Hello Everyone,
I just wanted to wish everyone the best of everything in 2004. May your stripers be enormous, may you get to spend more precious time on the water, and may you get the opportunity to share your experiences with friends and loved ones.
I've been hard at work creating my first DVD, "Stripers Gone Wild" and thanks to all the great suggestions I've received, right here at Striped-Bass.com, I'm about to release a mind-bending look at stripers and how to catch them. I figured it out the other day -- this project represents: over four years of effort, over 100 hours of new footage, 1,500 hours or more spent acquiring that footage, and countless hours reviewing, editing and finalizing the DVD.
The DVD will have over 90 MINUTES of action packed footage...a substantial amount of it underwater! The fishing/diving sequences take place form Maine to Montauk. No matter what type of tackle you prefer, no matter if you fish from a boat or from the surf, this DVD will give you a better understanding of stripers that will translate into you catching more and larger bass.
I cover techniques on how to read the water, and with the use of Maptech charts, aerial photography, satellite views, bathometric charts, and animation, I then put you on a specific striper “hot spot” and take you underwater to examine the realm of striped bass. I visit such legendary spots as Montauk Pt, Point Judith, Watch Hill Point, Brenton Reef, Beavertail Light, Gay Head, Wasque Point, Quonny Breachway, and Cuttyhunk. You’ll learn techniques from Captain Gary Corsetti that helped him win three separate ASA tournaments in 2003, including a 54 pound striper – the largest ever landed in an ASA tournament. In fact, you’ll see him catching and releasing bass up to 45 pounds! You’ll get to see Crazy Alberto knocking the scales off stripers with topwater offerings in the surf. There’s even a blitz sequence where a surf fisherman nails keeper after keeper, on an oversized, wooden “Spook”…he even hooks both a big bass AND a big blue at the same time. World-renowned fly fisherman Ed Hughes provides a fun look at flyfishing during a number of springtime frenzies.
I brought back my ever-popular “Stripervision” technique for giving you a virtual reality tour of striper habitat. I explore: reefs, rock piles, beaches, breakwaters, channels, pinnacles, promontories, creeks, rivers, harbors, bays, sandbars, tidal rips, and open ocean. I give you a fish-eye look at HOW BASS FEED AND WHAT BASS PREY ON: herring, menhaden, eels, crabs, bay anchovies, mullet, scup, silversides, cunner, flounder, scup, squid, snappers, pollack, and lobster. You’ll see proven fish catching techniques from chumming, to fly fishing, from topwater plugging to deep water chunking.
Finally, I take you on my own very personal hunt for giant stripers. This three-year odyssey involved four trips to Cuttyhunk between 2001 and 2003. It resulted in my catching (from the surf & on topwater plugs) both the striper that graces the cover on my last video with Lefty Kreh AND a 59” fish I released (no picture or video – my biggest regret of 2002). On my 2003 trip to Cutty I captured the most amazing footage of LARGE stripers EVER (the highpoint of 2003 and my entire career as an underwater videographer!). This footage reveals hundreds of BIG bass, many of them over 30 and 40 pounds with a few that I would estimate at over 50! I examine everything from tide, time of day, phase of moon, and location to give you a roadmap to success that can apply to anywhere along the striper coast.
I’ll be selling the DVD through a number of Striped-Bass.com sponsors and it should be ready before the end of January. If you’re interested in a copy of “Mike Laptew’s Stripers Gone Wild”*, let your S-B supporting retailer know, so that they know how many to order. As always, I promise: “The only place you’ll see more stripers is in your dreams.” However, I have to warn you: “The images of Cuttyhunk stripers will haunt you until next season.”
Happy New Year and God Bless.
* No stripers under 18” were knowingly filmed in the making of “Stripers Gone Wild.”
