Unlike other members of the bass family, stripers love cold water and that is exactly why the Saluda River is such a popular place. The river is fed from the bottom of the Lake Murray Dam and the water temperature rarely exceeds 60 degrees in the warmest months. Trout are stocked in this section of river while the wild stripers and smallmouth have maintained a presence in this water for years.
My brother, Dawson Jordan, is dedicated to learning to fish this area and so Ryan Stephens, Garrett Dorn, and I planned to meet him early one morning in Columbia. Ryan and I went to a lake the night before our fishing trip and threw a cast net to collect some gizzard shad. A thunderstorm was bearing down on us the whole time and the wind closed the net when i threw it, but we managed to catch 7 gizzard shad. The gizzard shad that we used were between 9 to 15 inches long which, due to their size, are not expected to get many bites. When they are hit however, you know the striper has to be over 15 pounds.
We left Dillon early in the morning to drive to Columbia and had my live gizzard shad riding in the trailer. Our group met on the banks of the Saluda River before 6 a.m. and carried our gear to the riverbank. We had a five minute walk to the riverbank and i carefully transported each fish in a 5 gallon bucked. Ryan and Dawson got an early start wading through the water and catching smallmouth bass below the rapids. They caught 6 smallmouth in the first 30 minutes of fishing. Garrett Dorn also had a few hits on his Zara Spook lure but the smallmouth jumped in the air and shook the hook.
In the meantime, I was wading into the water trying to set my rods with the gizzard shad. I attached a planer board to each line and send four gizzard shad into the main body of the river. The planer boards use the current to pull the bait straight out into the river allowing the shad to swim above the bottom and not to drift with the flow of the current. The depth can be set by increasing the distance from the planer board to the hook. I had a stinger hook attached to each of the shad so that i would hook a fish if it were only to bite the shad’s tail. A stinger hook is a treble hook that is tied to the front hook, and one prong is put in the fish’s back near the tail.
It was still early in the morning and as i fed line for one rod, i noticed a dark shape darting side to side through the water and it was coming right for me. I yelled, “Snake” and jumped out of the water. Garrett had his hands on his knees and was laughing because what i thought was a snake was actually his top water lure.
Dawson and Ryan did some brainstorming and ventured up river to try fly fishing in the rapids. Garrett continued to cast and I tried to scare the osprey from eating my shad. One osprey swooped down and snatched a shad, killing it on the spot. I had to run back to the trailer and carry another shad to the river.
Dawson and Ryan returned and we saw two men standing on some rocks who were catching small stripers. The rocks were out in the middle of the river and to get there, we would have to wade through the current carrying our supplies. Not to mention that the water was cold and a cell phone was lost along the way. It took some convincing to get me in the water but Ryan finally won and we swam out to the rocks to try our luck. I was careful to keep the four rods pointed apart so i would not tangle the fish that were on my hooks. We climbed up onto the rocks and everyone started fishing again with a new and upbeat confidence. I hurried to send my shad and planer boards back out into the current. Once my lines were set, Ryan came around with a loaf of bread and gave everyone a few pieces. This is the lunch we get when Ryan is in charge of food. No ham, no cheese, no mayonnaise, just plain bread.
By the time we decided to leave, we were still yet to land a river striper, but we learned a few things about the river and saw where the two men were successful in catching their fish. Simply understanding the river better by the end of the day is means to call our fishing trip a success. We each had different goals of what to catch while we were there. Dawson wants nothing more than to catch a striper on a fly rod. Ryan will use whatever means necessary that will give the best chances to catch the most fish, and i was looking for the giant. The chances of catching a striper the size of what i was fishing for was slim, but the way to find it is to keep the right bait in the water, and the fish will eventually swim by.
There are many ways for fishermen to approach this river and be successful. The specialist fly fisherman can drift flies and streamers to catch fish in the rocks, while a spin fisherman can throw a plug or plastic lures in the open water, and others may be more successful using live minnows while sitting on the bank. Whatever the preferred method, fishermen rarely seem to leave the Saluda River dissatisfied.