It’s finally happening folks. I’m slowly getting sucked in and re-programed from hoping to scoping. Right now I’m in the “scoping while hoping” stage of the Livescope transitional brainwashing and I’m kinda like a kid in a candy shop with chocolate in all directions. One minute I’m slowly dragging a worm down the end of a point and the next minute I’m chasing a fish or a group of fish 20 yards away, reminiscent of a cat chasing a laser dot all over the house. I can see the draw of being 100% Livescope focused rather than methodically working my way down the bank without the use of any electronics and just hoping I run across a fish. It’s like the difference between blindly shooting into a scattered flock of ducks or selecting a target and focusing on the perfect shot.

Yesterday evening kinda sealed the deal for me when it comes to scoping as I completed the whole gamut of catching fish from top to bottom. Most of the week I caught fish pitching the worm to fish I was scoping, and they were chasing the worm the bottom where they would pop it…..or not. I think the hookup ratio was about 1-10 this week pitching the worm. Another way I caught fish this week was throwing the Keitech/Damiki rig over brush or pitching it to random fish I’d see while scoping but yesterday evening we got into a flurry of surface activity at dusk, and I got to use the 2.8 Keitech/Damiki for fish right below the surface. That was a new experience for me, and we had fish surfacing all around the boat at times. If the fish didn’t show themselves on the surface, I could scope out their location and we could cast to them. It was pretty cool to watch a group of fish a foot below the surface and see my bait approaching them in a collision course. Because of the anticipation, swinging on a fish can be premature at times and yesterday evening I found myself missing as much as connecting. Definitely a faster paced environment when dealing with schooling fish on the surface but a lot of fun with the scope.

I fished from Monday through today this week, and I had some decent sacks to show for it. The staging locations often frequented by the older generation of 4-5lbers in late winter or early spring has now been taken over by the younger generation of 1-3lbers. Numbers-wise that’s cool but size-wise it is lacking this week. The big girls are in transition from staging to spawning and they may get just a bit harder to find at times as I’m not a bed fisherman, so the size of my fish may be down for the next week or two. On the bright side, numbers will be up and there are going to be plenty of aggressive fish all around the shores of our lake for the next few weeks. If you are a bank fisherman, it’s your time to shine and there are plenty of parks that you can stretch a line on some shallow bass from the shore.

It seems that the bulk of the fish are still oriented to the bottom but there are a lot of fish hanging out over the top of the brush or in small groups, just kinda cruising around the brush piles. Since we have bottom oriented fish and suspended fish right now, we have options, and lots of them. I only needed 2 options this week, but I also threw the chatterbait and spinnerbait around a bit in the wind with no joy. It was the worm and Damiki/Keitech combo that did it for me this week. The good thing about the Keitech bite is that I’m no longer dragging it on the bottom at the speed of a three toed sloth but using it similar to the spybait in the summer, with a very long cast around a point, a ten-count drop and a slow, steady retrieve. Just like the spybait, the rod just kinda loads up when using finesse gear and a fish hammers the bait with that long cast. Here’s a video I made from spring a few years back and the slow rolled Damiki pattern.

In the past I’ve had good success with dropping my shaky head straight down under the boat when I’ve seen suspended fish chase my bait down on the 2D, so it only makes sense that I could have success pitching my shaky head to suspended fish I’m seeing with the Livescope. That pattern worked well for me with the shaky head as I cruised down the bank, I was either throwing the shaky head at targets on my mapping or pitching the shaky head to targets on my Livescope. Time after time I watched the suspended fish on my Livescope chase the worm down and the more aggressive the fish chased the bait determined whether they would strike the bait or not. Sometimes they didn’t let the worm get to the bottom before grabbing it. I caught a few this week that grabbed the worm on the drop.

My favorite target area this week was probably docks. Sometimes they were around the docks and sometimes they were in between the dock. I just had to throw the worm around or look at my Livescope to get an idea where they were. The shallow docks were really in play this week as well as those empty slips and a few spud poles. It seemed like the dock bite was more prevalent in the afternoons, so I mainly spent my morning on points with the Livescope, focusing on brush piles out on the ends of points. I was either sitting off a point and throwing the Damiki swimbait around the brush or throwing the worm up into shallow water rocks and then heading to the docks in the early afternoons. That’s not to say there aren’t fish on the docks in the morning hours, I just think it’s better around the docks in the afternoons. Perhaps it’s the black floats heating up in the sunny afternoons or it could be the shade that the docks provide. Either way, the docks probably produced the best numbers, but the rocks and points produced the best quality for me this week. My worm choice was the Zman big TRD on a 1/4 ounce Boss jig head and my swimbait choices were a Trixster Kamikaze head or Lanier Bait Damiki head with a 2.8 Keitech.

