Striped Mules

Experts expect Eagle Lake’s hybrid fishing to make a very noticeable rebound this year.

It has been said that a mule has more horse sense than a horse; it knows when to stop eating, and it knows when to stop working. It is that tendency to stop working that led to the sayings “lazy as a mule” and “stubborn like a mule.”

However, a mule’s tendency to stop at unexpected times isn’t because it is lazy or stubborn. Rather, a mule seems lazy because it won’t put itself in danger, and a mule seems stubborn because it can’t be worked into the ground like its horse mother.

These traits that humans see as rebellion are actually a mule’s way of telling its owner, which obviously lacks any sense at all, much less horse sense, that something just isn’t quite right. A mule’s unwillingness to cooperate means that something is wrong.

While not as legendary and the subject of so many folk-tales, hybrid striped bass aren’t much different from mules. Like their sterile four-legged land cohort, hybrid striped bass are the result of two different, although closely related, parents.

A mule is a cross between a male donkey and a mare horse. The original cross of hybrid striped bass came from a female striped bass and a male white bass. However, fertilizing female white bass with sperm from male striped bass produces the more recent farm-raised hybrids.

Like a mule that seems smarter than either of its parents, according to the Southern Regional Aquaculture Center, a hybrid striped bass has a greater tolerance to extremes in temperature and dissolved oxygen than either of its parents. And just like a mule that seems lazy or stubborn, a hybrid striped bass’s unwillingness to cooperate means that something is wrong.

Eagle Lake, an old Mississippi River oxbow about 20 miles north of Vicksburg, has been known for several things over the last several years — big bass, fast-growing crappie and a hungry hybrid striped bass population that rivaled any lake in the nation. According to some, the main attraction was the hybrids.

However, some are now questioning if that is still the case.

A brief search of Eagle Lake hybrid striped bass fishing on the Internet will pull up fishing forums that question what has happened to the hybrid fishing, and outdoor blogs with entries about anglers who went fishing for hybrids only to catch nothing but yellow bass.

“The hybrid fishing has fallen off in recent years,” said Tim Carpenter, owner of Eagle Lake Lodge and Outfitters. “I’ve noticed it dropped off quite a bit the last two years. But Eagle Lake has always been an excellent hybrid fishery, which has regularly produced 7- and 8-pound stripes.”

According to the MDWFP, there are plenty of these good fish in the lake. Chief of Fisheries Ron Garavelli said 250,000 hybrids were introduced to Eagle Lake in 2006, and 250,000 more were introduced in 2007.

“We have a request to put 150,000 more in during 2008,” Garavelli said. “That’s just a request, though, and we never know what’s going to happen with a hatchery situation. All I can say now is that we’ve got them on the schedule to stack again this year.”

With so many hybrids continuing to go into Eagle Lake, it makes one wonder the reasoning behind the tough fishing that some anglers are encountering.

Are the hybrids getting wise to the pressure? Not likely since hybrids are not much more than roaming eating machines that, according to Garavelli, can put on more than 2 pounds per year.

Have the previously stocked fish died out? Maybe so, but 500,000 fish introduced to the lake in the past two years should have made up for any natural mortality and then some.

Did the fish leave the lake?

“I think you may have hit on something there,” said Carpenter. “We may have had a problem with fish leaving the lake recently. They control Eagle Lake, and there is a drawdown every September. The winter pool is 75 feet, and the summer pool is 77 or 78 feet.

“When they draw the water down, it goes through Muddy Bayou into Steele Bayou then into the Yazoo River and on into the Mississippi River,” Carpenter explained. “About three years ago, they weren’t able to let the water out until sometime around the first or second week of March because the river was so high. When they did, for about two weeks, you could stand right below the (Muddy Bayou) structure and catch the hybrids on just about every cast.”

Carpenter added that these fish were already out of the lake, working the current and eating baitfish that were coming from the lake. This possible loss happened in 2005, and taking into consideration that anglers started noticing the drop-off right after that, it’s reasonable that this had something to do with the hybrid fishing going south. Were hybrid anglers fishing for year-class fry in 2006 that weren’t big enough to do battle yet?

With all the fish introduced to Eagle Lake the past two years, it’s also reasonable to believe the hybrid fishing will soon be just as strong as it ever was. The 250,000 fish introduced in 2006 should be pushing 5 pounds by now, and the 250,000 introduced in 2007 are nearing the 2- to 3-pound mark. This just might be the year to put all those old-school hybrid tactics back to work.

One angler who knows exactly how good these techniques are is Sidney Montgomery, the former marketing director for Tara Wildlife. Montgomery now lives in Madison, and he has considered hybrid striped bass to be his main fish for more than 40 years.

“Thy hybrids are still in deep water in late March and early April,” said Montgomery. “When they’re in the deep water like this, there is no better way to catch them than trolling with a 300-Series Bandit crankbait.

