For this angler, the 2024 open water season started with a dull thud back in March. As the weather and water warmed, successes started to outpace failures, and by the time May arrived I was pretty dialed. By Memorial Day my family had boated numbers of crappies, bass, perch, cats, and walleyes, including a couple new personal best fish for my wife.

June ushered in typical Iowa heat and humidity and kicked off the pursuit for spawning bluegills and cats. Although trophy channels and flatheads have eluded me so far this year, I was fortunate to help a buddy catch and release his personal best 9 pound channel cat at a local lake. On this and another more recent outing we filled the livewells with quality 8-10” bluegills, topping off the freezers for festivities later this summer.      

Although my crew has enjoyed very successful fishing so far this year, anticipation for Christmas in July with hybrids and white bass has reached a fevered pitch! The time has come to stow the panfish gear and mobilize stouter equipment for the angriest fish in freshwater!

Pound for pound, stripers are the most aggressive and hardest fighting fish in freshwater, destroying any shad patterned artificial bait in your arsenal- inline spinners, slab spoons, flukes, crank baits, swim baits, chug bugs, pop-r’s, whopper ploppers, mister twisters, and so on… These fish are just plain mean, and on medium weight tackle they have no equal for aggressively slamming baits. My best friend said it best, “...when they’re hitting good, it’s pure violence! When topwaters are on the menu, they hit them so hard it's like catching them twice!”

Last summer, my friends and family enjoyed the best striper fishing of our lives. During a stable weather pattern marked by heat, humidity, and strong south/southwest winds, we avoided the skunk on 6 consecutive outings. We owe our success to flexibility, trying new things, and not getting stuck in a rut from previous seasons. While the reliable top water pattern from 2022 failed to deliver consistent results, inline spinners and blue/chrome spoons quickly became our go-to baits. As an added bonus, on each outing we boated aggressive channel cats up to 5 pounds while casting for stripers.  

In years past, our striper fishing approach was to anchor on structure that has produced fish, motoring to individual waypoints marked on my lake map. However, last summer this strategy proved inefficient and unreliable, with known hotspots from previous years drying up. This forced us to experiment with trolling, drifting, and fishing in areas that we’d overlooked.

On one outing in 2023, as the blazing sun began to dip towards the Western horizon, a new pattern emerged. After paying the “lake tax” again, losing another expensive crankbait to the rocks, I pulled up the anchor and began to search for a new lure. As the steady winds pushed us downstream, I advised my kids to keep casting while I tied on a new bait.  

The boat rocked listlessly with the waves and current as we rounded a point, riding the edge of a shallow flat that dropped off quickly into 20 feet of water. Lulled into complacency from hours of casting with little to show for it, without warning my son and daughter got the surprise of their lives! With crushing force that nearly wrenched the rods out of their hands, my oldest and youngest doubled up! A moment later my middle child hollered out, “Fish on!”. Out of nowhere, I was struck dumb, sitting with a handful of line, a smirking crankbait, and an unfinished knot, while my kids were tripled up! I immediately sprung into “Dad Mode”, careful to toss the crankbait into a cubby while tossing my rod and reel to the side. After scrambling to find the net, I caught my breath and assessed the situation.  

3 kids, all veteran anglers mind you, were hooked up and struggling with quality stripers from stem to stern in the boat. As soon as a fish was netted and tossed in the livewell, another call for help came from a different corner of the boat. The chaos continued with fish caught on nearly every cast until we drifted past the flat. As soon as it had started, the action stopped on a dime. Past experience screamed in my head that the frenzy wouldn’t last for long, and with a renewed sense of urgency, I dropped the big motor and cranked it over, throttling back to the beginning of the flat in a wide arc to avoid spooking the school.  

I cut the outboard after reaching the backside of the point and dropped in the trolling motor to optimize the boat’s orientation and to control the drift. For the next 30 minutes we repeated this exercise, and on each pass singles and doubles were common, quickly stacking fish in the livewells and beaming smiles on my kids' faces. I don’t remember how many fish we caught, released, and kept, but after spending an hour or so cleaning fish in the dark we had a couple gallon bags of snow white filets.

Whisker Seeker Tackle offers the best purpose-built catfishing and multi-species gear available. When I go striper fishing, my go-to rods are the Catfish and Carp series in both casting and spinning configurations. When the fish are deep, hitting slab spoons, heavy swim baits, and large crankbaits, the 7’ casting model and an Abu Garcia Revo X reel are my preferred setup. If the fish are hitting spinners, top water baits, square bills, or jigs, the 7’ spinning model paired with an Okuma Avenger, Pflueger President, or Shimano Stradic gets the nod. In either case, you won’t be outgunned by even the largest double-digit hybrid, or occasional catfish, and the parabolic action of these rods makes even small fish a blast to fight.

When the weather gets hot, the fishing can get even hotter! Give striper fishing a try this month, and you may find your Christmas in July!  

Good luck and tight lines!