The Bradford pear & red bud trees are blooming in Northeast Oklahoma, so the hybrid/wipers are biting like crazy!  Hybrid or wipers as they are sometime called are a cross between a striped bass and a sand or white bass.  Did I mention that they fight like bulldogs?

Scott Yeager owns the lure company “Striped Bass Tackle 4 You” (web site: sbt4u.com) and lucky for us both, last year he and his family moved two doors down the street from us.  Scott is a quite an accomplished hybrid and striped bass fisherman.  So last weekend we hooked my Tracker Marine Pro Team 185 Bass Boat up to the truck and headed for Skiatook Lake, which is about 25 minutes from where we live East of Owasso, OK.

We launched the boat at the Osage ramp and made the long ¼ mile run back into Osage Cove.  Several days earlier I had caught over 30 hybrids, sand bass & black bass on the left side of that cove so that’s where we started.  It was a “dead zone”.  Not a single bite, so we navigated over to the right side of the cove through the standing timber and across the 8’ deep channel, then all hell broke loose!

Scott was throwing a blue backed suspending jerk bait that he sells on his web site, and I was fishing with small 3/8 oz. white spinner bait.  I don’t know how many doubles we hooked up with, but it was crazy.  After getting my 6 lb. test mono on an ultra-light rod broken off twice in the trees, I switched to a bait caster with 10 lb. line and we tore ‘em up.

Scott caught one really good fish that wrapped him around a stump twice, but with yours truly utilizing my expert trolling motor skills, he managed to kneel down on the bow and unwrap it and then continue the fight until the fish was landed.

It’s great when you go fishing and catch so many fish in three hours you loose count, but that’s what happened.  Attached is a picture of Scott and a 5 lb. 6 oz. wiper (weighed on a digital scale) with the lure still in its mouth.  You will find that lure for sale, as well as several others, on his website www.sbt4u.com.

Hybrid Stripped Bass on a Jerk Bait

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