Mega school of striped bass stacked beneath the boat on Lake Lanier.
One of the most interesting things about striper fishing on Lake Lanier is how dramatically the size of a school can change.
There are plenty of days when I’ll spend the morning looking at my electronics and find stripers scattered in relatively small groups. I might see five or ten fish together, move somewhere else and see another little group, and continue seeing that pattern throughout an area.
Then there are the days when I find what I call a mega school.
These are the schools where the graph can absolutely light up with stripers. Instead of a handful of fish, there can be what appears to be hundreds of fish occupying the same area.
So why does that happen?
There isn’t one single reason. It’s usually a combination of bait, water temperature, dissolved oxygen, current, light conditions and underwater structure that determines how spread out or concentrated Lake Lanier’s stripers are.
Stripers Are Schooling Fish, But They Don’t Always Need a Huge School
Striped bass naturally travel and feed together, but that doesn’t mean every striper in an area is going to join one enormous school.
When conditions allow baitfish to spread out over a large area, stripers can spread out with them.
You may have several small groups of stripers all feeding on blueback herring in the same general part of the lake without those groups ever coming together.
In that situation, I may graph a handful of fish on a hump, another group around a ditch, and more fish along the edge of the river channel.
The situation changes when the environment begins concentrating both the bait and the stripers.
Summer Temperature and Oxygen Can Concentrate Stripers
This becomes particularly important during the summer on Lake Lanier.
When surface temperatures climb into the mid-80s and higher, stripers start dealing with a problem.
They prefer cooler water, so they move deeper. But deeper isn’t automatically better.
As Lake Lanier stratifies during the summer, dissolved oxygen can become limited at certain depths and in certain portions of the lake. Stripers need to find water that provides a suitable combination of temperature and oxygen.
That can dramatically reduce the amount of water they actually want to occupy.
Think about taking fish that could previously use a huge portion of the water column and suddenly squeezing them into a much narrower comfort zone.
Now you’ve already increased the chances of finding larger concentrations of fish.
Add bait to that equation and things get even more interesting.
Follow the Bait
Blueback herring are one of the primary forage species for Lake Lanier stripers, and where the bait goes, the stripers aren’t usually far behind.
When the herring are scattered, the stripers can be scattered.
When something concentrates the herring, it can concentrate the stripers.
Current, wind, water temperature, underwater structure and predator activity can all influence where that bait positions.
That’s one reason areas such as river channels, river swings, ditch mouths, humps and points adjacent to deeper water can become so important.
If one of those areas provides comfortable water and concentrates bait at the same time, multiple smaller groups of stripers may begin using the same area.
That’s when you can suddenly find the mega school.
Why a Mega School Doesn’t Always Mean a Mega Bite
Here’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned from spending so much time chasing these fish:
The biggest school isn’t necessarily the best school.
I’ve been over what looks like hundreds of stripers and struggled to get them to bite.
You can change bait presentation, move the baits around in the water column and try to trigger them, but sometimes those fish simply aren’t interested.
Then I can leave that giant school, find a much smaller group somewhere else, drop the baits down and start catching fish.
That’s because there is a difference between fish that are aggregated and fish that are actively feeding.
A huge number of stripers may be occupying an area because the temperature, dissolved oxygen and depth are comfortable.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re there to eat.
Meanwhile, a much smaller group positioned on the right side of a hump, along a ditch, on a river swing or around a concentrated ball of bait may be actively hunting.
I’d rather have 10 aggressive stripers underneath me than 500 fish that won’t open their mouths.
Don’t Just Count Fish on the Graph
This is also why electronics are about more than simply finding arches.
When I’m looking at my graph, I’m paying attention to how those fish are behaving and positioned.
Are the stripers all packed tightly at one depth?
Are they spread vertically through the water column?
Are fish streaking upward?
Are they separating from the school and moving toward my baits?
Is there a big concentration of bait nearby?
Those little details can tell you a lot more than simply seeing a screen covered in fish.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is assuming that because you’ve found a giant school, you have to stay there.
Sometimes leaving hundreds of fish to go find 20 is exactly the right move.
Current, Sunlight and Weather Can Change the Picture
Conditions can also change how concentrated these fish become.
Cloud cover can allow fish and bait to use structure differently than they do under bright sunshine. On a bright summer day, fish may relate more heavily to deeper water and defined areas such as the river channel.
Current can make an even bigger difference.
Moving water can reposition bait and create predictable feeding opportunities. Combine current with the right contour — especially something like a river-channel swing, ditch or hump adjacent to the channel — and you can create an area that both bait and stripers want to use.
Sometimes that creates an incredible bite.
Other times it creates an incredible-looking graph and a boat full of fishermen wondering why nothing will eat.
That’s fishing.
Finding Stripers Is Only Half the Battle
Modern electronics have made us extremely good at finding fish.
But finding them and catching them are still two completely different things.
When I find a mega school, I’m definitely going to give those fish an opportunity to show me what they’re doing. But I’m also watching their behavior.
If they’re reacting to the baits, I’m staying with them.
If they’re just sitting there and refusing everything I put in front of them, I’m not afraid to leave hundreds of fish behind and go hunting for a smaller group that’s actively feeding.
That’s one of the things that makes striper fishing on Lake Lanier so interesting.
You’re not just trying to answer:
Where are the fish?
You’re trying to answer the much more important question:
Where are the fish that want to eat?
And sometimes the answer is a mega school.
Sometimes it’s ten fish sitting in exactly the right place.
— Captain Matthew Haynes
Lake Lanier Striper Snipers
lakelanierstripersnipers.com/