Friday January 18th 2019 went Striper fishing with Tom Brown local Striper hunter on a midday trip. We launched from his slip north of Brown’s Bridge at noon and headed to Flat Creek. The air temp was about 47° and the water temp was in the low fifties. A typical day in January, bluebird sky and all. Tom had been fishing Flat for a couple of months because it seemed that this had the most concentration of bait in the area. We found long bait layers along a 60’ bottom and could see Stripers below them. We targeted between 48 to 52’ and the fun began. When I say the hard way I mean fishing with 10lb leaders and this was new to me. With medium light rods and no drag on the reels it was difficult at times not to thumb the reel. But I didn’t, causing the fight to be way longer than what I was used to. Eventually the Striper would grow more tired as the fight continued taking up slack as the Striper slowed down his escape. All in all it was another great day on the water with just a slight wind and very few boats around us. We boated 7 Stripers in the 25 ½” to 26 ¾” range only losing a couple as it was a fast hit and run. Some of the fatter ones took a lot longer to bring in but following the 10lb leader rules we were very successful.