Photo by Mike Marsh

The hand warmers had quit working, gloves were now only holding their own, and the lull between hookups was just starting to gain our attention. Then two rods went down simultaneously and suddenly the cold and the wait for a bite forgotten, overwhelmed by the fight of big stripers on the other end of the tackle.

January fishing is a little on the cold side, a little on the slow side at times, but when the stripers decide to feed in the wintertime, things heat up quickly. Here are four lakes -- Cherokee, Cordell Hull, Norris and Old Hickory -- that you can get warm on quickly.

The Science Of It All
Before we get into the where and how of winter striper fishing, let’s sidestep a little because below the depths of the lakes that we’re featuring lies more than big stripers: There’s biological data in there as well.

Tim Churchill may have vacated the reservoir coordinator’s position to work more directly with the TWRA’s director, but he can’t hide from me when I need questions answered about Tennessee lake fishing, including stripers.

Whether we’re talking about Cherokee, Cordell Hull, Norris or Old Hickory lakes, the type of habitat stripers prefer in cold weather, and their typical response to cooling water, remains similar. Churchill said stripers become generally more dispersed across lakes in the winter months when the water quality improves. However, an abundance of cold-stressed shad, such as those near steam plant outflows, sometimes concentrates the stripers.

Churchill said when water temperatures drop, threadfin shad in particular are susceptible to cold. They become slower and unable to avoid predators like stripers. As a matter of fact, Churchill said shad and alewives make up at least 90 percent of striper diets throughout the year.

He has learned from anglers across the state what type of structures are key to harboring scattered winter stripers. Churchill said many anglers have told him they have success on humps, submerged islands or rock outcroppings when temperatures drop.

Pat Black of the TWRA’s Fisheries Division calls himself a “fisheries biometrician.” I laughed and asked what that meant exactly. He said a large part of his job is to dig through the data and try to make sense of it all. That’s just what he did for our look at winter striper lakes.

Black took the time to calculate the monthly catch rates for stripers on three of our spotlight lakes. He didn’t have any winter creel data for Cordell Hull and was unable to provide the info on that lake. For the remaining three, Black went back over the last five years (2001-2005) of creel data to adequately represent each lake.

Cherokee Lake had the highest winter (December through February) striper catch rates, followed by Old Hickory and then Norris. He really wanted to show us where Cordell Hull ranks, but the information wasn’t available. You can bet it’s near the top of the list.

To get the catch-per-angler-hour estimates, Black lumped a great deal of data over multiple years to obtain meaningful figures. He said often in the wintertime, the creel clerks are concentrated in areas where anglers are seeking other species, so the chance of encountering anglers targeting striped bass is sometimes low.