Name:   John C - Subject:   New Member FlyGuy Date:   12/13/2016 4:59:23 PM

Hey FlyGuy, it's great to have you as a new member. I love your boat and one of these days would love to have one just like it! Also great to hear of another person trying to figure out stripes on the fly rod. 

Over the years I have been researching this whole issue. I agree with you that our fishing should be similar to Lanier. In fact, this time last year I went and fished with Henry Cowen for that very reason- to try and learn lessons to apply here. I need to write up the lessons of that trip in a blog post. But bottom line what Henry said was to find the bait and you will find the stripes. Whether the bait is shallow in Kowaliga Bay, deep in Kowaliga, shallow upriver, whereever. Follow the bait no matter the season. This necessitates a lot of running and gunning looking for them. His advice also was to talk to the bait fishermen to see: a.) where they are and b.) how deep they are, and translate to fly fishing in the appropriate manner.

As to people not fishing on top water here, that's not accurate in my opinion. I can say from experience with David Hare (Alex City guide service) that he fishes a ton on top. This time of year he pretty much exclusively trolls with live bait that is on planer boards, on top. He does that until the thermocline turns over in the warmer weather.

Here are links to a 3 part series I did, asking David about striped bass on Lake Martin in general:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjzJUoR02PM

http://lakemartinvoice.com/2012/12/13/in-search-of-striped-bass-on-lake-martin-part-2/

http://lakemartinvoice.com/2012/12/20/in-search-of-striped-bass-on-lake-martin-part-3/

at the risk of throwing too much info at you, here's another really good resource. In the last year I have met and fished with Drew Morgan. He is a fly fishing guide that mostly floats the Tallapoosa, just above Lake Martin. He's on this forum, I think his alias is Fly Fishing Guy.  his website is: https://www.eastalabamaflyfishing.com/

and I recently wrote about a trip here:

http://lakemartinvoice.com/2016/12/13/fishing-on-the-tallapoosa-river/

Drew's a super nice guy and great guide. We are teaming up for a fly fishing (and spin if you want) tournament in the spring. Stay tuned.

Here's another post I did w my general setup :

http://lakemartinvoice.com/2015/03/17/how-to-catch-striped-bass-on-a-paddle-board/

I'd love to meet up with you some day and swap notes.