what depth range is likely to hold the most fish, you only have to figure out where they are within that zone. That part depends largely on the target species. Stripers, walleyes, trout other species that roam open water often will be suspended over much deeper water and roaming quite a bit, so the key to finding them often is to locate schools of baitfish. Look for seagulls resting or circling in an area. Usually baitfish are nearby.

Cover-oriented species like bass and crappie often will relate to cover or structure at the depth of the thermocline, so if you figure out that zone is 20 to 22 feet, start looking at points, humps and channel edges that offer good structure within depth range. If you can find stumps, boulders or a brushpile atop structure in the key depth range, that's even better.

Whether you locate specific fish to target or search as you go by trolling or drifting, set your lines so that your baits stay at the thermocline or slightly above it. Most fish are more likely to move up than down to fish.

Finally, continue to watch our electronics for more clues as you fish, and take note of every detail any time a fish bites.