Month: March 2025

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Six options for spring on Lanier

This week was about as short as it gets for me. Yesterday was the only day that I got an early start and stayed out till mid-afternoon this week. I fished a few hours earlier in the week, but I really didn’t get a handle on things until today. The way my morning started this morning was with some topwater at dawn after seeing a few surfacing fish on a point in the creek. They were shallow and chasing bluebacks on the surface, so I tied on the Spro Epop in the emerald color, and it didn’t take long till a fish came completely out of the water, blowing up on the popper. It was my first topwater fish for 2025 and it was on the emerald color. It reminded me of catching fish in late March years ago on the old emerald popper. I generally use the popper if I see surfacing fish but it’s also a good idea to start throwing it around those shallow pockets very early in the morning right now. Yesterday I found that the fish were actively feeding on top for about the first hour of sunrise. The popper bite will improve over the next couple months but it’s a good idea to have it tied on and ready.

The second bait I used with success yesterday was the Damiki Keitech swimbait over brush and on points. I like the little Damiki rig when it’s flat in the early morning hours because I’ve found over the years that the bass can react to smaller baits in flat conditions, better than larger baits. Basically, it’s easier to fool them with the little 2.8 Keitech on a 1/4-ounce Damiki head, whether it’s over brush or just blind casting a point early in the morning. If you’re using Livescope, it’s just as easy as locating fish in the tops of the timber or brushpiles, and making a cast just beyond the target area, counting to ten and a slow retrieve back to the boat. I can also cast to single fish or small wolf packs with the little swimbait using Livescope and it kinda reminds me of sight fishing redfish in the marshes of Louisiana. You can also use the little Keitech around docks with great success right now and yesterday I caught fish with the keitech around docks, points and over brush.

Next came my meat and potatoes bait yesterday, the shaky head. I used this the most yesterday and it produced some very nice fish, first while running a stretch of deeper docks and then I started hitting the deeper, shady rock bluffs. If you’re not scoping docks, right now you just have to assume there are fish under every dock….and there could be right now. Right now, my favorite place to look for bigger fish with the worm would have to be a deep, dark shady rock bluff with a blowdown or sunken wood on the bottom. The sundrenched rock bluffs are a good option right now, but I prefer the deep, dark shady areas for bigger fish right now. Really, you can’t go wrong throwing a shaky head worm around rocks and docks right now, especially in those mid-morning hours when you’re waiting for that wind to kick up. Yesterday I caught the most fish on the shaky head.

Late yesterday morning the wind started to blow out of the SW, and it started a pretty good ripple in the creek so I noticed the wind blowing right into a couple rocking points and I wanted to see if the crankbait bite was still an option, so I picked up the cranking rod and started making bomb casts with the crankbait across points. The DT10 runs at about 10 feet in depth but most of my casts started at close to 10 feet and I don’t think I caught a fish on the crankbait yesterday while it was making contact with the bottom. I ran a long stretch of rip rap in the creek and found a couple of smaller fish willing to eat the crankbait, but I just wasn’t feeling it with the crankbait. The wind was really starting to pick up and I had another fun bait in mind, but the crankbait is definitely still in play right now. It won’t be long till we can put away the red cranks and pull out the shad pattern crankbaits. We’re going to be approaching the shad spawn very soon and a shad pattern crankbait that dives between 5-10 feet will be the ticket for some nice bass prior to, and during the shad spawn.

If it’s spring and the wind is blowing, you’d better have a spinnerbait on the deck. Yesterday in the early afternoon the wind picked up and it provided me with plenty of options for my 3/4-ounce SpotSticker Baits Mini Me. Right now, I don’t use a trailer for the bait, and it does just fine without one. It’s pretty simple with the spinnerbaits right now. Just find a wind point and start chunking it around. I like to spot lock up wind and make my casts downwind for the extra distance on the cast. I follow it up with a 10-15 count depending on the depth I’m fishing. If I’m fishing shallow, I like to keep it just above the bottom and for deeper applications like over brush, I’ll give it a 10 count just to get it down below the surface a bit. Yesterday I caught some nice ones with the spinnerbait out on windy points, but I broke it off in the top of a brushpile after success on a few points. I don’t like to use Livescope for the spinnerbait because I like the surprise I get from the fish slamming the bait unexpectedly. After I broke off the spinnerbait, I decided to pull out one of my all time spring bait favorites, but the spinnerbait on windy points is a must right now in the afternoons.

