Hartwell striper guide Chip Hamilton with a nice striped bass near the Lake Hartwell dam. Photo by Terry Madewell.

When fishing for Lake Hartwell stripers during the month of May, getting an early start to the fishing can be a really good idea. I learned that on a trip to this deep, clear lake last spring.

At least it was that way when I fished with Chip Hamilton. Hamilton wants to be on this clearwater lake and fishing about an hour before sunrise.

He said that the hour before sunrise is an almost magical time of the day for stripers on Lake Hartwell. He added that as the eastern sky begins to get the first hint of light, the stripers sometimes go on a feeding binge.

Since I prefer being on the lake early anyway, I was rigged and ready. On the morning we fished, he was casting blueback herring off a point while the sky was still very dark. He had eased the boat onto the gravel shoreline on an island point and was casting the rigs out of the back of the boat. He slipped three rods into rod holders and the waiting began. After 30 seconds without a bite, Hamilton mentioned something about it being a slow morning.

I thought he was kidding.

Before I could chuckle at what I figured was a joke, one of the rods took a nosedive under the strain of a linesider. I was solidly hooked to the first striper of the day. In the next 10 minutes, we caught two more and missed two bites. Then five minutes with no fish action caused Hamilton to re-think his strategy. He began to pull the rigs in to move to another spot. By now, I realized he was serous about the fast-paced action he was expecting.

“We still have a half hour to find them feeding in the shallows,” he said. “We’ll try another point, then we’ll start looking for them in the deeper water.”

A five-minute boat run ensued and we quickly worked the same setup. This time we didn’t have to wait so long for the fish to bite. Before he got the second rig out, I had one hooked on the first rod.

The action continued until sunrise and then it switched off like a light switch had been flipped.

“OK, it’s time to get serious,” Hamilton said. “We’re going striper hunting now. We may have to motor around a bit to find them, but once we do, we’ll see some pretty fast action.”

While I had thought we’d already seen some fast action, I took him seriously this time. In the next few hours, we did get into a considerable amount of what even Hamilton admitted was fast-paced striper and hybrid action.

“We enjoy excellent fishing throughout much of the year here on Lake Hartwell,” Hamilton said. “But the fishing in May and June is outstanding. And, unbelievably, some of the best striper fishing of the year actually occurs during the real hot weather months of July and August. It can be absolutely outstanding. By mid- to late April and May, we get into a strong, predictable pattern that lasts for several months.”

Most of the action is on live bait, but there can be some topwater schooling action, too. Hamilton said that he is geared up to take advantage of any topwater schooling action. However, his bread-and-butter pattern from now through summer is live-bait fishing. With that pattern, he said he has an outstanding chance of success on a daily basis.