Georgia angler Travis Harrell made an extended, 150-foot forged throughout the swift present boils and whitewater of the Flint River. It was March 19, Harrell was fishing from shore, and water was pouring out of the tailrace beneath the hydroelectric dam that kinds Lake Chehaw.
Harrell’s 2-ounce pink bucktail jig, adorned with an 8-inch lengthy Got-Cha white plastic grub, landed on the far facet of tailrace present circulate. Then he began one other lure retrieve.
“That forged was similar to one million others I’ve made, however then I felt a success and the load of the fish,” Travis tells Out of doors Life. “I knew it was an enormous one, and I yelled ‘Fish On! Fish On!’ so different anglers close by knew I’d connected they usually’d pay attention to their strains within the water.”
Harrell had already been casting for 2 hours that morning when the fish struck at 9 a.m.
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“The striper stored going and going, and there wasn’t a lot I might do,” says the 42-year-old from Albany. “I had a heavy Lew’s rod and a Daiwa bait-casting reel spooled with 17-pound monofilament. However the farther that fish went downstream in present, the extra fearful I bought that I’d lose it.”
There have been massive boils and loads of sharp rocks round. Harrell finally noticed the fish’s enormous tail on the floor, and he thought if he didn’t tighten his drag and switch it, he’d absolutely lose the bass.
“I actually leaned on the fish, and I used to be getting worn out,” he explains. “However she lastly turned again, and I gained line on her.”
Harrell says he fought the massive striper for 20 minutes in complete. One other fisherman, Doug Willbey, confirmed as much as assist him with an enormous touchdown web.
“My arms had been hurting, and my fingers had been cramping from the struggle close to the top,” Harrell says. “However we went down some stairs subsequent to the wall, and Doug scooped her in his web.”
Harrell was afraid the online would break. He helped Willbey, who nonetheless had the linesider within the web, climb again up the concrete steps to the highest of the wall.
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“We began whooping and hollering once we bought take a look at the fish,” says Harrell. “I referred to as my dad to inform him, however he was sleeping as a result of he’s retired. My mother needed to wake him up, after which he got here proper over to see my fish.”
On a scale they’d on the dam, the fish weighed 50 kilos, greater than any striper they’d seen caught from the Flint River.
“I actually didn’t wish to kill the fish, however we needed to take it to the DNR workplace in Albany to have it formally weighed and measured,” Harrell saus.
The fish formally weighed 52.2 kilos, with a 47.5-inch size and a 35-inch girth. This shatters the previous Flint River striper document, a 48.5-pounder caught in 1983.
Travis says he has fished “the wall” all his life, studying the nuances of striper fishing from his dad, who additionally has fished there all through his lifetime. The spot is a 15-foot-high concrete wall that borders about 50 yards of river pouring out of the dam.
“I’ve realized every part about fishing for stripers within the tailrace from my dad. He all the time instructed me that if I wished to catch an enormous striped bass from there I had to make use of massive lures and put in quite a lot of time casting throughout tailrace currents.”
A good-knit group of native anglers fish the wall usually via the yr, says Harrell. They catch panfish, catfish, bass, and hybrid stripers. The spring is when massive spawning-run striped bass will push up the Flint River, however they’re halted by the dam, the place anglers have a shot to hook one with out the necessity for a ship.
“All my household has caught 30-pound stripers from The Wall,” says Harell. “My finest one till now was a 22-pounder. It takes effort to attach with an enormous striper there. That’s why in spring I take trip time to fish The Wall.
“I feel catching an enormous striper within the Flint is like looking for an enormous ol’ buck,” Harrell continues. “You gotta put within the effort and time.”
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