 The author with an early-day striper. Photo © Ken Schultz By Ken Schultz
After we’d landed the second or third large striper casting with light tackle, Joe Valentine asked, “Do you do this every time?” “I think it’s you, Joe,” I answered. “You’re the good luck charm.” Joe hadn’t fished on my boat in a while, but he joined me and George Phillips yesterday in Virginia waters of Chesapeake Bay. The sun was just clearing the horizon when we reached our first destination near Tangier Island, after a frigid 30-minute run over calm water. The air temperature was 29 degrees when we left the dock, and we were bundled like moon-walking astronauts. A few minutes later I was posing for photos with a 32-inch striper, noticing later that I still had my skull cap and ski goggles on top of my head in the photos. The fish took a big swimming plug about 15 minutes after we arrived. I revived the bass and put it back in the water, and a few moments later George hollered out. Off to the northeast some 25 miles, a large rocket was lifting off the launchpad at Wallops Island, Virginia, carrying a cargo mission to the Space Station. I should have held the fish a little longer and gotten the rocket in the background. Over the next few hours we moved to several places, casting jigs and large plugs around  Photo © Ken Schultz By Ken Schultz
There’s a chill in the air, and some significant changes are occurring or are about to occur. In the fall, a major change in some lakes is the turnover, a phenomenon that is especially noticeable in bodies of water that have significant depth and layers of markedly different temperature. This is generally large lakes and reservoirs. If you only fish occasionally, you may miss the changes that occur and simply find on your next outing that the lake is quite different than it was on your previous visit, and perhaps harder to fish. But if you fish a lot you’ll probably observe some of the things that happen. Either way, fishing may become poor for a short while during the turnover, but quite good afterward. Why and How Lakes Turn Here’s what happens in the actual “turnover”: When the average air temperature is lower than the water’s surface, the temperature in the upper zone declines and mixing takes place. Cold water is more dense than warm water, so newly cooled surface water sinks to deeper levels. This causes a mixing of the water throughout the zones. Eventually the zones disappear. When the |
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