Striped Bass Fishing

Sucker Punch Stripers

Almost anybody can catch smaller ones
when striped bass fishing. But trophy class
linesides, fish in the 30 pound plus range,
demand specialized baits and techniques. Sucker
punching is one of the best of them.

Suddenly, one rod tip went crazy, then dipped hard towards the water. Friend Wife wrestled the bucking rod from its holder and held on as line streamed off the reel. Drag or no drag, you just don’t stop the first sizzling run of a big striped bass. And this one was big---topping the scales at better than 31 pounds as it turned out. Not a bad start for our striped bass fishing trip.

Everybody who fishes for them knows how to down-rod for stripers. Typically, a live shad, rigged off a slip sinker, is lowered into the lake. Then you use your trolling motor to power-drift through schools of baitfish until a striper hits. I’d first learned that lesson striped bass fishing on Lake Norris, down in Tennessee, where many authorities believe the next world record will come from. It’s an effective technique wherever big rockfish are found.

Like I say, everybody knows how to do this. But some fishermen seem to do better than others. My buddy Gerald Bates, a premier striped bass fishing guide, is one of them. In the past, in fact, he often brought in limits when nobody else was taking anything.

“I unfortunately made the mistake of opening my mouth to other guides,” he wryly recalls. “Next thing you know, everybody was using my method.”

What’s different about Bates’ style of striped bass fishing is the bait. Instead of shad he uses suckers. Big suckers. The largest he can find. The stripers like the difference. “The average fish on the lake runs seven to 11 pounds,” he says. “Yet we rarely take one weighing less than 15 pounds with this technique. Most of our catch runs 20 or more.”

There are several advantages to suckers for striped bass fishing. First is their toughness. They can be kept in any bait well and remain frisky. “This is important,” Bates points out. “If you don’t wrestle one all over the boat he isn’t lively enough. Shad are rarely that active. And, of course, they require special round bait wells and heavy-duty aerators.”

Suckers stay lively at great depths as well. “A shad doesn’t last five minutes down at 70 feet,” Bates insists. “After that, you’re just towing a dead fish around with the boat.” Suckers, on the other hand, are unaffected by depth. “They really cut a shine down there!” he stresses.

You can even reel up, return the suckers to the bait well, and change locations. The bait will be just as active as when you started. You cannot reuse a shad under any circumstances. Big, active baits tend to attract bigger gamefish. “It’s the old saying,” Bates notes, “the bigger the bait, the bigger the fish.”

Suckers don’t come cheap, however. Area bait shops, when they have them, charge $15-20 pound for suckers. “At the size we use, that works out to only three or four suckers for a double sawbuck.” Because of that, Bates often takes the time to catch his own from a couple of local creeks he knows. He keeps the location of those streams very close to his vest, however.

Despite the cost, don’t try and economize by getting smaller suckers when striped bass fishing. You’ll be disappointed. There were two boys from Indiana staying at the same lodge as us. They had come off a great guided trip, where they’d limited out on fish running 15 to about 22 pounds, and were real happy about it. While we were out with Gerald, they, having learned the system from their guide the day before, gave it a try in their own boat.

Thing is, they tried stretching their budget with smaller baitfish. “Twenty bucks for a dozen baits is kind of steep,” one of them complained at the boat ramp. “But what can you do?”

A dozen baits is about eight more than they should have bought for their money. And it showed. We’d periodically see them through the day. They took one fish, weighing about ten pounds. In the same time period, the four of us aboard Bates’ boat took eight stripers. The smallest went about 11 pounds. The others ran from about 18 to 30. At one point we had three of these trophies on simultaneously.

The only difference between us and the Hoosiers was the size of the bait. “Very rarely do we take small fish,” Bates says. “And our fishermen appreciate the fact they are catching trophy stripers.”

It’s no secret that Bates introduced sucker striped basss fishing to the lake. He’s been sucker-punching stripers for more than a quarter century. For awhile he worked for another guide service, and shared his secret with the other guides in the group. The word spread. Pretty soon most guides on Lake Cumberland knew about the method, and it didn’t take long for private anglers to learn how to sucker punch a striper.

Other than the bait, sucker-punching is little different than any other down-rodding method. But there are some nuances.

• Treble hooks are preferred to singles, because they more likely result in a positive hook-up. Tease the sucker until he opens his mouth (I found this works easier if you hold the bait upside down), and hook one of the barbs through his mouth, just behind the sucker lips.



• Lower the bait to the depth you are marking fish. But it’s always a good idea to run one or two lines shallower as well when striped bass fishing. For instance, we were seeing stripers at 70 feet, in about 90 feet of water. That’s where we set most of our baits. But we ran one on a balloon rig at 50 feet, just in case.



• If you’re used to fishing shad, the rod action comes as a surprise. The rod tips vibrate steadily as the suckers swim around. When a striper shows up, the bait gets nervous, and often panics. The rod tip then can move as strongly as when a fish first hits a shad. You have to wait until there’s no question that a linesides is on. But you’ll know it. The rod dips downwards hard, and then cuts a jig in its holder.

“Do not set the hook,” Bates cautions. “Just pick up the rod and start reeling. The striper will have set the hook himself.”

And be sure to bring a big net. You’ll be sucker-punching some really big rockfish.