It’s been a few years, but I probably wouldn’t have the experience and knowledge with the spoon during the winter months if not for a Friday evening on the way back down lake after a day of pre-fishing for a tournament the following morning. It was getting close to sunset, and I was passing the mouth of 6-mile creek, on my way back to Bald Ridge when I just happened to see a large flock of gulls circling and diving in a small cove in the Shady Grove area. I saw a few loons working below the gulls and I turned the boat towards the action. At the same time a center console boat was coming from the opposite direction and heading straight for the birds. We both pulled up just short of the action at the same time and we were both on the bow of the boats in no time making casts into the area. I was throwing a pearl white Sebile and immediately hooked up with a striper. At the same time, I could see the guy in the center console very near me was hooked up too, only his fish was a big spot. We both made casts again after releasing our fish and I immediately hooked up with another striper while the guy in the striper boat brought another huge bass to his boat. After seeing that, I asked the guy what he was using and he showed me a little white War Eagle spoon. I generally used my smaller spoons for vertical fishing but after seeing him bring in two 4-5lb spots casting the spoon, I tied one on and sure enough, the stripers had no interest in the spoon but the bass were crushing it.

The next morning my buddy Matt and I entered a UGA tournament and won it with just shy of 20lbs and just about every fish we weighed that day came from casting the spoon in various ditches. We had 2 fish that were over 5lbs, and the rest were decent fish also. That winter the bass were just crushing the spoon in the center of the ditches, but the bite was much better when casting the spoon, rather than working it vertically. That’s probably the best day I’ve had casting the spoon in the winter and to win a tournament with 2 five-pound studs was just icing on the cake.

This week started on Sunday afternoon after church service. About the whole time I was sitting in church I was thinking about ditch fishing and the spoon. A friend of mine asked if I would mind saving him some fish for a family meal and I told him I would. His family loves fish but he’s doesn’t fish so every once in a while, he’ll contact me and ask for some fish. I’ve got no problem saving him some fish and helping to feed a family is worth saving a few bass for table fare. He usually brings me a 12 pack of beer which I don’t drink but I take it out to the country and give the beer to a friend who does drink beer and has a private lake filled with crappie and bass, so I exchange the beer for crappie and bass fishing in his lake. It’s a good trade and I usually load the freezer with crappie and bass filets from the lake.

I knew exactly where I was going to go on Sunday afternoon after doing some scouting on Thanksgiving afternoon while giving the grandkids a joyride in the boat. We stopped in the middle of a ditch and on the first drop, the bottom came alive, and we were in business. Two of my grandkids got to reel in a bass from the ditch and then we left them biting because it was just too cold to have the kids out in the wind. That ditch was loaded with fish as it is just about every year around this time and sometimes, I just have to drop my spoon on faith because the fish are usually so stuck to the bottom, I can’t pick them up on sonar or Livescope. I’ve written about this before but when using the spoon, Livescope is helpful to locating the moving fish but the ones that are resting on the bottom are very hard to see. I just know from fishing Lanier for the past 20+ years that the fish will be there and you can just about cast your spoon in any direction, letting the spoon flutter down to the bottom and usually the fish will come alive and pull off the bottom to investigate the spoon. Sometimes they hit the spoon before it gets to the bottom and sometimes it takes a few hops on the bottom to get the fish to react. Once I get a group up and swimming around, chances are, more groups are going to start moving around, thinking something is happening. Depending on the size of the group in the ditch, it can provide fun for hours or it can only last a few minutes before the group scatters. Releasing the caught fish back into the ditch will generally shut the bite down after the third or fourth fish, so I usually keep the fish in the livewell until I get ready to leave the area or I get 5-10 in the livewell. When I release the fish, I usually idle away from the ditch before releasing my catch if I want to continue to fish the area. I don’t recommend keeping the fish in the livewell for an extended period of time unless of course, you know what you’re doing, you’re a tournament angler or a fishing guide trying to put that five bass picture together. (I always get a chuckle out of that one).

Back to Sunday afternoon. I’d like to be able to tell you that there are certain things that I look for when looking for a productive ditch, and there are but for the past week, the two most productive ditches for me were in areas that are nothing special, just flat mud bottom with very little structure. One would be classified as a ditch but the other is just basically a swing in a creek channel. In both cases there is bait, clouds of bait just drifting through the areas. Massive clouds of threadfin shad moving around, not being influenced by the wind but just kinda hanging around the area. The bass in the first ditch were everywhere on Sunday and there was some bigger fished mixed in this year. I think the average size is up this year and I think the average size bass being caught around the lake is up this year too. I probably caught close to 30 fish on Sunday afternoon and provided table fare for a friend. Think of that beer as a big bag of crappie filets for a fish fry.

I fished again on Monday for a couple hours in the warmest part of the day generally cycling through four different ditches that have produced, and I had a pretty good run. I skipped Tuesday and shot back out on Wednesday for a couple hours in the warmest part of the day. On Thursday I fished with my friend Curtis, from church, who also lives on the lake and is a pilot for Delta. He has a pretty busy schedule, but he managed to jump in the boat with me on his way back home after flying back from Denver. He said it was actually warmer in Denver than here. We got into fish right away in the early afternoon and Curtis put 2 nice fish in the boat on his first 3 casts to start us off. I think one of which may have been his pb at a little shy of 5lbs. We brought a couple doubles to the boat and fished for a couple hours, bouncing back and for between 2 ditches, before calling it a day.

Yesterday I got out again from noon till 3 or so and caught a lot of fish but I could tell that things were slowing down a bit in the ditches for the spoon bite. The fish Have been looking at the spoon all week and the size of the bass certainly decreased yesterday. The biggest key this week was the bait and matching the hatch with the 1/2-ounce War Eagle spoon. Early in the week, it was all about the white spoon but by Wednesday they really reacted to the chrome spoon much better. When I came off the water yesterday afternoon the water temp was down to 55 and dropping. It was 58 at the beginning of the week. The lake is down a little over 4 feet and dropping, exposing some pretty interesting shoreline and bass hideouts when the lake is at full pool. Here’s a few of the memorable fish from my week.