we were out on Kegonsa 7/3 in the morning

some surface feeding , but seeing a lot of bait fish on the graph with mixed other fish in the 5-10 foot depth in 18-24 feet of water

so we break out the planer boards , find some diving lures and trolling at first way too fast , then we figured out how to add enough drag that we got down to 2.7mph and we started getting fish , then with the sun now getting up in the sky everything seemed to go 8-15 down in 20-24 feet of water and we could no longer get down there.

anyone here fish for stripe bass

we actually picked up a striped bass my first ever , a huge blue gill and a nice northern so the fish were down there in these schools of bait fish

we fried up the gill and the stripe bass yesterday , I could eat stripe bass more often and there is no season or limit on them in WI

also doesn't seem many people fish for them

also what is your preferred small planar board I lost one of the 2 we had when the northern hit , we doubled back several times looking for it and never found it so I need a starboard and I didn't care for the design of these.

the ones I had are opti tackle they look to be a rip off of the mini yellow bird design with the ball bearing line closure in the back

also if any of you have made any I would be interested in what they look like

We have some true stripers in the Ohio river as well has hybrids. A few lakes are stocked with true stripers. Don't know if there's a much better fighter or funner freshwater fish to catch than a striper. We catch them mostly on top water or jigs or live bait in the river.

Never have trolled for em.

we used the bucket method for get from 3.6 to 2.7mph

need to work on a harness to put it in the center , she pulls a little to starboard like this

that little boat slides right along at 3.6 in idle

I have to experiment with a larger bucket or drift sock to see if I can get us down to 2.5 or maybe even 2

my dad trolls worm rigs a bunch at 1.5 to 1.7 and they pick up a lot of fish that way

I am a bank fisherman and I don’t target them specifically but catch them as incidentals when I’m fishing in Lake Hopatcong ( New Jersey) in late April early/May each year.

Here’s a couple I caught last month.





I filleted them and took them back to PA with me.



I batter dipped them and served them with some homemade tartar sauce and fries.





Like SNIPERBBB says, they are hard fighters, very exciting to catch.

Lug you got you some hybrids there.

Yeah, white bass/striped bass hybrids.

is this a hybrid or a stripe?




Edit : looking at more pictures it would seem broken strips on closer to the belly indicate hybrid

I know next to nothing about trolling but when we went to lake Eric for walleye on a guided trip we ran planer boards. Seems like to get the lure deeper we just ran more line out from planer board to lure. More line deeper they would go.

All the fish pictured are Wipers, which is a striped bass/white bass hybrid. They grow very quickly and are stocked in even small ponds now. They are sterile. They typically die if released during hot temperatures, so it's best to keep and eat them.

Keith

I hate the term wipers for hybrid stripers.

#1 lure for white bass: sonars

So do I.

I agree it's a bad sounding name for a useful fish. The name sounds fecal related.

Keith

Got an ocean full of stripers here. Have gillnetted them but never caught one on a hook and hope to keep a perfect record!, lol

Guys use wire line or leadcore when trolling to get deep enough, used to use a lot of umbrella rigs this way, but kinda fell out of fashion due to the size limit. Never saw anyone use planing boards, but large diamond jigs will go deep and you can use them on regular line. You can drift over the schools and work the jigs.
Jigs can be used with feathers, plastic thingees, or cut bait.

If you want to go slower, and the surface conditions are calm you can troll in reverse....

It is my understanding that true, non-hybrid striped bass are saltwater fish. Crossing them with white bass produces a hybrid that can live in freshwater. So every striped bass you catch in freshwater is going to be a white bass/striped bass hybrid.

I could be wrong but that is the way I understand it.

I guide for them here on Texoma. We don't have many hybrids, but are one of the few lakes where striper can reproduce. Can't help you with trolling though, the only method I don't use. It is effective, especially a-rigs with swimbaits or bucktails.

That's not true. True stripers can live in freshwater. They just tend to not get as big as their saltwater brethren.

All the fish pictured are wipers? I seriously doubt the DNR stocks wipers in Lake Kegonsa. More than likely a white bass.

Takes salinity and current for striper to reproduce. They can live in any freshwater (that has oxygen), they just cannot reproduce. There are many lakes around the southeast that have striper not hybrids. They were put there by hand. Texoma is the striper capital of America because we produce millions in the wild every year. We have a 10 fish limit with 2 over 20"

True, but 10 to 20 lbers all day is pretty fun for freshwater fishing.

Get 'em on ice right away and clean soon as you get home. Same goes for small sheephead. The key here is to keep 'em chilled.

Which is a good thing that they can't reproduce. They'd clean a lake out fast. White bass are bad enough.

I stand corrected, thanks for the information guys.

