Brooms Island 10-13, 6:00 AM

[Slackdaddy]

Late notice,, but hitting Brooms Island (Nans Cove) at 6:00 AM tomorrow,, headed out to the oyster beds for a few hours.
Any and all are welcome

[ski357]

Hope you're having fun out there this morning. Let us know how it went. I hope to get out this afternoon myself.

[Slackdaddy]

Last 2 trips to Brooms Island (about a month or more ago),, was void of fish,, just a pure white sonar screen,, never saw a mark.

Today I got on the water about 6:15, dark. I had to turn the fish finder off the 1st 30 minutes as it was blinding me.
I was still in the cove (in dark with a head lamp and lightpole) and ran into an area of multiple bait blow ups,, 4-5 at a time, constant 6' round blow ups all around me,, bait fish jumping into my kayak, looked like Menhaden. I cast a tbuzz bate and swim bites all through the blow ups for 10 minutes, nothing,, I then decided to head out to the oyster beds, half way out I turned the fish finder own, the screen was filled with bait balls and large fish for the next 2 hours. I trolled 2 rods - each with 1/2 underspun jig heads and 4-6" trailers (1 wht, 1 chart)., I trolled different depths and speeds, Constantly trolling through large groups of bait and fish on the sonar,, nothing.
Only thing I can think is low tide was ~8:00am,, and I had just missed prime tide ?

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[ski357]

That's a nice set up! I just got in myself. Had two puppy drum. Both times it was when I was kinda forced into shallower water, due to passing boats, and started bouncing the lures off bottom. Saw lots of small bait and some surface action, but no luck casting.

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[Slackdaddy]

I ran as shallow as 2.5 feet on a few passes,, both bait and larger fish disapeared off the sonar as soon as I got shallower than about 8',, 95% of my time was in 10-13'

[dsaavedra]

Slacckdaddy, it's been my experience that catching stripers can be really tough when there's such an abundance of bait and they're feeding so hard on it. My theories are that our lures just don't stand out in the fray, or that they simply don't want to eat plastic when they're surrounded by the real deal. Could be a bit of both.

I've had similar experiences to you several times over the last few weeks - tons of bait, tons of blowups, and no interest from the stripers. However, I've found that the bunker don't move into these areas until the late evening (at least the specific areas I'm fishing) and if I fish these areas in the afternoon before the bunker show up, the stripers are there waiting for them and willingly take lures.