My Dad flew in from Texas for his 72nd Birthday so I took him down to West Point for 3 days of striper fishing. The lake seemed to be turning over on the main lake proper so after a morning of hitting humps on the main lake, and a few smaller fish we decided to run up river to some cooler water. We started doing a little blind pulling over points off the river channel in 69-71 degree water and found the mother load. We caught stripers for 2 solid days. All of our fish were between 3 to 15 pounds. We lost count on the stripers, best guess between 40-60, and we caught 2-3 nice hybrids. We also caught white bass and a nice 5-6 lb catfish that joined us for dinner. Netting threads and small gizzards was the bait of choice, but we caught a few on planer board trout medium sized. Our biggest fish was around 15lbs that was caught on a dollar bill sized gizzard. We had a great time and the accommodations at Highland were great. The lake was down a good bit, probably 10 feet or more. Not much ramp left at Highland thought.
From the amount of stripers that we saw in the river and the amount we caught, the striper fishery looks great this winter on West Point.
I made a couple of videos of the fish catching.

wow...good job...I can't believe I didn't see any other boats and they were that thick...a little different than lanier.

Way to go Jim!! Great times right there, congrats.

Proper stocking levels, low fishing pressure and abunant forage = a great fishery!! That is the LSBC goal for Lanier, Great fishing!

Nice video. Glad you could fish with dad!

Thanks a bunch fella's. West Point is an awesome lake for numbers and the pressure was non-exsistent while we were there. I can count on one hand the number of boats we saw in the three days of fishing. One thing I do miss about West Point is the Hybrid population. Hybrids were always a great topwater fish on West Point. You could run the length of the lake and see 2-3 big schools of Hybrids busting on top on any given evening in the fall. Pound for pound, Hybrids are every bit as good as Stripers when it comes to sportfishing. As I understand it, they started a Hybrid stocking program again on WP which I hope will continue, as well as the current strain of Striper.

That brings up a good point about the climate on a Hybrid stocking program on Lanier. I know it was an idea that was tossed around some years back but lost traction due to the idea of splitting the alotment of fingerlings between Hybrids and Stripers for Lanier. I believe there were some other concerns also. It has worked well for Hartwell and had it not been for the surviving Hybrid population on Clarks Hill after the fish kill, fishing would have been a lot worse.

Is this something that might be of interest to the LSBC Mike?

It is something that the board of the LSBC has discussed, both internally and with the WRD. Of course the LBSC cannot do anything without the permission of the WRD. We thought that a supplement stocking of Hybrid with private funds would reduce the summertime mortality of released stripers, amoung other things. The WRD was not very receptive of the stocking wiht private funds idea, primarily due to the possibly of disease, parasites or some type of invasive species being introduced. There are also concerns about the availble forage, as Lanier fish tend to be on the skinny side.

From the states perspective if Lanier is warranted to get 400K fish, it would get 400K - either all stripers or a combo of stripers & hybrid's. Our response was that if hybrid's came at the expense of stripers, no way - we want stripers. If hybrids could added to stripers we were all for it. The state on a whole is moving away from production of hybrid's.

Now if the state learns thru data collection (the angler diary on the LSBC website, reports from striper clubs, etc) that the fishing pressure or striper mortality is higher then expected and the state is unable to reliably produce the number of stripers needed, then perhaps additional stocking with private funds will be reconsidered.

Issues such as this is exactly why the LSBC was formed. To develop a rapport with DNR/WRD and make sure that Lanier lineside anglers are properly represented and partnering with the state to make Lanier the best fishery possible.

Would a small split be all that bad? When things are slow it would offer another option. I don't know all the dynamics. I am just curious.