I seriously doubt the DNR would stock any fish in WI that had no season and no bag limit

the Yahara joins the Rock , which joins the Illinois and the Mississippi and gets to the gulf

I had heard of them on Kegonsa just never caught one before

these are basically the same as Rock bass in WI take and eat all you want the DNR does not care

they do stay small , while they get huge in other places in WI the record stripe bass is 1 pound 9.3 ounces 17 inches so this one was probably 15 inches the fillets were decent size and ate well.
the record hybrid is just shy of 14 pounds and 28 inches
although the state record for the hybrid was Lake Columbia which is a cooling lake for the power plant in Columbia , it gets fish of unusual size because it doesn't freeze in the winter near the plant it creates a micro climate for fish to stay active and feed all winter

15 is a nice eater size on these I could eat them every week if I could catch enough.

I may try some lead line the planer boards really help to get lines out and cover water and keep lines from all wanting to go strait back where if a fish runs 8 feet one way or the other they cross lines

got this one on a Berkley flicker shad but spoons might work decent also

have a small live well on the boat that we kept it alive in till we were home , then filleted it right away and got it in a bag in the fridge.

Wipers are extremely popular for stocking in ponds. Millions are sold by fish hatcheries in the US. People bucket stock fish all over the country.

Keith

We are coming down there in a couple weeks to fish with Cole Cook of Texoma Striper Company

Very interesting, Keith.

WI DNR lists their stocking back to 1972 , if they are sterile and were stocked pre-72 that would make them a >51 year old fish

https://apps.dnr.wi.gov/fisheriesmanagement/Public/Summary/Index

my first thought would be well maybe they only listed game species stocked , but they had a lot of minnow species stocked so that doesn't really figure

I live about 1.5 miles from Kegonsa and fish it regularly, its full of white bass. Waubesa up river has both white and yellow bass. Monona has some also. If you want to load the boat with them head up Mendota and troll spinners or little cleo spoons in blue and silver, also watch for diving seagulls and get over there quick and cast its a blast on light tackle. The key to eating them is to keep your fillet knife about a 1/4" above the skin when skinning and V out the lateral red line. You dont want any red meat on fillet and as previosly said get them on ice pronto.

I forgot about boards. I've 10 Church boards with 2 differant releases. 6 of them I put my own spring loaded flags on and use pinch pads set up for power pro inland and 4 set up with releases for Lake Michigan.

That's a white bass...not a striper or a hybrid.

The Wildlife here stocks stripers in a few lakes to help control the blueback herring populations. We have lakes with hybrids, stripers, and whites. The bluebacks really hurt the whites in some lakes by eating the eggs, as well as the walleye eggs. You can try inline trolling weights to help get deeper. But I don't know if the weights will work on planer boards??

There are several species of fairly similar fish in the striped bass family Moronidae, the true basses. They mostly all have a similar feature that affects how humans consider them as food. Along their sides they have pores in their scales that form a "lateral line" and which is very sensiive to vibrations in the water which is a major way they detect prey. Behind that lateral line is a strip of red tissue that receives the vibrations and that is nerve tissue. Most of us when we eat fish are enjoying the flavor of white muscle fiber and find that the red nerve tissue has a bad or perhaps very bad flavor. If one carefully removes all the red nerve tissue from a white bass for example most would not detect a difference in flavor from walleye muscle.

thank you very much @Mendota

it had a Y bone in it that ran right down that red line of tissue

skin on scaled , slicing out the y bones with most of the red tissue around them I could make 3 pieces out of each side that cooked nicely

I looked at some white bass picks , and that is certainly what I had , also thanks for the tip on Mendota

we like the Madison lakes but prefer the ones with state launches as we have to pay extra not being Dane county residents

also the blessing and curse of blue green algae this year , didn't have any ski boats or wave runners or much for cruisers running us down this year.

2 years ago I had a guy sure he could get around me on the inside , when I left him all of the channel he cut my lines and got himself hung up on a sand bar. could have driven 10 of his boats side by side through the channel the channel was 30 feet deep and I was anchored in 7 right on the top of the drop off had lines up into the shallows and down into the deep

Looks like a regular white bass to me

well I went looking at other planer boards

$$$ everything else is quite expensive 35-45 for even small boards

already having one and seeing that most of them use a snap swivel off the back of the board

the opti uses a ball bearing system that springs back after you pull the line into it , this system if the board comes loose can cost you a board and even at 15 dollars each who wants to drop money in the water that they don't need too

my solution , put a snap swivel in the ball bearing line grabber then turn the adjustment screw till it would go in no more and that locks the snap swivel in

we went fishing to day , it was windy , we trolled all over , found a pile of suspended fish 5-10 feet like a line on the graph , fish jumping around us , but we couldn't pick up a bite