At Times They’re Better Than Livebait

“At taping time, there was no bait anywhere close to where I’d located the stripers. We had a few baits but ran out by midmorning. What happened next made for a great In-Fisherman TV segment and turned me into a true swimbait aficionado.

“Stange dug through his gear and came up with a few 9-inch Storm WildEye Swim Shads that he’d used on a recent muskie expedition and had also used for stripers in saltwater. ‘Too small?’ he asked. Should be just right, I said.

“Honest to goodness, it was only a few minutes before Doug’s lure got hammered by a 30-pounder. He’d cast the big bait right to a shoreline spot filled with timber. The fish struck in a giant explosion of a strike, not more than seconds after the lure touched down. The striper’s really the only fish in freshwater that can take a lure like that, and it’s one of the most exciting things you’ll ever see.

“Well, I also had with me a few 8-inch Shimmy Shads, another swimbait style, so I started to cast those. Soon enough I had a 30 plaster one at the end of a long cast. We ended up catching four good stripers on those big swimbaits in a couple hours—and this was out of clear, shallow water in the middle of the day, conditions where stripers turn down anything that doesn’t look totally realistic. It was some of the most exciting fishing I’d done in a long time. ”

Lure & Tackle Options

In-Fisherman defines a swimbait as a lure having two distinct actions: a side-to-side roll, and a tail-flap or thump. This two-part action is evident in Storm swimbaits, including the WildEye Swim Shad and the Kickin’ Minnow. McClintock also mentions the Shimmy Shad made by Trophy Technologies. Other soft swimbaits targeted primarily to trophy bass hunters, like the Mission Fish or Huddleston Deluxe Trout, do a job on stripers, too. These pricey lures are impossible to find in tackle shops outside of the West Coast but are available online at swimbaitnation.com.

Match the length of the swimbaits you use to the size potential of the stripers that swim in your local waters, McClintock advises. “A 30-pounder has no trouble eating a 2-pound skipjack, or a foot-long swimbait,” he says. “If your stripers reach a maximum size of, say, 10 pounds, you should downsize to about a 4- to 6-inch lure. For most situations, you can’t go wrong with natural shad or rainbow trout patterns. If the water’s murky after a hard rain, chartreuse is deadly, and black works great at night.”

McClintock uses 7- or 7.5-foot medium-heavy power and medium-fast action rods. “Several manufacturers make specialty swimbait rods up to 8 feet,” he says. “Muskie rods are another option. Don’t get something with a pole-cue action. Some of the baits are heavy, but basically, the rod needs some tip action for castability and shock absorption, but the butt has to be powerful enough to horse big, powerful fish away from cover.

“The reel should have a smooth drag and never, ever lock it down perfectly tight on these bruisers. I use a 5.2:1 Pflueger Trion 66 and spool up with 40-pound Berkley Big Game line, which is very abrasion-resistant—big river stripers are forever running into submerged timber when hooked. A high-speed reel is unacceptable for lure-casting since it hasn’t enough winching power for stripers. A slower-speed reel also gives the lure a more lifelike swimming action upon retrieve.”