BADIN/HICKORY/NORMAN

Looking for any reports on how striper fishing is at either of these lakes....Lake Murray S.C. is my go to lake but the season there is as bad as it has been in several years...a large fish kill there this past summer has seemingly hurt this years fishing...Have fished Norman, Hickory and Badin and each one is good for stripers but seem to be more seasonal than Murray which is a much larger impoundment.....

not interrupting crappie fishing for sure but any reports would of occasional hits or noticing the striper activity would be helpful...

The fishing has been exceptional the last few weeks especially Badin and Norman.

I have a buddy that's on Murray today. He had to tell the Warden he was catfishing cause he was catching so many stripers (by accident). After the warden saw him catch/release about 15 stripers he went over and checked him making sure he new he regulation was 5 per person. He didn't get a ticket, but received a stern lecture!
Sounds like it's pretty exceptional there too!

Chris

If you are talking about bigger 20+ pounders out of Murray then yes it's been a down year, but the lake is loaded right now. Average size of a 40 boat tournament last weekend was around 8 pounds. Not bad.

Most guide boats are catching there limits under an hour.

Thanks for the information....

Well I did get down to Murray Wednesday for a night fishing trip....we started at around 7 and had our limit at 11;30......most were 15-18 inches but several were near 20 inches.....fished up the lake away from the crowd and for a Wednesday night the dam parking lot was nearly full....had to pull around toward the street side in order to park the truck/trailer. I counted over 20 boats from the dam to Spence Island.......busy busy. the stripers were everywhere in the basin....

Stripers hitting below the dam upper end early and late on topwater on Tillery. Big crowd all the time though.