The last bait I used yesterday was the Zman Jackhammer chatterbait. Man, I gotta tell you guys, I love me some chatterbait in the spring. If nothing else, I love the way my rod unloads and reloads when they hit the chatterbait. The heck with Livescope! Give me the thrill of not knowing exactly when it’s going to happen and when it does happen, it can be extreme. Once I broke off that spinnerbait yesterday afternoon, I didn’t skip a beat and hit a rock point with wind on it. On my first cast I felt the chatterbait unload and reload, and I knew a fish had swirled on it. My very next cast produced another swirl so I knew there was interest. I worked my way down the side of the point and made casts across the point; on my 4th cast, I felt the bait totally unload and then reload, doubling over with a fighting fish on the end. That’s such a great feeling when fishing points out in the wind. Years ago when I first started using the Jackhammer, I mainly used it around docks and in the shallows in the spring but over the years I’ve broadened my usage of the chatterbait to include rocks, docks, points and random bank beating. Basically, I’ll use it anywhere, anytime the wind is blowing and it’s sunny out. One of the biggest attractions using the chatterbait is that chrome flash from the blade in the afternoon sun. That flash is a fish magnet and one of the main reasons I have success with it. Another successful area I like to use the chatterbait is the shade patches around docks in the afternoons. There’s just something about running that chatterbait through a shade patch down the side of a dock and feeling a fish slam it in the dark shadow. I finished my afternoon yesterday about 4pm and the last 2 hours were spent throwing the chatterbait in the wind and popping the occasional bass. I think the chatterbait provided the most fun for me yesterday and the wind was instrumental in my success. I used a pearl paddletail fluke jr. for a trailer on the chatterbait and it provided a great ending for my week.

Right now the lake is holding steady at just above full pool and the corps is only moving water a few hours a day. Water temps are still a little on the low side for this time of year but the lake is warming and approaching 60 degrees right now. Above are 6 baits that I use this time of year with great success on Lanier. I could rattle off another 4-5 baits that I would use in addition to these six but these are 6 of my favorites and the ones I used with success yesterday. Here’s a few more fish from my week.

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Fishing, Fasting and Felines

This week has been an interesting one for sure. It started out this week with Lisa traveling for work, so I had to hold down the fort early on this week. Last Wednesday I started a 10 day fast for religious and health reasons. First off, my prayers for folks have gotten larger here lately and I wanted to spend more time in prayer and less time enjoying good meals. I’ve read a lot about fasting and the health benefits of fasting and I wanted to give it a try. I’ve also watched several episodes of “Naked and Afraid” on tv and it seemed to me that most of the plump, pale and pudgy ones seem to do very well, basically surviving off their own body fat for days in a state of ketosis. They just lay around the grass hut eating their own fat and make their skinny tattooed partner mad because the skinny one is doing all the work. The ones that come in skinny and don’t eat much, have issues and drop out a lot more than them chunky ones. If they can do it for 21 days naked, cold, with nothing but bugs and worms to eat while getting bitten by insects, surely, I can do it in the comfort of my home. Mainly it’s a test of my willpower and sacrifice. Well, I finished my 10 days yesterday and I feel pretty good as my only solid food over ten days was a little chicken or shrimp and fresh asparagus or soup some evenings. I had a little fruit in the mornings for a few days but most days I just had a cup of coffee and started my day. During the day I drank a can of Fresca which is basically carbonated citrus water and that would carry me through the day. I did lose weight as well as energy for sure. I dropped down to my last belt notch over the 10 days, but I do feel a bit better overall. I’m going to do another fast soon but the next time I’m going to try without the morning coffee, and we’ll see how that goes.

On another note, our new little kitten, Casper is not doing well and we’re just praying that he makes it. Lisa found the little guy abandoned in a work shed and it was very cold so Lisa thought the little newborn kitten was dead. She put the Kitten in her coat pocket and a few minutes later her pocket started moving. The mother was reunited with the kitten and nursed it along with 3 other kittens that Lisa rescued in the shed that would have surely died. We found a home for the others, and we decided to keep the little white one to give our current cat a friend be around while were away. We’re not sure what happened to little Casper, but he just started getting very lethargic and all but quit eating. The vet said he had a little fever but otherwise they could find anything. They wormed him and we left. He may have eaten something he wasn’t supposed to as we have some indoor plants or maybe it was a piece of plastic. Once before he ate a little piece of plastic, and we waited 4 days before he finally passed it. If you’re reading this, please keep little Casper in your prayers as he’s struggling right now.

Fishing started slow but turned on big time as the week progressed. This week was one of those weeks that gets better as the week progresses with the weather being stable and the bass getting into their spawning routine. There are some weeks where the fish reset and things that were working days before don’t work now. Last week I was having a ball with the crankbait but this week I didn’t catch one fish on a crankbait, and it wasn’t from a lack of trying. Monday, I didn’t fish, and Tuesday was a short day, but Lisa was back on Wednesday, so I hit the lake to put something together. The numbers were there on Wednesday, but the bigger fish were baffling me until Thursday when I started to zero in on the big girls, then it was just a matter of making the right casts to see if they were home. The shaky head was what they wanted to bite but the bite was somewhat unique, and I had to get used to it.

