The day started out to be foggy with heavy overcast skies at 7am. No threat of storms until later in the afternoon. Water temperature was 83 degrees which meant our Lead Core baits had to be down near 30′. With the dark clouds above we needed dark swim baits so we put a Sexy Shad 4” split tail trailer on a 1oz bucktail jig. Our other Lead Core bait was a 1oz bucktail jig with a Sexy Shad paddle tail swim bait. Having launched at Vanns Tavern that put us unexpectedly over fish. We moved further into Two Mile Creek so our baits would pass over them at the right depth. That worked quite well and it was Fish On. Mark brought in a 24” Striper. 

What I didn’t say is that I was testing a third Lead Core rig mounted to the back seat post. 

That being said we normally slow the boat to put less stress on the Striper as well as whomever reels in the catch, that leaves the other person to bring in the other Lead Core so it doesn’t get caught in a tree. And that being said I had to bring not one but two lines at 270′ out and quickly because I had to get the net for Mark’s fish when it got close enough to net. Ouch – what a workout. My right cranking arm was burning. Thank goodness I brought the “belly buckets” too. After pictures we released the Striper back into the deep using the Seaqualizer. At that point I told Mark the 3rd Lead Core passed the test and let’s wait until we had a third person in the boat before using it again. Seeing that the Sexy Shad split tail got hit we decided to change the paddle tail out for the split tail on the other Lead Core. We move out of the Vanns Tavern area and headed out toward B Buoy. After about 30 minutes we had another Striper on. This one was 25 ¼”. 

Since starting this morning the sky remained gray with dark upper clouds. At 10am the sun started to peak through the clouds just as a lower secondary cloud layer moved in to block the sun. If that didn’t happen we were going to change out our bait colors to chartreuse. Then the lower secondary clouds passed as the sun was blocked again by the upper clouds. Every time we broke out the lighter colors the sun got blocked so we just stayed with the same color baits we started with. Suddenly the wind picked up like it was going to storm so we left catching only the two.