Dale Welch- The Striper King
How Dale Welch Became a Striper Guide on Smith Lake
and a Super Striper Recipe
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.
When the Alabama Fisheries Section first stocked Smith
Lake with striped bass, quite a few people knew about
it. But in the 1980s, very-few Alabama fishermen knew
how to fish for stripers, especially at Smith Lake,
where there never had been stripers before. When Dale
Welch went fishing on Smith Lake, he did not know there
were striped bass in the lake, and would not have known
a striper if he had seen one. "I was fishing along
the edge of a deep bluff when I saw a big school of
fish that I thought were Smith Lake's spotted
bass,” Welch recalls. At that time, the only way
I knew to catch a spotted bass was to fish a 3/4-ounce
Hopkins jigging spoon, so I tried it.”
Using an old flasher depth finder at the time and the
transducer on his trolling motor, Welch watched as the
spoon went under water. When the spoon dropped down
to about 3-feet above what Welch thought was a spotted
bass, he stopped the spoon, jerked it one time and let
it flutter back down. “Nothing happened the first
time, so I popped the spoon a second time and allowed
it to flutter down again,” Welch says. “As
the spoon fluttered down on my depth finder, the fish
marked on the flasher closed distance on the spoon.
I got a hit. My rod bowed over like a limp noodle.”
Welch had his drag set loose enough not to break the
12-pound-test line. When he finally landed the silver-looking
fish with its black lines and a sharp, pointed nose,
he didn’t know what kind of fish it was. “I
thought it was a carp, a drum or some form of bass that
I knew nothing about until I showed it to someone who
told me it was a saltwater striped bass,” Welch
remembers. “This was one of the fiercest-fighting
fish I’d ever caught. I started deliberately
looking for them on Smith Lake.”
Since the Hopkins spoon proved that it could attract
the striper’s attention, Welch started fishing
with that. Once Welch knew he could find and catch stripers,
he decided to guide for them. At that time he did not
know of anyone else guiding for stripers on Smith Lake.
Welch thought that, as hard as those fish fought, there
would be many people who would want to catch them. He
recalls, “Instead of having to go to the Gulf
Coast to catch a big fish, anglers could come to north
Alabama. That is how I became a striper guide.”
Welch learned that, in the hot summertime when most
people wanted to fish for stripers, they’d be
closer to the dam on the lower end of the lake. So,
the closer to the dam you got, the more stripers you
could see on your depth finder. Welch also warns of
the erratic nature of stripers. “These fish are
not structure-oriented,” he says. “You will
not find these free-roaming fish holding on anything.”
Eating Striped Bass:
If you’ve never caught saltwater striped bass
before, you’ll learn they are great sport fish.
Because stripers can have a strong fishy taste, here’s
a technique I use to make the meat of a striper taste
as sweet as the meat of a crappie.
* Filet the fish. Cut the red meat off the side of the
filet, cut the red lateral line out of the filet, and
then cut the filet into one-inch-thick strips.
* Put those strips in a bowl in an ice chest, and cover
the meat with ice.
* Pour Sprite or 7-Up over the ice in the bowl until
the soft drink covers the ice.
* Place the lid on the ice chest, and let the fish soak
in this mixture for 4-6 hours.
* Have your batter mixed or your cornmeal and flour
combination ready. As soon as you take the striper filet
out of the water, rinse it off, dip it in an egg-and-milk
mixture, and batter it quickly.
* Drop it in the skillet, cook to perfection, and enjoy.
Even people who don’t like the taste of fish will
fight to get more of this 7-Up Striper.
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.
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