Striper fishing is good. The only thing that has changed this week is the weather! I must admit, I have not been on the water for the past several days; way to cold and windy. There is a shallow water early morning bite using Herring, Threadfin and Gizzard shad on free lines and planner boards. Once the sun gets up, weight your lines with several split shots, deploy your down rods in addition to your free lines and move to deeper water. The bait has been moving to a depth of 25 to 40 feet over 40 to 80 foot bottom. If you are not marking any bait; move until you do and fish there. This pattern should hold as long as the water temperature stays in the mid 40 degree range. If the water temperatures dips into the low 40's we will start to see a Threadfin Shad die off and the Stripers will get "locked in" on these small bait fish. This will require you to fish with smaller baits in an attempt to match the small Threadfins. You may also want to reduce your trolling speed to .3 to .5 miles per hour. There are fish in every creek with high concentrations of bait. However, Flat, Balus and Four mile creeks are hard to beat this time of year.
The lake temperature mid 40's and the water is lightly stained on the main lake with heavy stain in the backs of the creeks. The lake is less than one foot below full pool.