Has anyone seen stripers in the Little River area lately? I’ll be there next weekend with a friend and his son and would like to put them on some good fish while we’re there. Has anyone ever caught them at the jetties or the beach? It’s hard to believe they just vanish in the spring. I go after them in the lakes so I know how they move from day to day sometimes. Any information would be appreciated.Here’s some info from Stripers247.com.
"I don’t think you will find any offshore migration during the seasons below (or South of) Nags Head, NC. True there are stripers caught in the rivers in South Carolina, Georgia, and Northern Florida. These fish are called riverine stripers. They live their entire lives in the river systems that are unobstructed by dams. They range from the tidal waters in the upper ends of the estuaries in fall and winter to the shoals of the “fall Line” and the tailraces of upstream dams in spring and summer. Some of the populations in Georgia are supplemented by stocking programs but South Carolina’s approach is to let the population naturally reproduce.
There are several studies available that were done by Clemson University graduate students that tracked the fish with radio telemetry. One of these studies was done in the ACE ( Ashepoo, Combahee, Edisto ) Basin in South Carolina. None of these rivers is dammed and none of them reach out of the coastal plain to the fall line. The fish were found to spawn in late winter and early spring DOWNSTREAM in the strong tidal currents near the Intracoastal Waterway and to spend their summers in the deep, cool, spring fed holes in the upper reaches of the rivers. Biologists can now tell a genetic difference in thes fish from river system to river system.
This has been an eye-opener to many of us long time striper fishermen that have fished for the river stripers for years. We read about the Outer Banks stripers, the Chesapeake Bay, The Roanoke River, and Long Island Sound. We just naturally thought for years that our stripers ca