"Last year," the guide continued, "for the week before Memorial Day we caught 30 stripers weighing 20 to 30 pounds and eight weighing more than 30. I had never encountered so many big fish. We caught them 45 to 55 feet deep. Then, all of a sudden, on Memorial Day weekend they disappeared. We still caught fish, but I never found the location of those big fish."

SUMMER
As mid-June approaches, Parramore finds striped bass deeper, and in the middle of the lake around the Sail Club, Chimney Rock, Long Branch and Blue Creek. Their depth varies with temperature. Last summer was especially hot; as a result, the guide caught fish as deep as 80 feet.

Nevertheless, the heat had a positive impact on fishing. On July 30, clients set a new record for Parramore when they caught six fish weighing a total of 150 pounds. Two weighed more than 30 pounds; one exceeded 40 pounds.

Fishing live bait on downlines is the preferred method for catching these summer fish, in Parramore's view, but artificial lures also produce when trolled behind downriggers.

"Down-rig trolling, or controlled-depth trolling, is an awesome way to catch fish," Parramore enthused, "and it's an alternative to using live bait. One day last summer, heavy boat traffic mid-lake caused me to move to the upper lake. The downriggers did not produce at the first two places we fished; then we moved to Youngs Island. When we stopped fishing, we had caught 10 fish weighing 200 pounds. Of those, one weighed 30 pounds and two weighed over 20 pounds. The strike from the 30-pounder came at noon while fishing water 60 to 70 feet deep, with the downriggers set at 45 feet."

Downriggers are most lethal from mid-August though October on stripers that are scattered or schooling, Parramore observed. The former require you to cover a lot of water to find them; the latter move too fast for downlines to do their job. "If you see a large school of stripers following bait balls," he explained, "don't even try to fish them with downlines, because they will have moved before you can lower a bait to them. They are on the move. Often, using downriggers you can make two or three passes through a big school before you lose them, and usually you catch a double with each pass."

In either situation, he lowers his two downriggers to within 5 to 10 feet of the fish below and trolls at a speed of 1 1/2 miles per hour. The lure, a horsehead shaped jig with an Indiana spinnerbait blade, is rigged to run 100 feet behind the downrigger ball.

"That's the deadliest bait that I've every used on a downrig," Parramore noted. "Troll slowly, as stripers do not like to hit at high speed."