There was a question regarding a possible link between what the Striper are currently feeding on and our (in the collective) frustration at our inability to get these fish to hook-up on traditional topwater lures …
I can say that the Striper that we encountered this weekend were definitely chasing little 1" Shad like fish … not sure if it is a 2nd spawn of whatever … We think either American of Hickory Shad … at least that’s what it looks like … I’ll post pics and you guys tell me … Anyways, we caught 9 keepers over the last 4 days … most of them in the back of … errr … Z5 … ALL OF THE STRIPER were chasing 1" fish … belly’s were full of them … We got everything on Pencil Poppers, but I’m positive that was a reaction bite more than anything else … Also noticed that the Z5 schools are schools of smaller Striper … our popper were smacked dozens of times … I think … by smaller fish …
We try to work the outside of the school, but they’re so unpredictable that they’ll pop-up anywhere … Yesterday there was a time when there were 7 boats working the same school for 15 minutes, but only 2 boats actually hooked up … EVERYTHING was being thrown at those fish to no avail … we followed the school around back and were finally able to cull off a few for the grill …
We fished all morning on Saturday (for Tim’s Tourney - See the Striper Board) and only came up with 2 shorts right at 7:30 am off the marker in Z4, but they went down and never came back up … we then found some schooling at B4 - till the bass guys ran them over … did I mention there must have been a Bass Tourney over the weekend … left there and found them again in the middle of B3 & B2, but we couldn’t get any of those to bite …
We fished again on Sunday … Didn’t find a thing until 6:00 pm at Z5 (see above) … ended up with 22", 23", 23.5", 24", and my Wife nailed big fish at 27.5" … and our 7 year old caught a his 1st Striper on his new pole and topwater lure that HE picked out and bought 
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