It had to be 15 to 20 years ago when I was fishing a tournament in a local Lainer striper club. I’d been in the club for a year or two and we were having our monthly club striper tournament on Lanier. Our club had a blind draw every month and boaters were paired up with non-boaters according to who you drew for the tournament. I liked the blind draw concept because you couldn’t fish with the same partner twice in a 3-month period, so everybody got to learn from a lot of different anglers in the club. I was a boater at the time and I drew a guy by the name of “Dale Sprayberry” to be my partner that month. I’m guessing it was a cool fall morning and we were just finishing up our spread of freelines, downlines and planer boards to start our first morning run shortly after dawn. I still remember it pretty plainly, even after a lot of years have passed. We were fishing the Longhollow area of the lake, and we were moving along slowly with the trolling motor on autopilot. The boat was pointed toward the west, and I was sitting behind the wheel of my Carolina Skiff staring up at what remained of the moon setting in the western sky. It was right then that Dale, who was seated right next to me, turned to me and said, “you know Jim, the old timers say that when the moon and the sun are in the sky at the same time, the fish bite the best”. At the time, I didn’t know Dale very well other than the fact that he was a karaoke sensation and sang a lot of country western music. I knew Dale was well respected in the club and had been around a long time, so I considered him a pretty knowledgeable striper fisherman. After Dale made the statement, I acknowledged what he had said, and I went back to looking at the moon. It couldn’t have been 2 minutes later I heard a loud popping sound and before I could figure out that the popping noise was the 25lb Big Game line popping out of the loop knot in the balloon where we had a big gizzard shad attached, Dale was on the rod like a rat on a Cheeto. We had our first striper of the morning, and it was a big 19lber on a balloon with a freelined gizzard shad. Shortly after that we followed it up with another high teens’ striper to give us our limit and we never caught another striper that day. We wound up winning the tournament with our 2 big stripers and Dale brought to my attention that once the moon had set the bite had died. I never forgot that day or that statement Dale had made, and to this day, when the sun and moon are in the sky at the same time, I call it “The Sprayberry Effect”.

This week wasn’t a very good week for me in terms of time on the water but for the 2 and a half mornings I was out, the fishing was good for me. This week the Sprayberry Effect was in full swing and every time I was out this week the moon was out too. Last week I couldn’t buy a bite before late morning but this week the fish were biting as soon as I hit the water early in the morning. There was a lack of bigger topwater fish in the mornings this week but there were far better numbers early, than the week before. Last week when I was making my run up lake in the early morning hours, I may have boated a fish at 10-15% of my stops and the number increased as the sun got higher in the sky. Last week, by afternoon the success rate would climb to 60-75% by early afternoon whereas this week the early morning success rate was around 50-60% and it jumped to nearly 90% by early afternoon. I’m still just running and gunning the Gunfish and with the exception of a few nice spybait fish this week, all of my fish were on the 95 Gunfish in Aurora black again. I had a lot more dinks playing spoiler this week and when the fish school on the Gunfish, it’s no telling whether a 10-inch fish is going to hammer it or a 4lber. I’ve caught both on back-to-back casts this week. Once again, this week the key was the wind and fishing the areas that had wind. There were some places on my route that were very slack and if that was the case, I threw the spybait a bit. I can tell that the fish are showing more of an interest in the spybait, which is par for the spybait bite. I can remember a year not too long ago that I caught some of my biggest fish in August and early September on the spybait so I fully expect that bite to come back around for me soon. I tried to fish productive areas with wind this week and I’ve had to eliminate some unproductive waters due to a lack of fish. I’ve been kinda bummed because some of last year’s big fish holes just aren’t producing this year so I’m doing a lot more ranging out and looking for new stuff to fish this summer. I’m still just using mapping and my target areas are underwater points and humps out on the main lake followed by the community holes in the creek on my way back in for lunch.

