Buggs Island Stripers

Last weekend I was invited to a clients lake house on Buggs Island just outside Clarksville, Va.  We went out about 3pm on Friday and located lots of shad about 2 miles north of the bridges in Clarksville.  Fished the bait fish hard, but had no bites - we did not see any birds diving on the bait we located.  We motored on down to the bridges in Clarksville and started looking for the diving sea gulls everyone says to chase.  We located many birds but they were not flying low or diving.  We fished the bridges and shore lines for about a hour then started motoring around looking for diving birds.  We went about 2 miles south then turned to head back north.  when we got to back to the bridges, we saw a lot number of birds diving close to the bridge.  We motored up close and used the trolling motor to get next to the diving birds.  we saw stripers pushing bait to the surface so we quickly cast into the swarm of birds.  First cast and BAM - 30" striper.  within 10 minutes we had five stripers and we also safely released three birds that dived into the water and grabed our bait.  we continued to motor around chasing the birds but the action disappeared as quick as it started.  fish were landed on 4" Storm wildeye swim baits in blue steel coloring.  I believe we could have thrown a rusty hook out when the striper were pushing the bait to the surface and hooked up.   The secret to landing stripers at Bugg Island is to motor around looking for the large swarms of sea gulls diving.    If you are luckly enough to locate the gulls in a feeding frenzy, you will have a lot of quick action.  The birds will not even notice you, just do not motor too close to the fish pushing up the shad.