Yesterday my partner and I fished the second tournament on the HD Marine Lanier Trail out of Little Hall Park. The weather and turn out was awesome, and I’m guessing 75-100 boats participated. We didn’t have a chance to pre-fish that much up north before the tournament and we stayed in the Chestatee arm in Lathem and Johnson. Fish were active on the surface where we were at and we were able to get on a pretty good jerkbait bite while the fish were coming up. Most of the fish we saw early were rising out of the brush and shooting up to the surface from 25-35 feet of water. We just put the jerkbaits right over the brush and made some slow subtle jerks with our suspending baits. Here’s a picture of the jerkbait we used:

This was a jerkbait that I started using a few months back and it’s been working well ever since. I think we caught better than half of our 10-15 fish off the bait and I was glad to see that my partner brought the one I made for him back in the fall. Once again, the fish that we were working on were all cookie cutter 1-2lb fish. After the sun came up, we went to work on the bank for bigger fish. We started hitting rocks with the cranks. We caught a few more fish on the crankbaits scraping the rocks and muddy bottom in shallow water. My little Sand Key medium diver was the ticket and a few of the fish we caught on the crankbait were suspended fish, just pulling the crankbait slow over a little deeper water in mid channel ditches. With the exception of a few smaller shallow fish, the best pattern for us was definitely working the jerkbait over brush early in the morning, just after dawn. Here’s a picture of the crankbait that worked well for us in the shallows and slow cranking over suspended fish. It was the smaller crank on the right:

All in all, it was a good day even though we probably made another mid pack finish and failed to bust double digits again. I look at it as a success because we have been able to fill a sack for both tournaments. I believe our weight was almost exactly the same as the last tournament right down to the ounce at just under 10lbs. The weather couldn’t have been better and the warm sun was a very welcome site after months of cold weather. The water temps where we were at were a little cooler than the south end and we were mainly in water in the low 50’s. I’d say the bass are very very close to moving up shallow, but for now a good plan is jerkbaits over brush piles early and then trying to find the big boys cruising the shore in the warm afternoon sun.

I’ve been making runs out in the creek frequently for the past few weeks to monitor what’s been going on and scouting for a upcoming bass tournament. Still, as of yesterday the blueback and threadfin die-off continues in the creek. I fished from the very back of the creek out to the main channel and still observed many birds diving on bait from back to mouth of the creek. This blueback die-off isn’t from cold water, as the water temps yesterday were in the mid 50’s range, but they are dying from what I call “ick” which is a yellow type fungus that builds up on the fish causing the fish to rise to the surface and into a circling gull mouth. I’ve also seen this on several threadfins that are stacked in the very back of the creek. I haven’t seen the ick in a few years and forgot all about it until I saw it again this year. I was chatting with another well know striper fisherman on Lanier who said he witnessed the same thing up on the north end of the lake last weekend. In the very back of the creek and going out to the Marina, the water is stagnated and has a lot of floating debris and a nasty film on the surface of the water that is reminiscent of the turnover. There is also a lot of dead bait littering the bottom of the shallow areas in different stages of decay. Under and around our dock, the dead bait is scattered everywhere on the bottom. I also pulled into a cut that always hold bass for us and saw a 2lb spot, dead on the bottom. I poked at it and flipped it over but saw no visible signs of damage and I hoped it was just a result of a gut hooking. This concerns me a little but I’ve seen no other signs of any dead fish in these areas. I think we need some good rain and the corps needs to move some serious water to flush this out of Bald Ridge. I’ve been watching for stripers and bass in the areas of the dying bait and it seems the fish have all but abandoned these areas. I have marked very few fish in the back of the creek and it seems that the fish are avoiding these areas as well as the fishermen. I’ve seen very few of either in theses areas lately. Once I get out towards mid creek, I can find bass off of points in 25+ feet of water and I’m still seeing some striper over deeper water in the creek channel near timber, but very few up shallow yet. These fish are tough to catch so we have moved our efforts to the more northern reaches of the lake. I would hope that the creek clears up soon because we are very close to a pre-spawn pattern and I’d like to see some of the nasty water cleared up soon.