Years ago, there was a book published that became very popular in the business world. It was on a lot of desks for a few years, and it was a best seller in the book world for a while. The book was actually a parable about 4 different characters and how they delt with change differently. The name of the book is “Who moved my cheese” and it can be very enlightening and helpful if you’ve never read it. In a sense, I replaced the word “cheese” with the word “fish”, and I try and apply it to my fishing from time to time. This week was one of those weeks.

I put a link to a short, animated video version of the book below before I get into my report so you can kind of understand the storyline about dealing with change.

On Monday I hit the water early hoping for some good topwater but still not much happening on the surface yet. That all hinges on the bait and the water temps are still a bit low for the bait to come closer to the surface in big numbers. I was hoping the little Damiki bite was going to be better for me this week and on Monday I could tell that it wasn’t what I expected. The water temps haven’t really made a significant move upward yet and this week the fish fed a lot at night due to the near full moon. That slowed the daytime fishing down a little for me and I found the bites to be few and far between on Monday. I stuck with the swimbait like a trooper and refused to go to the shaky head again, so it turned out to be a slow day of searching and moving around. I probably put in 5 hours and had some smaller fish as well as these 3 decent fish all on the little Damiki swimbait. Here’s my 3 best from Monday.

On Tuesday I hit the water again about mid-morning and I decided to look for the new cheese out on the main lake. Generally speaking, it’s around this time of year that I start checking the offshore humps and points out on the main lake to see if I can locate some big girls that are less pressured than the popular creek fish that are staging for the spawn. Years ago, Jimbo and I were fishing in very early spring and the topic came up about where bass spawn on Lanier. For years I was under impression that a lot of the main lake fish made their way into the creeks when it came to spawning season, much like a striper does instinctively, but Jimbo had a different theory and I kinda liked his theory better than mine over time. Jimbo believed that the main lake bass find areas to spawn in place without ever leaving the main lake humps near the river channel. It took a while for that to soak in, but I eventually decided to spend more time on the main lake in the early spring and much to my surprise, the fish are there, you just might need to make some adjustments to catch them. On Tuesday morning I decided to make one stop before leaving the creek for the main lake humps. The one stop was close to the mouth of the creek, and it had been producing a fish every time I hit it with the swimbait, so I decided to make a couple casts. There were some loons and gull working in the area and I was hoping they had stirred up a bass or two. I wasn’t wrong and shortly after stopping I caught a nice one to start a chilly morning.

After that fish I hit 3 main lake areas and bombed in all 3 so I made my way into Young Deer to check some points I hadn’t checked in a while with the little Damiki swimbait. On my second stop in the creek I was able to bag another nice fish throwing the little Damiki and this fish pretty much made my day. This one was well over 4 and probably my biggest this week.

I got both fish on video and here’s a link below.

I may have caught a few smaller fish here and there, but I could tell that the little swimbait bait was dying off and the cheese had moved. In the back of my mind I kept thinking that I needed to go back to finesse fishing but I just kept right on throwing that little Damiki.

I didn’t fish on Wednesday and on Thursday there were no big fish to be had with the Damiki. The cheese had officially moved, and I just kept going back to the old cheese location, just like one of the characters in the parable.

By Yesterday I was ready to embrace the change and I decided to go back to finesse and throw the dang shaky head! There were docks that I hadn’t visited all week and there had to be fish on the docks by now so I set out to run some docks. It didn’t take long before I started catching fish around the docks with the shaky head but size was on the small side. I started thinking I might be in for a dink fest and there was some heavy rain headed our way. I really wanted to end the week on a good note and sure enough, right before the rain started I caught a good one on a rocky dock to end my week.

I had found the new cheese but who knows where the cheese will be next week??

The lake level is a little less than a foot above full pool and holding steady. Water temps are in the mid-fifties and the corps will be pulling water this afternoon and into the night so with the big moon tonight there should be some good night fishing on Lanier right now!