Hi Wayne, Your assessment of the striper spawn, the condition of the fish - and the possibility of hitting things just right this year has me really excited to return to the lake again in May. As for the original question asked by FlagPowell, I am certain that your response as to the depth of the male fish awaiting females will help him, and others, a lot. Unless you have a side finder, you won't see them. Just cast the fly and strip it in fast. I think I also mentioned back in 2015 that if you can smell them, you know that's likely a staging area. Also, you informed me that the bigger fish we were catching off points, down deep, were more likely to be larger females, during the 2015 trip. We fished uphill for these larger females and had the best luck at dawn and in the evening. Long countdowns to 25 plus got to these bigger girls hanging on the points. We caught fish up to 8 pounds which is not huge, but it was the numbers that really made the trip. We had four days of crazy fast striper fishing. Mostly smaller males near the surface during the day and bigger females morning and evenings. Even better, we had great luck finding them in many places which combines the thrill of hunting and discovery with lots of catching, and serious case of striper thumb! As for fly fishing gear, we really only used one line. It was 30 feet of T-8 attached to a monofiliment shooting line. LC-13, T-11, and T-14 are good shooting head options as well. A fast sink full striper line will work great too, is more readily available and is a more friendly line to beginning and intermediate casters. Rio, Scientific Anglers, Airflo and others offer good fast sink striper lines. I used 17 pound straight Seaguar fluorocarbon leader (resists abrasion). We used primarily Clousers (2 to 5 inches, mainly chartreuse over white) because they ride hook up and are easy to remove from the fish, especially on barbless hooks, which is helpful during a hot bite. All the rods we used had fighting butts and ranged from 6wt. (very fun) to 8 wt.