My Dad and I just got back from our annual trip to West Point. We had a really good time and caught plenty of fish. We stayed at the Highland Marina floating cabin and the accommodations were great as usual. Bait netting was no problem with the Hydro-glow at the cabin and in the back of the creek at Highland. We netted alot of gizzards and threadfins with some very large hybrid threadfins mixed in. I hadn’t netted any hybrid threads in 3-4 years but we got a bunch on this trip.

Yesterday was pretty slow and we only caught around 8 fish between the morning and afternoon. The lake was down about 4 feet and they didn’t generate yesterday. I really wanted to get my dad on some numbers so I used a technique with the netted bait that we used last year that worked out great. We found some large schools of gizzards in the back of Highland in 2 feet of water. We filled the net with gizzards with one throw and filled 2 five gallon buckets with 3-4 inch gizzards in water and put 6-8 dozen in the bait tank. We headed to the large flat we planned to fish and with the wind blowing into the flat, we released the gizzards in the buckets across the mouth of the flat and let the wind push the released gizzards across the flat.  We waited about 30 minutes and it was on. We guessed we caught 30-40 stripers this morning on the flat. Most of the fish we caught were on downlines on the bottom in 25 feet of water. Most of the fish were between 3-6 pounds with the biggest striper around 10 pounds and a hybrid that was very close to 8. After the morning my dad was pretty much wore out so we grabbed some lunch and headed back home. My dad doesn’t have to many fishing trips left at 71 and smoking like a chimney so it’s really great to get him out and put him on a few fish.

Sorry fella’s, I’m getting everything ready for a 3 day trip to West Point next week with my dad so I’m doing some service and repairs on my boat this week. I’ll be back on Lanier after our WP trip and hopefully find a few fish for the National Championship on Lanier.

I got out with my good friend Brett W on an invite to fish in the Lanier Striper Club tournament. We started the day slow trolling leadcore and downriggers just looking for active schools. We marked plenty of fish up on points, but most were inactive fish and small groups of Spotted bass. We finally found a decent school of fish in the back of a large cove area. We trolled a set-up of 2 leadcore and two downriggers through the school without a sniff. We quickly turned around, brought in the trolling gear and dropped the herring down and tried power reeling the herring to no avail. Brett had a big 2 ounce Bucktail jig with a 6 inch swim bait tied on and I had a ounce and a half with a 5 inch swim bait. We both dropped down past the school and climbed the ladder with the jig stopping it every couple of feet. That was the key. We both hooked up at the same time using this method but mine broke off. Probably a 30-40 pounder. lol 

The action was fast as we managed 2 good keeper fish before the school moved on. These two fish were enough to win the tournament.

Guys, when you get over a school like we did, sometimes you have to act fast because a lot of these schools are moving quickly and you only get one good shot at getting a good fish or two. Just like a lot of schooling stripers, the larger fish will generally be below the smaller fish so dropping a heavy 2+ ounce bait gets it down fast into the target area for bigger fish. In our case, we dropped all the way to the bottom and worked it up from there.

One last thing I wanted to add is that after the tournament the club meets for lunch at a little restaurant in the back of Flowery Branch. It was a lot of fun with a great bunch of guys! I saw a lot of laughs and a lot of smiling faces. That’s what it’s all about.

Good Fishing!

Jim

I got out this morning with a friend to do a little planer board testing and scouting a little north of Browns Bridge. Long story short; not much to report to the north. The best we could do with the planer boards was a few small spots and a 4 pound catfish on a weighted planer. After dinking around that area for a couple of hours we came back down to the 2 mile chute. We marked a nice school of larger fish just to the back side of a point but couldn’t get any to commit to the trout and bluebacks. We moved further south and found some really nice schools of stripers around the mouth and inside 6 mile. Again, we got right over the schools and no takers. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, we power reeled, fished above them, below them, in them and around them. We did everything but troll through them. I left all my trolling gear at home for this trip. I was commited to live bait. I kick myself for not bringing the u-rigs for these groups of fish.

We headed back to the dock around lunchtime and called it a day. No stripers were boated today. It was one of those days that the fish we were on were not really active fish. The water temps were in the upper 70’s this morning and from what I’ve seen, a few fish are probably moving a bit north. I think that the front coming through this weekend will cool the water a bit more and scatter a few schools. We saw very few topwater fish north of Browns Bridge and not much topwater to speak of by the time we got to 6 mile. My guess is that planer boards and free lines early, followed by downlines and trolling once the sun comes up. There are still good groups of fish on the south end that can be caught trolling. We did see a few larger fish sitting on points early but couldn’t get any to hit the trout yet. All in all, we’re starting to see signs of a fall pattern with fish being shallow and on the surface chasing bait early in the morning and late in the evening. Topwater baits should work well early in the morning and late in the evening. I also like using 1/2 to 3/4 ounce bucktail in light or off white colors for surfacing stripers at dusk.

Good Fishing!

Jim