Was on the water Saturday and noticed guide after guide posted up on the channel bank facing the islands and flats (outside of Highport). My guess is that people are targeting White and Sandies schooled together on the sonar and using live bait and or slabs to catch them.

Would anyone be willing to confirm my suspiscion? I'm potentially headed out tomorrow and wanted to replicate what the 50+ boats I saw were doing.

Thanks in advance
Paul

There is a little bit of everything out there right now the smaller stripes have been on top with sandbass under them early in 7-12 foot of water have to catch about 10 or so to get a keeper. Catching box fish mixed in with them. I have seen a few nice Striper caught with bait in that area last week.I have only been keeping striper if my peeps want them,and we have had enough sandbass on most trips to throw back the smaller stripers.Have heard some reports of sandbass on top in the evenings.Watch the graph ,and the top of the water some of the sandbass have been hanging of the ledges about mid day 18 to 23 foot deep.Most of the fish have had 1-2 inch shad ,or ghost minnows in them.

Thanks Michael. Looks like my fiancé and I need to book a charter with you. I certainly appreciate the info. I'm knew to this whole freshwater sport fishing. I can hold my own fly fishing rivers and have great success deep sea fishing when I lived in Orange Beach AL. We attempted to slow troll some large shad on Saturday morning but with no success.

Maybe tomorrow I'll throw some Zara spooks early in the morn and then drop some shad down if I am able to mark some fish.

Will let you know how it goes.

Unfortunately didn't do any better yesterday morning.

Around 7 or so we saw a pod of fish, presumably stripers or hybrids, erupting on bait fish on the surface of the water. I got one chance with my popper as they neared our boat. Fish 1, Paul 0. We continued to look for surface action and free drifted the flats across from Highport. Action seemed go dead within an hour.

We found many coves with awesome bait; netfuls of 5" shad, but nothing preying on them from below.

I guess this is why they call it fishing.

There is bait EVERYWHERE, it's nuts. Try a soft plastic, like a sassy shad. One hook makes it a lot easier to get them off and get back to fishing. Comes in handy when the surfacing is quick like you experienced. Either super glue the plastic to the jig head, or get a jig head with the spiral lock.