The lake level is about 6 inches above full pool and the corps have throttled back their generation periods. The water temps kinda dropped back down a bit this week and when I left the water today it was around 56 out in the creek. Right now, is a good time to be on the water as there’s a lot of active fish and we should have some very nice spring days ahead. Here’s a few of my memorable fish this week.

Things are right on schedule in the creek right now and we’re quickly approaching another spawning season for our bass population. I haven’t seen any spawners here in the back of the creek yet, but the water has been cold and stained so I don’t have much visibility around our dock and out in the cove. We’re still about 10 days away from the next full moon and those 10 days should be good overall when it comes to feeding fish. The bite window for the fish is getting wider and wider and this week there was a good mix of 2-4lbers eating in a lot of areas in the creek. The biggest task for me this week was finding the bigger fish and putting a pattern together to find where the bigger females hang out, especially early in the morning hours because that’s when I’ve been struggling for the big fish bite. The rocky secondary points in the sunny afternoons usually provide a bigger female or two and a little spike in my adrenaline, but where to find those same females early in the morning has been my biggest question this week. I think I found my answer about mid-week when I noticed that my bigger morning fish usually came from the deep dark shadows where I’m pretty sure those predatory bass instincts are just waiting for something to invade the dark shadows of a steep rock bluff. That was my target this week.

This week it’s been more about mapping than it has been about scoping. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve pretty much had my scope on all week, but my eyes have been more fixated on making casts in a certain zone rather than a certain target. I’ve made some progress with scoping this week and I was pretty proud of myself yesterday afternoon when I was picking bass off the top of brush, “cast to catch” with the scope. I have yet to catch a 5+ scoping but I’m sure that will happen very soon. This week it was mainly about the shaky head, and I had the opportunity to get out early in the morning a couple days during the week. I’ve been throwing the little Keitech around early in the mornings this week but random long casts with the Keitech/Damiki head hasn’t started producing random large fish yet. That bite is just around the corner for me but for now the shaky head is still producing the best bang for my buck. The key has been to fish it slow and the 10 second rule is in effect. If you’re not familiar with the 10 second rule, it’s the amount of time between the time the worm hits the bottom and when you first move the worm. Short hops and 10 second pauses between hops. These fish are like cats when it comes to worms, they’ll sit there and stare it down and if it doesn’t move, they’ll pounce on it after a few seconds pass, especially if other bass are in the area. These spotted bass are very competitive when it comes to a possible food source, so the more bass there are around your bait, the better chance you’re going to get bit. Unfortunately, most times the bigger bass are smarted and let a smaller more aggressive bass get the meal, and I wind up hooking a 2lber while a 5lber is escorting my 2lber to the boat. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the phrase: “Dang, you see the one that was with him!” That’s usually my luck, I’m bringing in a pesky little buck bass while that big momma is following the buck to the boat.

Even though the worm accounted for the bulk of my fish this week it’s a good idea to keep the little swimbait very handy and ready to cast. Last Friday I was approaching a secondary point to fish around a brush pile and as I was picking up my rod, I heard a splash and saw a big swirl out over deeper water, at the end of the point. I thought that maybe it was a loon, but I made a cast into the swirl area with my little swimbait and immediately hooked up with a solid 3.5lber. On my very next cast into the same area with the swimbait the rod loaded up again but this time it felt like a dump truck fell on my swimbait. It was a great fight to the boat with finesse tackle and the little Trixster Baits Kamikaze head with a 2.8 Keitech. It’s my biggest so far this year. Here’s a picture.

In my last report in early March, I embedded a video showing the target areas I frequent during the early spring when fish are staging. The lake is full of these areas and the lake is full of bass so any of those secondary points and underwater outcroppings can come into play in the early spring. Good mapping with color shading at different depths can come in handy this time of year when looking for those bigger female stagers. Here’s the Staging 101 video again and another good staging video I made to help explain staging bass on Lanier.

