Dale Welch- The Striper King
How to Catch ‘Em
 Editor’s
Note: One day in 1988, Dale Welch of Crane Hill, Alabama,
a biomedical engineer in Birmingham, left his job to
go fishing and never returned. No, Welch didn’t
vanish. He discovered a new career and a new life as
a saltwater striper guide on Smith Lake. Welch has guided
for stripers longer than any other guide on Smith Lake
and has caught four Smith Lake records. Today, we’ll
learn some of Dale’s striper-fishing tactics.
Once Welch locates a school  of
stripers on his depth finder, he baits up and tries
to catch them. But for many years, catching shad and
keeping them alive and active presented another problem,
due to the special tanks and complicated filtration
systems the shad required. However, Welch has solved
the problem and fishes live bait called black salties,
which he purchases from I.F. Anderson Farms, Inc. in
Lonoke, Arkansas. “These live baits look like
goldfish, but they have silver sides, silver flashes
and dark backs. I think the stripers like the silver
flash that these give off,” Welch says. “This
company ships these baits in to me FedEx overnight,
and they live well, just like goldfish do.”
Welch uses a No. 3/0 circle hook with the black salties.
“I like the circle hook because it usually hooks
the stripers in the lips, so if the customer or I want
to return the fish to the water, we can usually release
the striper, and it will survi ve.”
Coming off the hook, going up the line, Welch has about
3 feet of 15-pound-test fluorocarbon leader and ties
it to a No. 3 barrel swivel. Above the barrel swivel,
he attaches a 1-1/2-ounce egg sinker onto his 20-pound-test
monofilament line. Welch uses a medium-heavy-action
baitcasting rod with a reasonably-limber tip and a wide-spool
Ryobi baitcasting reel. “The key is having a really-smooth
drag system on the reel because these stripers will
pull drag off,” Welch advises. “If you have
a reel that sticks and holds the line tighter than its
pound weight class, the striper will break off.”
Welch places a rod in each of his four rod holders and
sets the drag on each tight enough to set the hook on
the striper, yet loose enough so the striper can pull
drag off after the initial strike when the fish starts
to run. Welch waits until the striper pulls the rod
down and then sets the hook before he tells his anglers
to pick up the rod a nd
start reeling.
Today at Smith Lake, the average striper Welch catches
weighs 10 to 20 pounds, and, on occasion, 20 to 30 pounds.
Welch holds the Smith Lake record with a striper that
weighed 45 pounds on certified scales. Welch says an
angler can expect to catch from zero to 10 fish in one
day and offers advice for anglers who have trouble catching
stripers. “If you don’t catch stripers within
6 hours of fishing at Smith Lake, then you’re
either fishing at the wrong time of day, you haven’t
found a school of fish, or the stripers are in a non-feeding
mood,” Welch reports. Welch explains that peak
fishing times for stripers vary depending on the season:
* summer to early fall — 4 am to 10 am or earlier;
* October-December — daylight until 12:00 noon;
* January-February — daylight until noon; and
* spring — daylight until 10 am.
“In the middle of the day, I’ve learned
the stripers are searching for the deepest water they
can find to stay cool and to get away from the sunlight,”
Welch says. He looks for stripers usually off the main
channel where he can find deep water in a creek or a
slough. “The worst time to fish for stripers is
on the weekends because all the recreational boaters
we have on Smith Lake make the fish really skittish.
I think the boat traffic spooks the stripers so badly
that they hardly feed on the weekends.” When the
boat traffic starts in the spring on Smith Lake, and
especially in the summer with no school and so many
boaters, Welch fishes only from Tuesday to Saturday
mornings. But when everyone’s attending football
games and hunting deer, you can enjoy fine weekend fishing
throughout the fall and winter.
To schedule a striper fishing trip with Dale Welch,
contact him at: 7932 County Road 312, Crane Hill, AL
35053, (256) 737-0541, dwelch@hiwaay.net, www.alabamastriperfishing.com.
For more information on Dale Welch’s bait of choice,
visit http://www.blacksalty.com,
or contact: I.F. Anderson Farms, Inc., 4377 Hwy. 70
West, Lonoke, AR 72086, Website: www.andersonminnows.com.
Phone: 1-877-GO-SALTY (467-2589), 1-800-206-4666, 501-676-2716,
Fax: 501-676-2718.
Tomorrow: Why Depth Finders and Trolling Motors Spell
Striper Success
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