Georgia angler Travis Harrell made a long, 150-foot cast across the swift current boils and whitewater of the Flint River. It was March 19, Harrell was fishing from shore, and water was pouring out of the tailrace below the hydroelectric dam that forms Lake Chehaw.
Harrell’s 2-ounce pink bucktail jig, adorned with an 8-inch long Got-Cha white plastic grub, landed on the far side of tailrace current flow. Then he started another lure retrieve.
“That cast was just like a million others I’ve made, but then I felt a hit and the weight of the fish,” Travis tells Outdoor Life. “I knew it was a big one, and I yelled ‘Fish On! Fish On!’ so other anglers nearby knew I’d hooked up and they’d be aware of their lines in the water.”
Harrell had already been casting for two hours that morning when the fish struck at 9 a.m.
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“The striper kept going and going, and there wasn’t much I could do,” says the 42-year-old from Albany. “I had a heavy Lew’s rod and a Daiwa bait-casting reel spooled with 17-pound monofilament. But the farther that fish went downstream in current, the more worried I got that I’d lose it.”
There were big boils and plenty of sharp rocks around. Harrell eventually saw the fish’s huge tail at the surface, and he thought if he didn’t tighten his drag and turn it, he’d surely lose the bass.
“I really leaned on the fish, and I was getting worn out,” he explains. “But she finally turned back, and I gained line on her.”
Harrell says he fought the big striper for 20 minutes in total. Another fisherman, Doug Willbey, showed up to help him with a big landing net.
“My arms were hurting, and my hands were cramping from the fight near the end,” Harrell says. “But we went down some stairs next to the wall, and Doug scooped her in his net.”
Harrell was afraid the net would break. He helped Willbey, who still had the linesider in the net, climb back up the concrete steps to the top of the wall.
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“We started whooping and hollering when we got a good look at the fish,” says Harrell. “I called my dad to tell him, but he was sleeping because he’s retired. My mom had to wake him up, and then he came right over to see my fish.”
On a scale they had at the dam, the fish weighed 50 pounds, bigger than any striper they’d seen caught from the Flint River.
“I really didn’t want to kill the fish, but we had to take it to the DNR office in Albany to have it officially weighed and measured,” Harrell saus.
The fish officially weighed 52.2 pounds, with a 47.5-inch length and a 35-inch girth. This shatters the old Flint River striper record, a 48.5-pounder caught in 1983.
Travis says he has fished “the wall” all his life, learning the nuances of striper fishing from his dad, who also has fished there throughout his lifetime. The spot is a 15-foot-high concrete wall that borders about 50 yards of river pouring out of the dam.
“I’ve learned everything about fishing for stripers in the tailrace from my dad. He always told me that if I wanted to catch a big striped bass from there I had to use big lures and put in a lot of time casting across tailrace currents.”
A tight-knit group of local anglers fish the wall regularly through the year, says Harrell. They catch panfish, catfish, bass, and hybrid stripers. The spring is when big spawning-run striped bass will push up the Flint River, but they’re halted by the dam, where anglers have a shot to hook one without the need for a boat.
“All my family has caught 30-pound stripers from The Wall,” says Harell. “My best one until now was a 22-pounder. It takes effort to connect with a big striper there. That’s why in spring I take vacation time to fish The Wall.
“I think catching a big striper in the Flint is like hunting for a big ol’ buck,” Harrell continues. “You gotta put in the time and effort.”
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