Another area that produced pretty well for me this week was docks. I’ve been seeing a steady increase in dock activity over the last few weeks, and it seems that the bass have started hanging around the docks. One day they might congregate out in front of the dock and the next they’ll be cruising in between the docks in open space. In the afternoons they could be inside the shade patches, inside the empty slips or hanging out next to the spud poles. You just need to make the casts to see where they are or refer to your Livescope and target what you see. Once again, the worm was my choice and the deeper docks produced the best for me, and a big bonus was deeper docks with big chunk rocks around. For some reason, these bigger bass have been hanging out in deeper, shady area around docks with dark chunk rock or a rock bluff early in the mornings. If you find all those elements, there’s probably going to be a big bass hanging out there. You just need to be the first one to get there and catch that big girl before another angler hits that area. If there was rocks and docks with deep water, I probably fished it this week and succeeded. The biggest key to my success in these areas was to fish the worm very slow. I watched these fish react to my worm on Livescope and sometimes they just hover over the top of the bait in some kind of standoff or stare down and then after 4-5 seconds, maybe more, they suck it in. That’s why I’ve been working the worm very slowly. It’s not an ideal situation if you suffer from some kind of attention disorder because some of these strikes are so subtle and infrequent it’s like watching paint dry at times. I get bored and I get frustrated. Yesterday I lost 2 fish that were over 4lbs at the side of the boat and that kinda rattled my cage for a minute but I bounced back and caught a nice fish to end my day. It’s good rewards but slow fishing with the shaky head at times but I haven’t found a better pattern yet.

Yesterday evening I took Lisa out in the creek after our dinner, and we spent an hour or so running a few docks that were out of the wind. We were both using a big TRD in the same worm color and I had just replaced our very last worm on Lisa’s shaky head. She had a nice fresh worm and I had and old chewed up worm that had been through quite a few fish. I started us off with a nice 3lber from the end of a dock and right after I released my fish, I saw Lisa’s rod load up and I knew it was big. It was a nice fight for Lisa and I think it’s her biggest this year so far. It was a great catch and a very nice way to end the week. Water temps were around 60 degrees in the creek yesterday evening and the lake is a little less than a foot above full pool and dropping because the corps is generating several hours a day now. Here’s Lisa’s big 4.7 from last night and a few other memorable fish from my week. It’s a great time to go out and drag a worm around!

Typically, this time of year I don’t have a lot of baits on the deck, but I always have a Damiki rig or some type of small swimbait like a 2.8 Keitech attached to a 1/4 ounce or 3/8 head. When we get into February the lake is usually at its coldest and the fish are usually at their slowest. Their metabolism has slowed them down and they don’t really get excited about much. Chances are, the fish are going to be in small groups, rather than big singles cruising the shoreline looking for meat. The small groups are going to be hanging out in unsuspecting places at times and if you catch one, it’s a good idea to make multiple casts in the area because more than likely there will be more. It’s also a good idea to put your caught fish in the livewell when focusing on an area and release the fish when you leave the area. By releasing a caught fish in the area, you just caught it, often times it will spoil the bite and shut down the action. By holding the fish in the livewell for a bit, chances are you can extend the bite, especially when targeting ditch fish. Right now, the bearings are going out on my livewell pump so it’s the worser of two evils, I can release the fish boatside and take a chance on the fish swimming back down and telling his buddies that there is danger above or do I keep the fish, turning on my livewell and listen to the deafening squeal of the worn out bearing in the pump for the livewell?

I started out on Monday in Jeff Nail’s boat after a 28-day layoff from the lake. The water was around 48 degrees, and we were hitting the ditches early on a cold morning. It didn’t take long for Jeff to boat the first fish in 40 feet of water with a little swimbait on a 3/8-ounce jig head from Spot Choker. He showed me the new Spot Choker head and I got a few from him to try. I also got a few of Trixster Baits Damiki heads and between the two different heads we were able to put 9-10 fish in the boat by days end, mostly on the swimbaits out in deeper water. I threw my favorite shaky head worm around when I thought the terrain looked like wormy stuff, but I came away with very little on the shaky head. For that reason, Jeff and I stuck with the little swimbaits for the majority of the day. The cool part was that I got a good look at forward facing sonar again and I’m going to have it very soon on a newer boat.

