My First Striper on Fly
There's a moment every fly angler knows — the take. But when that take comes from a striped bass, something primal kicks in. The line goes tight, the rod doubles over, and suddenly every trout you've ever caught feels like a warm-up.
My first striper on the fly came on a windy April morning on Chickamauga Lake. I'd been chasing these fish with spinning gear for years, watching them blow up shad on the surface while I lobbed spoons from the bank. That morning, I rigged up a 9-weight with a 300-grain sink tip and a big white Clouser, figuring I had nothing to lose.
The Setup
Stripers on the fly require you to think like a conventional angler first. You need to find the fish before you can catch them. I'd been watching the lake for weeks — noting the wind direction, the bait movements, the bird activity over the main channel. On Tennessee's big reservoirs, the fish are never randomly distributed. They're following forage, and the forage is following the thermocline.
That April morning, I found them stacked at the mouth of a creek arm where the warmer water was pushing baitfish out into the main lake. The birds gave them away — terns working tight circles sixty feet offshore, diving on shad that were being pushed to the surface.
The Cast
With a 9-weight in hand and 30 mph gusts from the south, casting was a humbling exercise. Striper fly fishing requires real casting. Not the delicate presentations of trout water — big rods, big flies, big casts. I spent the first twenty minutes feeding the fish and the wind before I finally got the loop to turn over.
The Clouser landed six feet from the feeding fish. I let it sink, counted to ten, and started a slow, erratic strip. Three pulls in, the line went taught.
The Fight
Stripers don't fight like anything else. The first run took forty feet of running line and all the slack I'd managed to stack at my feet. By the time I got the fish on the reel, my heart rate was somewhere north of 160. Fifteen minutes later, I had a fat 22-inch striper in the net.
I still think about that fish. Not because it was big — it wasn't. But because it opened a door I didn't know existed.
Getting Started
If you want to chase stripers on the fly in Tennessee, here's where I'd start:
- Rod: 9-weight minimum, 10-weight preferred for bigger fish and wind
- Line: 250–400 grain integrated sink tip or full intermediate
- Flies: White Clousers in #2/0–4/0, chartreuse-and-white deceivers, half-and-half patterns
- Leader: 20–30 lb fluorocarbon, 4–6 feet
The Tennessee River system gives you world-class opportunities without ever leaving the state. Start on Chickamauga — the fish are there, the access is good, and when they're up feeding, you won't forget it.