Same deal as the last report, I’m approaching the target area from up wind and casting the Gunfish down wind. I can really get a long cast, throwing down wind with 15lb braid and an 8-foot flouro leader and the more time that little Gunfish is in the water, the more chance you have of catching a fish. Bringing the Gunfish against the grain of the chop creates better water disruption and I’ve been moving it pretty fast. Reason being, I don’t want the fish to get a good look at the bait, but I want him to react to it and I achieve this through skipping and doing a quick splashing ‘walk the dog’ action during the retrieve. In most cases the bigger fish would run it down before the smaller fish but during the early morning hours it was generally smaller fish that gave it all of the attention and the bigger fish wouldn’t show up till around lunchtime. When the bigger fish start showing up it’s a good idea to check that line very frequently because those 4-5lbers really test the drag system and the line quality with bulldog runs. Good gear is a must for these big summertime spotted bass so keeping your line fresh and drag set will take a lot of worry out of fighting a good fish.

This is the time of year that you need to be watching your surroundings because surfacing fish can give away locations and that’s how I’ve found my biggest fish for the past 2 weeks. Some of my catches have been sight catches over the past few weeks and keeping my eyes peeled while running up lake or keeping my head on a swivel while I’m fishing an area is a good idea to increase your catch rate. Besides the topwater and spybait, this is the time of year that the spoon will come into play. Last year I used a 5-inch Georgia Blade spoon out on the deep ends of points to net a few fish early in the morning and then here and there throughout the day. If you’re not familiar with using a spoon in the summertime, it’s fairly easy to learn and it can be a very productive way to catch late summer bass, especially when it gets tough with the swimming and topwater stuff. I had the video camera rolling last year while I was spoon fishing and got a nice one on video using a Georgia Blade spoon. The video gives you an idea of how I’m using the spoon.

I had to pull my boat out of the water this week because a battery died on Wednesday morning and I need to do a few other things like maybe getting some new electronics very soon. Fishing without sonar is a challenge but it wasn’t long ago that we were all fishing without the kind of electronic technology we have now so it’s like dialing it back 20-30 years. This time of year, my fishing outings are reminiscent of some of the ultra-hot days out in the marsh of Louisiana, site fishing for redfish. Lots of humidity in the air and it was miserable out in the beating sun but connecting with a good redfish that you saw tailing along the shoreline can make the miserable August heat a lot more bearable. I feel the same way about fighting a good bass that had just exploded on my topwater bait out on the main lake in the middle of the afternoon heat. To me, it makes it all worth it. There are several different tactics that can work on the lake right now. You can go shallow or deep all over the lake right now. There are good fish out on the main lake, at the deep creek mouths and all the way back to the backs of the creeks.

This week we’ve spent just about every afternoon down at the dock catching bream with our grandson and just about every day while bream fish we’ve seen multiple big bass coming into the cove for “hit and run” activities on the bream. I gotta hand it to these bigger spotted bass, when they come into the cove, it might be one or it might be a few, but they aren’t there to sight see. They’re usually pretty swift when they attack the bream on the shoreline and it’s pretty vicious as it’s usually over in seconds and the spotted bass are gone. They don’t stick around for an encore or any secondary feeding in the cove, they get in and get out swiftly. On the other hand we have the bigger largemouth that come into the cove and they are much slower and much more curious of people. Where the spotted bass are more skittish of people standing on the dock, the largemouth will come over and say hi on some occasions. For some reason the largemouth will come into the cove, and if I’m standing on the dock, they will usually circle around the dock a little and then swim right up to where I’m standing and look at me. I’ve never seen a spotted bass do that, just the largemouth but it’s pretty interesting to see the different characteristics of the two. I guess my point is that bigger bass are cruising the backs of the creeks in very shallow water feeding on bream in the pockets all day just about every day during the summer. I’m more of a summertime offshore open water guy but I could probably make a good day out of fishing shallow and targeting some of the bigger bass cruising the backs of the creeks right now.

It’s the middle of August and it’s hot without much relief in sight but look on the bright side, in just a few short weeks we may start to feel a little weather relief and football season is right around the corner. The lake is about 2 and a half feet below full pool and I gotta think the water temps are in the mid to upper 80’s. Stay covered and hydrated out there! Here’s a few topwaterfish from Monday and Tuesday.