Steve Hacker's

Pickwick Lake Smallmouth Services, Inc.

Featuring Catch and Release Fishing for Trophy Smallmouth Bass

Big Stripers

Only a very small percentage of my fishing is for stripers, but when they're on and we run across them, we can have a ball. We have many mornings in late spring and early summer where we start catching them at daybreak on topwater baits, usually fish weighing from 8# to the mid teens, with a few over 20 pounds. A great way to start a summer morning!

Below you will see several pictures of Dave Mansell and Randy Wiek wearing the same clothes and holding up big fish. These are not the same fish! They are different fish caught on one of the most unbelievable mornings of big fish fishing action any of us have ever seen. Here is part of the report recorded and e-mailed the day it happened:

"Well, there aren't many days when you can honestly talk about a day's catch as being in the 'several hundreds of pounds', but that's exactly what happened to Dave Mansell and Randy Wiek this morning--and if you're thinking 'those Pickwick drum must have really been biting today', there was only one small drum boated all day! 

Guess it was that weather front moving in, but the big stripers were on an absolute tear. This morning they had 30 over 10#, 6 over 20#, and two over 30#! I have no idea how many 4 to 8 pounders they caught. Over a quarter ton of fish!. Best baits were the big Storm swim baits, Flukes on leadheads, and the big Redfin waked on the surface. Caught a few on a Pupfish, too. Just bass tackle, using the big Loomis spinnerbait rods and Shimano baitcasters (250 Calcutta and Chronarch SF) with 15# and 17# line.

Dave caught one that pulled the scales down to 32.5 pounds that blew up on the Redfin on top. It just doesn't get much better than that. What a day. Some breakoffs and giants lost, too; no telling how big. Both guys complaining by noon of elbows and forearms so sore they could hardly fight the fish. . . ."

To view the pictures below, click on the thumbnails (NOT the text description underneath) to view the full-sized picture.

1901 County Road 10, Florence, Alabama 35633-2959

Phone: (256)760-8090       E-mail: info@smallmouth.com

Acts 2:38                                                   Long May She Wave!                                              Mark 16:16

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