BLUEFIELD, Va. — When Jeff Hubbard of Bluefield got a chance to fish Tennessee’s Cherokee Lake in March he wasn’t sure what to expect. He was there March 27, a Thursday, and fished from daylight on. The fishing had been slow all day.
“We were fishing in about 18 feet of water and there was a big ledge where it went from about 15 feet to 45 feet on a steep drop. I watched the sonar and saw the bait starting to rise. It came up to 20 feet, then 15, and I thought they might start turning on here,” explained Jeff in a conversation on a recent edition of West Virginia Outdoors.
Thinking the bait ball was nearing the surface, his suspicions were confirmed when several broke water around the boat. Stripers have a tendency to turn on all at once and go into a feeding frenzy, which was exactly what happened.
Hubbard explained he had been fishing with live bait in the depths, but tied on an old Rapala topwater lure he happened to find in his tackle box. He admitted he doesn’t use artificial bait much, but thought the situation might be the right time to give the dusty old lure a try.
“I chucked that plug, one blew up on it and I jerked it out of his mouth. I reeled in and threw it back in the same spot and I hooked into a big one,” he said.
He wasn’t sure just how big because the fish immediately took a dive for the bottom. The reaction wasn’t like a striper and Hubbard was unsure what he had hooked on the other end of the line. Each time he got the fish close to the boat, it took another deep dive. It took a half-hour to get the fish to the net and when he finally had it secured, he was shocked to find one of the biggest hybrid stripers he had ever seen in the net.
“The bottom of her belly was seven inches across. When I put the tape measure around her, her girth was more than her length,” he laughed.
He also noticed in her throat was the tail end of a fairly sizeable shad. Clearly the fish was in a feeding frenzy and was full of eggs.
Listen to “Jeff Hubbard — Tennessee Record Hybrid Striper” on Spreaker.
Jeff said he got the girth and length measurements and took a nice picture in hopes of getting a replica mount made. He had no intention of keeping the fish, but decided to check the weight.
“I had her on a set of digital scales and she weighed 23 pounds 5 ounces and the hook wouldn’t hold her. I had another set of grip-style, analog scales and she was 23-5 on those,” he explained.
Hubbard flagged down a fellow angler in another boat who stopped off to see what was going on. He offered him a third set of scales.
“He got his scales out and she was 23-6,” explained Hubbard.
A quick check of the smartphone revealed the Tennessee State Record for a hybrid is 23-3. At this point, Hubbard faced a decision. He could release his fish with the personal satisfaction she was a record breaker or he could try and get her to an officer of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency to get a certified weight and put his name in the record books. However, the latter decision would jeopardize survival of the fish and all of those eggs she was carrying.
“I don’t know, it was just something telling me I wanted to throw her back. I guess I could have put her in the livewell and tried to get the certification, but maybe I’d get more respect for turning her back,” Jeff said.
So, he turned her loose, back into the waters of Cherokee Lake.
“I got one picture, kissed her on the head, and put her back into that water and she slapped that tail and splashed me right in the face like she was saying, ‘let me go, I’ve been touched enough,'” he laughed.
It’s not Jeff’s first conversation on West Virginia Outdoors about a major accomplishment in the Outdoors. A few years back, he joined us to talk about an equally amazing caribou hunt in Canada.