“My favorite spot for trolling is from the canal (Muddy Bayou) south toward the boat ramp. The fish are in that deep water about 12 feet deep over 18 to 22 feet. I prefer fishing a bait with a green back and some orange on the belly, but when these fish want to eat, you can catch them on anything.”

Another section of the lake that Montgomery likes to troll is from Garfield’s Landing toward the east for about half a mile. This section features a prominent sandbar that drops from 7 feet down to about 20 feet. From there, he moves out to the middle of the lake right across from Garfield’s and trolls the suspended fish in 27 feet of water.

Trolling is also Carpenter’s primary technique for catching hybrids. However, he says he typically uses it to locate big groups of fish. Once located, he throws out a marker buoy and continues to troll the same area, or he might try some different tactics.

“Once I get a bite, I like to patrol that area back and forth for a while,” he said. “Pretty much every time you go through that same spot, you’ll catch a fish. I like the 200- and 300-Series Bandits, and anything that looks like a threadfin shad — the blacks and blues — will work. Of course if they’re biting, they’ll bite anything.”

Carpenter is also a big fan of casting for hybrids. He makes a couple casts around his trolling holes, but he mainly sticks with casting to the ledges in the south end of the lake. He’s partial to a chartreuse Bomber Slab Spoon, which he lets fall to the bottom then pumps up with big sweeping motions.

“You’ve got to let that spoon flutter and fall, flutter and fall,” Carpenter explained. “You can do the same thing with the Rat-L-Traps, too. Hybrids love to bite a falling bait, and they will snatch up anything that looks like wounded bait that is falling to the bottom. That’s a real trigger for the stripes.”

While trolling and casting are hard to beat for putting big hybrids in the boat, the reason many anglers think of April when they think about hybrid season kicking off is that this is when acres of water erupt with the fray of fish slashing into shad near the surface. Unfortunately, Carpenter says this action has been hard to find the last several years, but if they do come back up, they become easy targets.

“I haven’t seen the schooling fish in years,” he said. “I used to see quite a bit, but I go out with my binoculars on lots of mornings to look. I wait and wait, but it just never happens. I don’t know why they’re not schooling, either. Perhaps it has something to do with the decreased numbers of fish.”

In case Carpenter has been looking at the wrong time, or the 2006 year-class fish decide to start schooling again, Montgomery said there is one tried-and-true way to catch the actively feeding fish.

Montgomery has frequently found schooling hybrids out in front of the public boat ramp toward the west where the water is 4 to 9 feet deep on the Louisiana side. He considers the 200-Series Bandit to be the schooling bait for dummies because it’s just so easy to catch fish on it in the middle of a feeding frenzy.

“You can also fish some kind of spoon,” he added, “but that crankbait is the way to go. One of the things that I used to love to do is get in the schools with a 6-weight fly rod with a Clouser Minnow. That’s a lot of fun.”

Besides trolling, cranking and fishing the schools, there are a few other techniques anglers should think about trying this year as they head out for the hybrids. They might just be the ticket to unlocking the good fishing again at Eagle Lake.

Once he finds a group of fish by trolling, Carpenter loves to vertically fish with a variety of lures. According to him, all vertical fishing means is getting a bait to the bottom, lifting it up a foot or so and pumping it up and down.

“That’s about as much fun as you can have with the stripes,” he said. “You can usually have a ball fishing vertically right at the public landing in front of the rock breaks. Those fish were in there last year, and they would get fired up about 3:00 every evening. But they would shut off just as quickly right before the sun went down.”

The other option that Eagle Lake hybrid anglers have is to fish at night. According to Carpenter, the key is to wait until about two hours after sundown. He suggested getting on the ends of the lit piers, either in a boat or on the pier if possible.

“All you’ve got to do is drop a minnow, spoon or jig down into the light, and jump it up and down. One will come by within about 5 minutes and attack it. You better do this before it gets too late in the summer, though, because the gar will move in around July, and you won’t be able to get your bait past them to the stripes.”

With fewer and fewer public places for anglers to go wet a line these days, Carpenter believes it’s important for the state to realize that most anglers just want to have the chance to sit in a boat and wait on something to pull on their line and renew their spirit.

“People pay for fishing licenses, and we need to make sure they’re getting a quality experience,” he said. “It’s important that we continue to take care of our resources on lakes like Eagle Lake, and make sure it doesn’t become just a water-sport recreation area, which Eagle Lake is quickly becoming.”

But special regulations may not be in the offing.

“We don’t have any plans to do anything right now other than keep stocking the lake,” said Garavelli. “A hybrid life span is only about four or five years. We’re stocking fingerlings, and those fish are growing. I plan on catching some this year because there are plenty to be caught.”

In the case of Eagle Lake, it’s obvious that nobody is lazy, and nobody is stubborn. If the hybrids’ unwillingness to cooperate the last couple of years was really an indicator that something was wrong, then the 500,000 fish that were stocked in 2006 and 2007 makes more than just horse sense. It makes mule sense.

For more information or guided trips, contact Eagle Lake Lodge and Outfitters at 601-279-6210.