[capefearfly]

Weather was to pretty today to stay inside so I headed for the water! I put in at the Wildlife ramp at Tar Heel and headed up stream to try my luck for some Cape Fear River catfish. After a couple hours of fishing and a few small cats latter I hooked up on, to my suprise, a striper. Fished for about half an hour in the same spot and caught two more. No record setters around the 5lb range but what suprised me was I caught all of em on a carolina rig baited with chicken livers, which is a first for me. So I guess I have finally made it out of the skunk club after all.

 

[Coach D]

Glad to hear you got off of the skunk. Great job.

 

[sundrop]

Stripers love most of the things catfish do. You can use basically the same gear for both. Especially if you add a bobber to the rig to keep bait up in "the zone"..

 

[Jeffonc]

I've heard it suggested (bottom fishing with livers for stripers), but not sure I'd ever seen a report claiming success. Congrats!

And you've shed the fog of the skunk, but you've arrived smelling like livers. Guess that's a good trade...

 

[Scott Hobbs]

Good deal on the stripers

Have done the same thing up towards Fayetteville, caught stripers on Chicken livers. Sure suprised me also. There are a lot more stripers in the Cape Fear than most people think.

>Stripers land locked at Jordan
>In the upper end of the Cape Fear
>Cape Fear around Fayetteville
>Around each set of locks you can catch them all year
>Plenty of them at Wilmington this time of year

And a striper for every pot


Tight lines <*)))))>{

 

[Wiskersticker]

I've caught some nice white bass while catfishing with liver in TN also. I had the same reaction. Don't know why, but it just happens. I've caught stripes while catfishing but on shad, never on livers.

Wisker

 

[Topsail Angler]

There are a lot more stripers in the Cape Fear than most people think.

>Stripers land locked at Jordan
>In the upper end of the Cape Fear
>Cape Fear around Fayetteville
>Around each set of locks you can catch them all year
>Plenty of them at Wilmington this time of year

And a striper for every pot


Tight lines <*)))))>{

They have stocked several hundred thousand stripers in the Cape Fear river over the past number of years. Most of the ones folks catch are stocked all though a small percentage are the offspring of the stocked stripers. They are not ocean migratory natural schools.

They chemically "mark" the ear bone of the stocked stripers. That way when they do stock assessments they can tell which are born in the river and which are stocked. The river still can not support a self sustaining population of stripers by most accounts I have read.

Most biologists I have seen express an opinion don't think stripers will be self sustaining on the CF until either better fish ladders are installed on the 3 lock and dams or they are removed altogether. It's a complicated subject and has as much to do with the forage fish as it does with the striper reproduction itself from what little I understand of the theories.

 

[capefearfly]

Hey I'll take the smell of livers anyday over the skunk. Heck it might even help with the fishing.

 

[ncnat]

I've talked to guys that have fished suspended chicken livers at night for stripers on High Rock Lake and done real well.

 

[Scott Hobbs]

Forgot to add, the blackfish (bowfin) and bream that I have also caught on chicken livers.

Tight lines <*)))))>{

 

[SwampFox]

Don't know if anybody is still working this discussion but me and Wiskersticker were talking about this in Jordan. What information I recieved was that the Hybrids were raised using liver so they respond well to it. If that is true is another story but that is what I was told.