Bayou Outdoors | Wiper Fever

article by Dan Chason

One of the most reliable fish to chase in the heat of summer is a striped bass. In North Louisiana you will hear striped bass referred to by many names:  striper, white bass, bar fish, hybrids and my favorite; the wiper.  Let me walk you through what is what.  A striper is a pure bred striped bass noted by a set of solid black lines along his body, following his lateral line.  A true striper can exceed 10 pounds and is a line stripping machine that once you hooked one, you will never confuse with his country cousins.  They can be found in our area primarily in Lake Claiborne and live among the depths near the dam feeding primarily on large schools of shad.  These fish are often confused and the important thing to note is that limits for stripers and their cousins vary as you can only keep 5 striped/hybrid striped bass but you can keep 50 bar fish and wipers.

Let’s now go to the beloved barfish.   These pesky critters can be caught in just about every river oxbow and lake in our area.  They tend to hold to the same color preferences and depths as crappie.  Crappie fishermen despise them as they will scatter a school of crappie faster than a cop walking in a bar disperses customers.  Barfish rarely weigh over a pound and have a gill plate that will cut your line or your hands very easily.  The gill plate is one of their defense mechanisms and one reason they aren’t preferred table fare for predators.  They will slice anything that comes at them from the rear.  Barfish are often misidentified but their size gives them away.  The lateral lines are darker and closer together.  The lines are spotty and not solid.  You catch one of these on a crank bait and you will find a critter that is difficult to handle but fun to catch.

A hybrid striped bass is relatively the same as his big pure bred brother the true striper.  The main difference is a hybrid has a broken lateral line, meaning the line does not run true from gill to tail.  They grow large but not as large as the true striper.  River oxbows such as Lake Bruin or Providence hold many hybrid stripers.  They love to school in the summertime and are a blast to catch.  My favorite method for hybrids and true stripers is a carolina rigged jigging spoon, jigged vertically.  Back off on that drag as they will not stay around long once hooked.  My other preferred method is by trolling a crankbait.  I take a medium series Bandit and troll with my Mercury 150 with the motor just put in gear and idling.  I watch the graph for schools of bait and have a marker ready to throw as they do school up and multiple fish is pretty reliable.

Now for the wipers.  Recently my childhood friend, Jon Miller and I traveled to a river oxbow and we were hunting wipers.  My favorite time to fish for them is late afternoon just as the sun is cooling down.  The shad will rise and follow current lines to feed.  On this particular day, we went to Yucatan Lake and I knew an age old trick that an old timer taught me.  When you are looking for wipers, look for coasting alligators.  That’s right….alligators.  What happens is that the wipers come up and feed on the shad and go back down.  When you see these juvenile alligators cruising jeddies or current edges, just wait.  When I see shad skipping I take my choice of 3 lures:  A Johnson Sprite spoon, my bandit crankbait in smoke color or my favorite, the old Little George.

    Jon had never chased wipers and when I told him we didn’t have to fish very long and he would be worn out, he laughed at me.  Jon is a CPA and has little time to fish and most of that is done on the private lake he lives on in Texarkana.  Little did he know we would find them and find them we did.  As we cruised down the lake, I could see that he was anxious but wary.  I don’t think I had him very convinced as I sipped on a Gatorade and just watched.  Suddenly a half acre of fish came up and started chasing shad.  Sure enough, here came two alligators.  I looked over at Jon and smiled and said, “You better back off on that drag.”

The great thing about a Little George or a Wing Ding is that you can throw the thing a country mile.  I grabbed a rod and made one cast and it was on.  To make a long story short, we fished 43 minutes and put 26 wipers in the boat.  I was so tired when we got back that I had to take some Tylenol for my aching muscles.  Jon was amazed.  We returned two more times and didn’t find them as thick.  After switching over to alligator watching and following, we put another livewell full in my boat.  I was worn out and believe me, it was hot.  

We cleaned up our fish and while cleaning them I was asked about the red line on the filets.  Any red that you see in a filet is actually blood.  This gives the meat a fishy taste (that I don’t mind) but if you have folks that like a more crappie like filet, trim the red lines on the filets.  Jon went home a happy camper and we made another great memory.

So the next time you are tired of chasing other species, give the striped bass a look.  Lakes like Claiborne, D’Arbonne, Bruin, Providence and Poverty are your best bet and can yield some line screaming trips like we experienced.  No matter the heat or time of day, you can always find your new friend the striped bass in an area lake near you.