“I run four planers, two on each side of the boat, then four ‘wonder lines’ off the transom, two on each side, with one short and one long. I call them wonder lines because they are fished without any weight, so you always wonder where they are. I run them from 8 to 15 feet deep, while the side-planers run all the way down to 20 feet. Then I put out six down rods, for a total of 14 rods. The down rods are placed in holders along the sides of the boat and weighted line with 3 ounces of weight so they go straight down off the side of the boat. There are three down rods on each side.”

Hall hooks a 1/0 live-bait hook through the baitfish’s nose. He uses baitcasting reels spooled with 14- to 17-pound mono lines and a 17-pound fluorocarbon leader. An egg sinker of up to 3 ounces is used to take the bait down to the fish with the down rods.

It can get exciting if a school of stripers attacks several baits at once. The more anglers on board, and the more experienced they are, the more rods Hall can set. He can carry up to four fishermen. New regulations allow keeping only four fish of any length between June 1 and Sept. 30. From Oct. 1 to May 31, only two fish over 26 inches long may be retained.

“In January, you can catch two-dozen fish and the next day you might only catch six or eight fish,” Hall said. “A great day would be a limit of two keeper fish per person and that happens most days. Sometimes you have to hand rods off to someone else to get them out of the way. You’re going to get tangles with multiple hookups, but you can always untangle them after getting your fish in.”

Though he finds fish while motoring through a likely area with the outboard, he uses a trolling motor to stay with a school of fish. Sometimes they remain in one area, especially when oriented to a piece of structure such as the top of a submerged hill. But at other times, they scatter or the school stays together but is on the move. If fish aren’t showing on the depthfinder screen or he isn’t getting any bites, Hall moves to another location or calls other guides and his striper-fishing buddies on the radio. Several boats working together have a better chance of staying on a school of biting stripers than one boat working alone.

Hall said the stripers feed actively until the water temperature dips below 44 degrees. Even then, they can still be caught, but he said that the bait must be presented right in the fish’s faces.

He fishes from a 20.5-foot Maycraft and advises anyone to use at least an 18- to 20-foot center console boat for fishing Kerr and to avoid fishing during high winds. He uses a 24-volt trolling motor to control the boat’s drift when fishing bait schools, but has also had success with a 12-volt motor.

To ward off the chill, Hall said he advises his clients to wear the same clothing as when hunting deer from a tree stand in winter. Coveralls, insulated underwear and rain gear that can fit over coveralls will keep a winter striper fisherman warm and dry.