"The fish congregate in these huge schools to feed on large schools of shad. They herd shad like dogs work cattle."

Parramore finds the schoolies -- fish weighing 10 to 14 pounds -- by either watching for feeding gulls or searching with his sonar. When using the latter, he searches around islands and on the edges of gavel and sandbars from Madwind Creek all the way downlake through the narrows to Martin Dam. It's the birds that provide him with visual cues.

"The gulls feed on shad the stripers are pushing to the top," he said. "While resting on a sandbar, the gulls send out a scout to search for shad. If successful, he will return and alert the others. As the gulls take flight, follow them. They give the fish away every time."

For catching stripers busting the surface, Parramore recommends a 1/2-ounce bucktail jig with a curlytail grub. Cast the lure into the school, let it sink for 5 seconds and then reel slowly for a straight-line retrieve. Winter is one of the two seasons of the year during which artificial lures produce well at Martin. If you want to catch big fish, Parramore said, you'll find them holding on the outer edges of the school. "Nearly every time we caught a fish over 30 pounds last winter," he recalled, "it was due to a strong wind blowing us out of a big school of fish. It's hard to leave a school to work the edge; if you do, though, you may catch a monster."

Help from his feathered spotters aside, Parramore relies on his sonar. As soon as fish appear on his screen, he kills the motor and puts out 4- to 5-inch shad on downlines, which he lowers the baitfish to swim just a few feet above the stripers.

Parramore makes a downline by attaching a 2-ounce trolling sinker to his main line, which is 20-pound-test Trilene Big Game, and then ties a 3-foot leader of 20- or 25-pound-test fluorocarbon to the sinker. The other end is furnished with a 1/0 or 2/0 Daiichi circle hook.

SPRING
Even though striped bass no longer spawn in the Tallapoosa, Parramore notes that the urge to reproduce still influences their actions. So during this season, he tracks the fish on the basis on behaviors characteristic of the pre-spawn, spawn and post-spawn periods. Stripers move out of the main lake to the creeks and river and then back again in a cycle running from late February to mid-June. During this stretch, catching a trophy striper is likeliest from the end of February to the end of April.

Parramore observed that the transition from winter to pre-spawn begins when stripers start consuming large shad. "I fillet my customer's fish and always check stomach contents," he explained. "When I see large shad, it's time to change fishing techniques and switch to the big jumbos" -- those being gizzard shad weighing 1 1/2 to more than 2 pounds. "It seems when the water temperature reaches 53 to 55 degrees, the stripers metabolism increases to the point where they switch from a winter diet of 'chicken nuggets' to 'T-bone' shad."