This week the bite with the worm was subtle to say the least. One of the most important things I mastered with the shaky head is learning to feel the bite however small it is. It just drives me crazy to fish with someone who slacklines a lot. The key to success with these big spots is to never have slack in your line because you can miss a very subtle bite from a big fish if you have slack in your line. When I’m dragging my worm on the bottom, I want to feel everything. Every little stick, rock or indifference on the bottom. I want to be able to feel when a fish slowly picks up my bait and starts swimming away. Using braid with a flourocarbon leader intensifies the feeling coming up the line and I try and visualize what the worm is doing on the bottom. On Wednesday I didn’t fish clean and lost a couple key fish by not setting the hook properly when a fish would pick up my worm and swim straight towards the boat, which was most of the time this week. Once the worm was picked up by the fish and I reeled down on the swimming fish I would forget the hookset and just keep reeling down. I lost two very nice fish to thrown hooks on Wednesday, but I figured out my error and vowed to correct that on Thursday’s trip.

Thursday I kinda knew what I was going to do, and it didn’t involve a crankbait or any other moving bait for that matter. The big fish I lost from the day earlier just happened to be out on the end of deeper dock, and basically the big female was in some form of spawn mode. You have to keep in mind that spotted bass will spawn deeper than largemouth, especially the bigger ones, and our spots can spawn just about anywhere. It could be out on the main lake humps, or it could be around an unsuspecting dock, down in 20-25 feet of water, around some small structure. These bass can be hidden from Livescope and my best hope was to just throw the worm around the deeper docks and work the worm very very slowly! I caught fish during the morning hours on Thursday, but the good bite didn’t start till early to midafternoon and that’s when I really concentrated on the deeper docks. After a few smaller fish I boated a 4.3 off a dock and figured it would be my biggest until just before the end of my deep dock run, I hit pay dirt. I threw the worm to the front corner of a 25-foot-deep dock and let the worm drop straight down. I’d made that cast a thousand times before over the years on the front corner of that dock and I knew there wasn’t any major structure in the area of my cast. Once the worm hit the bottom I started a very slow drag. It didn’t take long till I felt the worm stop like it had come into contact with something. I just held a little pressure on the worm and waited. I felt the worm move just a little. I hadn’t induced that movement, and I knew it wasn’t natural. I kept a little pressure on the line and again I felt something unnatural barely moving the worm followed by a slight tick. The tic is generally when the fish quickly sucks the bait in by opening the mouth very quickly and creating a strong quick vacuum. In the next second I figured that hooksets were free, and nobody was looking so I reeled down and laid into the suspected worm nibbler. The first thing I felt was dead weight but, in another second, I felt a big head shake and I knew I had something big. The fish stayed down and swam out to the boat like dead weight with an occasional big head shake. When the fish finally decided to come up and jump, I could see the worm lodged deep inside the roof of her mouth. She wasn’t going to shake that out and I dipped the net in the water as she shook her head, tail walking right into my waiting net. At first glance I thought it had to be a largemouth but on a second look I knew it was just a big ole spot. I said “thank the Lord and where’s my scales”!! I was shooting for a 5lber and when I hung her on the scales it immediately popped up to 6.3 which was a tie with my biggest spot to date, but the scale settled on 6.1 and I said, “I’ll take it”. It was every bit as thrilling as the 6.3 record from years ago. I put the fish in the livewell after weighing her and I sat down for a second and relaxed. I thought about running back to the house with the fish and grabbing a tape measure for a replica mount, but then I thought that the fish was probably close to spawning and I really didn’t was to drag her around for a measuring session so after a couple minutes I picked her up and took a good look, thanked the Lord again for such a great fish and I released her. She headed straight back to the dock she came from. The picture at the top was the only picture I took of her besides the picture of the scales.

Yesterday I was out with my buddy Jeff Williams, and we were doing a little worm fish. Years ago, Jeff helped me tremendously by giving me confidence in the shaky head. I took several beatdowns from Jeff using the shaky head over the past few years and every once in a while, we get together, throwing the worm to match our skills. The last time I think we tied so this time was going to be the tiebreaker with equal time on the front, nothing but a worm and no Livescope. Yesterday Jeff jumped out to an early lead and never looked back. We had a great time as usual, but the good bite didn’t really start until the last couple hours of the trip. Jeff was ahead by 3 fish, and we ran one last stretch of deeper docks which accounted for most of the bigger fish for the day. Just after 3 o’clock I made a cast into a shade patch of a deeper dock and soon after the worm hit the bottom, I felt a small tug on the worm. I reeled down and set the hook on another bigger fish. At first, I didn’t think the fish warranted the net but then Jeff got a look at her, and he immediately told me it was 5 or over. Once again, the big fish tail walked right into Jeff’s waiting net and the fight was over. I knew it was right at 5 if not over and I thanked the Lord again and weighed her at 5.2. After that we fished a bit longer but called it a day and headed back to the house. Jeff got me in numbers as usual, but I did manage the big fish of the day which finished out my week of fishing and 10 days of fasting. It was a great ending to the week and to my fasting.

The lake is a little over full pool right now and the corps is moving water a few hours today. Water temps have been on the rise all week and was somewhere around 55-57 degrees in the creek. The fish are staging and getting very close to an early wave of big spawners right now. I targeted the deeper fish that I felt were staging at the deep end of the docks and it worked pretty well for me. The most important thing for me was being able to recognize that subtle bite from the bigger fish. Here’s a few more fish pics from my week.