Here we are again, another Saturday and the feel of Autumn is just a few days beyond our grasp. Here in Georgia, football season officially starts at noon today when UGA kicks off its season with the Clemson Tigers. The days are getting shorter, and the lake is starting to cool. Back here in the back of the creek, the water is a bit stained, and vertical lines of bubbles are streaking to the surface from the floor of the lake as the lake begins its fall turnover. This will slowly work its way out of the back of the creek and towards the main lake over the next couple of months as the thermocline breaks down and the fish start orienting more towards the bottom in late fall. Until that time, we should have some fun topwater days ahead. I’m not sure it even exists anymore but years ago at Disneyland all the fastest roller coasters required an “E-Ticket” to ride them, and the e-ticket would cost extra to purchase. If you had kids that were big enough to ride the good rides, you usually purchased e-tickets for everyone so you could feel the thrill of the good rides. This week, topwater was my e-ticket ride on the lake and I didn’t bother with anything else.

I got to go out on the lake every day this week, but Tuesday and Thursday were short days due to physical therapy on the knee in the mornings. It’s going on 8 weeks since my knee replacement and that sucker is still painful. Some of it is from the therapy and some pain is self-induced from getting up and down in the boat every day. Probably, the best therapy is the boat activity, but I know that physical therapy helps, especially with the muscles around the knee. The pain is mainly bone pain in an area that had a lot of arthritis so in addition to cutting off the top of the tibia and fibula, they had to clean a lot of arthritis on the bone. That area is still sore. As far as knee function goes, the knee does well but I can only stand for about 10 minutes before I have to sit down and rest the leg. It’s mainly the muscles around the knee that are the weakest. The quad and the calf muscles are still weak, and my hamstring is still kinda messed up from the tourniquet. Icing down my knee several times a day helps with the pain and swelling and hopefully the pain will subside soon.

I’d say that the fishing is typical for this time of year and having Livescope for my first summer has been very interesting. It’s just amazing to see how these fish set up and react to bait presentation on Livescope and I’ve got to admit, it’s a game changer. For me, it’s just about 1 or 2 baits and moving around a lot. A few years back, you would have seen me sweating it out with a spybait and a drop shot rod in hand, plinking around a brushpile with a pretty worm and 2D, but these days with Livescope, I’m just swinging for the fences with those topwater explosions and moving on. Most of the time it’s pretty obvious as to what’s going to happen when approaching brush with fish on it, you make your cast over the fish and the fish tend to follow the bait. Usually, if there is a group, the whole group gets curious and follows the bait back to the boat. Some fish in the group are less interested that others, but they still tend to follow the group. The group may be ten feet below my topwater bait but still swimming with the bait directly underneath. The idea is to get the fish to react to the bait and come to the surface to get it. Most times they either lose total interest and swim down deeper away from the bait or they make a few quick runs at the bait but stop their charge just a few feet below, just short of the bait and then swim away beneath the boat. Sometimes one fish will break ranks and just shoot straight up at my topwater while the rest of the group will follow, schooling on the bait on the surface. That’s usually when the explosion occurs and that’s been my e-ticket ride this week. That only happens about 10-20% of the time during these hot summer days but it’s worth the effort.

Early this week we had mild early morning temps and the fish responded well. We also had a moon over head for the morning hours which I believe effects the bite. There was some wind to work with and when there is wind, there is topwater. In the world of topwater fishing on Lanier right now, wind is life. The idea was to match the patches of wind with the point or hump with structure. If I could find chop or wind over a brushpile on a point or hump out on the main lake or in the creek, the chances of connecting with a topwater fish went way up. The water is very clear right now, and the fish has the ability to throw the bs flag if something doesn’t look right when they are approaching my bait. This causes the fish to either stop short of the bait or blowup in a near miss. It happens a lot so I found that if I sped the bait up so they couldn’t get a good look at the bait, they tend to react better. When I was using the Ima Skimmer ko I always moved it fast through the water. Believe me, if a fish wants the bait, they’ll chase it down, no problem. I made them chase it down, so they didn’t have time to look it over. The way this helped was with chop on the surface. The choppy backdrop confuses the fish even more and the fish is more likely to make a bad decision and totally commit to the bait if there is chop on the surface. Early this week the wind was easier to find, and the temps were mild, but as the week progressed the wind was harder to find, and the temps slowly went on the rise. By late this week I had to cruise around to find patches of chop in the morning hours. Thankfully I have great vision when looking off in the distance and I could match the chop with an area that was holding fish whether it was a point or hump on the main lake or in the creek. It pays to know the lake well and know a lot of locations when scouting for those patches or areas of chop.

The way it worked for me this week was I usually approached my target area from up wind. This is important for me for 2 reasons, one is that I get a longer cast, casting down wind and the second is that you will be bringing your topwater lure against the grain of the surface chop. By bringing your bait against the grain, this causes more surface disruption and makes the bait more noticeable to the fish from down below. I’ve found over the years that the fish react better to baits swimming upwind, vice going with the wind on the surface. Speed of the bait was crucial, and my retrieve was fast, but I still wanted the bait to produce the side-to-side action, splashing on the surface to get the fishes attention. That’s what usually created the strike, moving the bait swiftly and creating more surface disruption. Moving the bait quickly across the surface worked well, but my biggest fish this week came from killing the bait. I found that some fish that followed the bait from below would just come shooting up like a missile if I just killed my topwater bait and let it float lifelessly. I found the pattern when I got distracted from my retrieve with a phone call or typing a text and letting my bait just float on the surface during my retrieve. Early this week I realized that fish would just come up randomly and just explode on the bait right in the middle of my distraction. For that reason, I started periodically killing my bait, about halfway back to the boat at random times just to see if I could get a fish to react to the lifeless bait. It worked a few times and just killing the topwater would create a strike from the following fish below. By late this week, the stopping pattern during the retrieve happened often. I only used 2 baits this week. First was the Ima Skimmer knockoff from Chuck Thrasher and “Lip Thrashin” Lures Monday through Thursday, and yesterday every fish came from the Azuma Zdog walking bait in the Casper Shad pattern. It’s been a favorite of mine on Lanier for years and I knew the fish had been getting a good look at the Ima baits lately.

All in all, it was a good week and to be catching topwater fish in late August, that’s a bonus. I think that Livescope has helped with that effort, but nonetheless, it’s been fun so far with Livescope. The heat has been tough this week but I’ve kept covered, move about 30-40 times in a day and I also have a big Igloo water jug with iced down water to drink on during the day. The lake temps are around the mid-eighties both out in the creek and main lake and the lake looks to be down a couple feet and falling fast. Here’s a few of my notable fish from the week. Hopefully cooler changes are coming soon.