The striper bite was a little slower than I had hoped for yesterday; however, Chad, Joe, and Mike still caught some and had an encounter with a river monster. This is a large flathead catfish, which is a non-native species to the Tar River and highly invasive in that it eats lots of small, native fish. If you catch one, kill it. We harvested ours.
Even though the numbers of stripers don’t quite compare to what is in the Roanoke and the fishing can be a little more variable, the lower Tar River has an excellent striper winter striper fishery capable of producing big Roanoke numbers (when conditions are right and we find the biomass) and large fish up to 30+ inches. While a fish over 30 inches is a rare encounter, we do see them at times, but we consistently catch fish in the 25-30 inch range (which is a 10-15 pound fish in the winter. The Tar gives us an excellent alternative when the fishing in the Roanoke has not yet fired off. Come experience the Lower Tar River. It’s a beautiful place full of opportunity.
