First off, I'm NOT a pro just a Joe who pays attention. I get lots of questions on the water, in the parking lot, and on my PM box. What color? How deep? How fast? How big? In the end the trick is...... Keep it simple! In general stripers hit lighter colors. It doesn't have to be white. Pearl, off-white, silver all work. It doesn't matter if it's got the brown stripe or the grey stripe or the green stripe. These guys are a search/chase/destroy predator. They don't sit and examine the bait like a finicky bass or trout might. The 2 things that really dictate presentation will be depth and size of forage. Once you meter where the fish are holding in the water column then pick your delivery system (downrig, leadcore etc.) or nothing if they are in the top 5-15 feet down. Then SIZE correctly. If they are clued in on silversides that week or month then they will ignore bigger baits that they may have been hitting a month or two ago.

The real reason I decided to write this is I recently started using flies. After losing a couple I started tying my own (Thanks You Tube!) and I was stressing over patterns. Turns out I was catching fish on pretty much everything I tied on. Streamers, Clousers, bucktails. With eyes, with no eyes, fluffy, slim, all one color, striped. The things that dictated how many I caught were 1 size, and 2 depth. Period. Of course these will both change with seasons and forage patterns. So educate yourself on just those two items in your local water and you will catch fish. Tight lines guys!