We started out live bait fishing. Plenty of bait. Only caught one little cat. After a few hours, I took my friends to the hill and went back out to troll. In just a short time I caught 3 striper and another small cat. The striper were 20 1/2", 25" and 29". After that I left. Can’t wait until October to work on a 3 fish limit 
. I still feel the new regs might hurt more than help the way they are setup. There is going to be alot of floaters. I have already started seeing a bunch of floaters.
KeyWest
Bluewater 2020CC
Yammy F-150
I think the idea is to discourage people from fishing for fish they can’t keep. Which makes sense given that it would be nearly impossible to enforce a ‘No fishing’ law. Hopefully anglers will have the patience to let the fishery recover to at least some of the quality it was a few years ago.
Lynn, are you seeing gill maggots in the fish down your way? I’m beginning to wonder just how much stress they put on the fish. tprice, if you’re reading this, are you seeing the gill maggots on Hartwell, as well? (there’s an echo in here)
The last few trips I haven’t seen any. Around the beginning of April into the first couple weeks in May, I was seeing a bunch of them. I don’t know what the difference was, maybe water temp.?
KeyWest
Bluewater 2020CC
Yammy F-150
quote:
Originally posted by dernflatlander
Lynn, are you seeing gill maggots in the fish down your way? I’m beginning to wonder just how much stress they put on the fish. tprice, if you’re reading this, are you seeing the gill maggots on Hartwell, as well? (there’s an echo in here)
this is a good site concerning gill maggots. http://www.tnfish.org/FishDiseasesParasites_TWRA/AchtheresGillMaggotsNegus_TWRA.htm
i’ve tried to find specific research that studies the mortality of stripers or any other bass species for that matter and it’s pretty tough. i’ve seen a few abstracts that touch on the issue, but nothing conclusive. looking at what they do to the striper, i don’t think it’s a contributing factor under normal conditions, but if you add in the water quality issues on area lakes then it may very well cause an increase in mortality.