It's been established that stripers come down the river from other states, as it's been possible to track some coming from Georgia into the upper reaches of the Coosa River. So it would only make sense, Nichols surmises, that the same thing happens with fish out of Tennessee. "Stripers are naturally programmed to go down the river as fingerlings and come back up it when they are mature," he said. Thus, small fingerlings could even survive the passage through powerhouse turbines or over floodgates if a dam were spilling water.

The optimum time for fishing tailraces such as the one below Guntersville Dam comes in the spring, when the fish are on their spawning runs, typically in March and April. "They accumulate below the dams at that time of year," Nichols observed. "You can find them chasing shad. It's the best season for that type of striper fishing, although there are other ways of catching them at other times of the year."

Nichols, who agrees that the striper action can be feast or famine, with anglers encountering either tons of fish or none at all, advises anglers not to overlook the side streams that flow into the main river, because they too are likely places in which to find stripers running. He noted that on the Tennessee River below Guntersville Dam, in the vicinity of Wheeler, the fish can be found running up both the Paint Rock and the Elk rivers.

"The hybrids -- particularly the younger fish under 5 pounds -- tend to be more gregarious and school up more, but you can catch the bigger fish in a school too," Nichols offered.

It seems to Burgess, the lucky fisherman who caught his 43-pounder below Guntersville on a 3-inch Sassy Shad, that the cooler the season or the hour, the better the action. "We got out there around 6:00 in the morning," he recalled, "and the fishing had shut down by 7:00." And speaking of cool, he also thinks that it's just plain cool that something so big swims the river.

"I knew catfish got that big," he said. "But I had no idea about stripers until I went with Frank. These stripers sure are pretty -- and they're a ton of fun to catch."

OTHER STRIPER HOLES
Guntersville and West Point aren't the only places in the northern half of the Cotton State that offer you the opportunity to tie into a monster striper -- other sites too exhibit outstanding potential.

Nichols likes to fish for the stripers of Lake Martin in the heat of the summer, trolling the cool, deep water with downriggers while looking with a depthfinder for balls of bait. He can even make out groups of stripers on his electronics at times.

"The biggest stripe I've seen with my own eyes was one that our folks collected below Lewis Smith Dam," he said. "It weighed 49 1/4 pounds."

In cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the state stocks rainbow trout below Smith Dam. According to Nichols, that's one reason that the stripers grow big below that dam. "They like to eat rainbow trout," he said with a grin. "Just like we do."

The stripers that the state is stocking nowadays are all rather of the Gulf Coast strain than the Atlantic strain. There's a big push in fisheries management to restore native populations of fish in the Southeast, and the Gulf-strain striper is the one associated with Alabama.

"There are some minor physical differences in the strains," Nichols noted, "but you just about have to be a trained biologist to be able to spot those differences."

It was thought initially that the Gulf Coast strain might be more tolerant to warmer waters, but that looks not to be the case now. "Historically, the Gulf-strain fish holed up in big limestone springs on the Apalachicola River," Nichols said. "Those springs are cooler than the similar springs that the Atlantic-strain fish had on the East Coast."

Whenever in earlier years stripers were stocked in new places, an outcry was sometimes made by anglers who favored other species and feared that the imports would eat their beloved crappie, bluegill and bass. "Studies have shown repeatedly that 99 percent of what stripers eat is shad," Nichols remarked. "They are a swift-water fish, so they're not even in the same kind of habitat as crappie, bluegill or bass."

For that reason, stripers fit in well with the state's overall scheme of providing anglers with as much opportunity as possible. And fishermen who land a big stripe will no doubt be hooked, and will want to go back to experience it over and over again.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION
The state-record striper weighed 55 pounds; it was caught in the Tallapoosa River in 1955.

Stripers are native to the state's rivers below the Fall Line, especially in the Mobile Basin, and are a popular quarry for anglers there. But they remain something of a novelty in the upper part of the state.

Landlocked populations of Gulf Coast-strain stripers occur in the Chattahoochee River above Jim Woodruff Dam and in Lake Lewis Smith.

Most stripers in the Tennessee River are Atlantic Coast-strain fish, although Gulf Coast-strain stripers have been introduced into Wheeler Reservoir.

Striped bass are also present in the Coosa River system, and Lake Weiss has a documented naturally reproducing population of the fish.

Striped bass angling is best during cool months; the most promising sites are tailwater dams. The roster of favorite baits includes live gizzard shad, white or yellow jigs, and spoons.