Jim Parramore with a 48-pound, 6 oz. striped bass.
Stuart Payne is an enthusiastic outdoorsman who occasionally shares his experiences.
If you want to consistently be successful catching striped bass, you had better be willing to learn a few basic things. That's according to Jim Parrramore, the owner of Trophy Striper Guide Service on Alabama's Lake Martin.
I had the opportunity to watch and learn from Parramore recently, and it was a thorough education on catching stripers. From where to get the best bait, to who does the best job mounting your trophy, Parramore shared his knowledge very freely.
Jim Parramore with a 48-pound, 6 oz. striped bass. Need we say more?
This summer, Parramore's clients have boated 14 stripers over 40 pounds this summer. The biggest weighed 48lbs 6 oz. Even a novice like me knows that's an impressive summer.
Trolling open water, I have been watching Jim watch his graph for nearly an hour. He's studying the bottom contours on his split screen graph. He has a topography map of the lake's bottom on one side and the fish finder sonar on the other. He is more intent on this instrument than a kid is on video games. This is the part that Jim calls "hunting". He says to be successful catching striped bass, you must "look at the topography map of the bottom and think of it as a topo of a hunting area. Now look for the places that you would want to set up a stand for white-tailed deer. Those are the same areas that will be holding the stripers we are looking for."
As I try to get my mind around this Jim says, "Here, see these arcs - that's stripers." He hurriedly baits four down lines with live threadfin shad and announces: "Now, we are fishing."
Jim instructed me to drop the baits to 35 feet and then to watch the graph. I do this and see the stripers are at 50 - 55 feet. As I ask why we aren't dropping the bait all the way down I see the stripers rising to the bait.
Jim explains that stripers prefer to feed on the rise.
That's when the drag started to scream.
Jim Parramore has been a striper guide nearly twenty years. He also holds a Masters degree from the University of Georgia in Wildlife and Outdoor Recreation and a second degree in forestry. He has done research on the striper's preferred baits, which has given him the reputation of having the freshest baits on the water. Jim also has the reputation of always being able to find and catch stripers.
Baits
I wanted to know everything about the bait that Jim uses -including why. From most fishermen that brings a variety of answers, most of them pretty vague. Parramore, on the other hand, is not just informative, he's to the point.
He uses fresh threadfin shad. His reason is simple: the stripers prefer it. When he started fishing for , he caught his shad out of a local lake. Despite all his efforts to keep the shad alive, he had a high mortality rate. He tried keeping the water cool. He tried different types of water such as, lake water, well water, de-chlorinated city water, you name it. Ph balance checks. Anti-bacterial compounds. The list goes on and on.
What Jim learned was the importance of getting the shad from the tailrace below the dam rather than the lake itself. Shad in the lake proper gorge themselves on plankton. They then purge when placed into a holding tank. All of the ammonia and waste overcomes the shad's immune system, and they will die -no matter how much you treat the water.
Thredfin in the tail race have already purged in order to fight the trailrace current. They've already done the preparation for being put into your holding tank. With a reasonable amount of care, Parramore says, you can have the fresh bait preferred by Lake Martin's sizable striped bass population.
When trolling, Jim will use trolling spoons and jigs while using downriggers he trolls at 2.5 to 3 miles per hour while looking for schools of shad. After locating with the downriggers you can switch to the down line rigs for some great action. The baits are trolled at around 35'. Again, Parramore says get the bait above the stripers because they prefer feeding on the rise.
Tackle
The rods of choice for Jim are 6'6" fiberglass rods with a soft tip. He uses circle hooks on all of his down line rods. The slow soft tip of the glass rod lets the fish take in the bait without restriction allowing a very high hookup ratio. With the circle hooks the fish will almost always be hooked in the lip allowing the easy release of small or unwanted fish. This helps to lower the stress on the fish for a low mortality rate. Jim uses 6500 series Ambassador reels with 20-pound mono for the main line and 15- or 20- pound fluorocarbon as leader. A 2 oz. trolling sinker is all the lead he uses. He rigs the terminal tackle like a Carolina rig, but without the lead able to slide. The package makes for a dependable and solid performer.
Electronics
A bottom finder with topography capability is essential when searching for deep stripers. Having the fish finder graph and topo displayed on one screen is easier than trying to scan two instruments.
With the side-by-side display, Jim intently watched the display of the contour lines while watching for the arc shape that represented stripers. He also kept the bait at the proper depth needed to target those big stripers.
One of the best indicators of stripers being in the area is schools of bait fish. "So go the bait fish, so go the stripers", he explains. On the graph he looks for loose balls of baitfish.
I asked about the dense balls of bait fish, thinking the stripers would herd them together.
Jim indicated that the stripers will bust up the bait balls while feeding, so a better indicator of feeding stripers are the loose bait balls on the display. You should also watch the graph as stripers do not always drive the bait to the surface while feeding. Look for the loose bait balls with the striper showing 15' to 20' deeper. Then drop a fresh shad and hang on!
When the stripers do drive the shad up, you can often see the gulls feeding too. Jim says big gulls are a more reliable indicator of striper than small ones. Small gulls , he says, will feed on smaller bait fish that the big stripers don't chase as readily.
Also, Jim usually will not target a single striper - no matter how big the arc on the graph looks. He believes that single fish may be some of the largest, but they're also loners. That makes them very hard to catch. While Jim believes that the biggest stripers do not school, he feels they will take advantage of the smaller schooling fishes' feeding activity to come in and get an easier meal.
Putting it all together.
After several hours of "Striper School" with Jim, it was time to head back to the dock.
As we were idling out after recovering the trolling lines, we passed over some loose bait fish balls with big arcs below them. Jim and I had the same thoughts as we put a couple of the last shad to good use. Down went the shad and up came the arcs.
We both knew we were going to be late getting home as the drags started to scream……
Editor's Note: If you're interested in Alabama's late-season striper fishing, you might want to call Jim Parramore of Trophy Guide Service at (205) 533-3664 or (205) 699-3247.