By Capt. James McManus
September is always a welcome end to the summer. Gone are most dog days and a lot of the boat traffic, fish are waking from their summer doldrums and it’s “fixin’ to get good.” There will soon be huge schools of breaking stripers on Hartwell. Spots and smallies will return to the banks, as well as start looking up more often on Fontana. Hoping to make another trip to Lake Michigan as I hear the big king salmon stage in front of major rivers. With cooler weather, everything is more appealing and often more rewarding.
At home though, I have heard rumblings of our wildlife folks preparing to stock stripers in Fontana. Hat’s off to them if it’s true. We have been pushing for that for years. Lots of time on the water lately has shown tons of bait, not just in a few places, but all over the lake. With sonar imaging, it’s easy to distinguish between bluebacks and threadfins, and both populations are strong.
Lessons can be learned from looking at other states stocking methods. Number one is that to have a viable number of catchable fish, you have to stock a goodly number to start with. Most states stock at least 15 per acre annually, and that works best I think with a mix of stripers and hybrids, although Lanier stocks only stripers. Studies have shown at Hartwell that summer survival rates are better with hybrids than pure stripers. With the cooler water temps and deeper areas Fontana should fare well with either. An interesting idea is to also stock some just below the Cullowhee dam, with the removal of the Dillsboro dam they just might have enough free flowing river to spawn and I haven’t talked to a single fly fisherman that objected to hooking into double digit fish, even if striped instead of spotted or colored.
Well here’s to cooler weather, tight lines and give our wildlife folks a thumbs up if you see them.
Later, Capt. James
Capt. James McManus owns 153 Charters. Give him a call for a great day on the water at (828) 421-8125