On Tuesday I felt like hitting the lake again and ditches, swimbaits and worms were on my mind. I just had to test the rocky worm bite but that is at a lull for me. My usual wormy stuff just wasn’t producing but that’s the way the worm bite is at times. It can good or bad and when the shaky head bite isn’t going well, you need to adjust, but I was left wondering why the fish were either, not on the rocks, or on the rocks, but not interested in my shaky head. Since Jeff and I caught the majority of our fish relating to ditches I abandoned the rocks in favor of the ditch bite. The ditch bite can be frustrating and sometimes you have to spend some time shopping the ditches but when you find the right ones you can go back for days and the ditch will still produce. Such was my case this week. I didn’t have many successful ditches to draw from this week but the ones that I found successful, gave up fish every day this week. It might be a “one and done” ditch but I could circle around, coming back a few hours later and there would be another fish to take the place of the one before. It’s a “right place, right time” scenario in ditch fishing but one thing that can dip the odds in your favor is the presence of loons and diving birds. I pulled into a pocket with a small ditch on Tuesday afternoon and two loons were working in 10-15 feet of towards the back. Sometimes these loons will get the bass moving around by stirring up the bait and a Damiki rig with a 2.8 Keitech is my choice to cast around the areas of working loons. I like to steer clear of casting into the loons but working the swimbait around the outer fringes of the working loons can produce a good bass or two. On Tuesday afternoon it worked well out on the end of a dock, where the loons were working, and the ditch met the end of the dock. Here are back-to-back 4+ spots on a Trixster Damiki head.

On Wednesday I didn’t spend a lot of time on the water and it was a slow day. I was still able to put a few in the boat on the Damiki.

We recorded our fourth podcast and celebrated Jimmy Sanders birthday Wednesday even. Here’s a link to view Friday Fish Fry #4.

Here’s the difference between a 5lb fish and a 2.14-ounce fish, both on the 3/8-ounce Spot Choker head with a 2.8 Keitech. One caught early in the morning and one later in the day.

Yesterday morning I was back at it and easing up on my lucky ditch when I saw it, something that doesn’t occur often but when it does, the stripers and/or bass are nearby in big numbers. It’s the presence of fish poop. I see it every year, usually during this time of the winter but not limited to this time of year, it’s just more prevalent this time of year. You can’t mistake it, it’s just splotches of brown, wet poop looking liquid with a backdrop of green water. Usually, it’s visible when there is little to no wind, as the wind and waves tend to break up the poop splotches rather quickly. Looking for or seeing fish poop dates back to my days of running the marsh for redfish 30 years ago. Even redfish poop indiscriminately while feeding and finding the poop in the marsh meant finding the redfish.

After seeing the poop splotches scattered around amongst the floating pine needles, and the direction of the light breeze from the west, I triangulated that the poop was coming from a nearby point, so I set my sights on the end of the point with my Spot Choker swimbait rig. My first cast produced a nice striper and during the fight I looked down at the graph and it was like spaghetti underneath the boat. Stripers were everywhere, and I thought to myself that the poop mystery was solved. If there’s a moral to the story folks, “where there’s poop on the surface, there are fish feeding or fish that just fed in the area. Here’s a video and a picture of the striper I caught with the help of the poop.

After the fight and subsequent release of the striper, the whole ditch cleared out and the stripers were gone so I moved on. I continued to catch a few fish here and there on the little swimbait but I wanted to switch over to a spot choker underspin and drag a few areas with that, mostly the ends of points in deep water and the center of ditches in shallow water. At one point early in the afternoon I ran into Jimmy Sanders, and I spot locked near a deep point I was fishing while we talked. I like to multi-task so while talking with Jimmy I was simultaneously dragging my underspin down the side of the point from 30-40 feet. That has been my deep-water target depth and where most of my fish had come from this week. As we were talking, I felt my underspin stop and pull back and I quickly recognized that I was in a game of tug of war with a nice bass. Jimmy once again was my luck charm and I like visiting with Jimmy out on the water because our visit usually results in me catching a nice fish lately. Here’s a picture of the fish and the bait used.

All in all, it was a pretty good week and I’m glad to be back on the water. The lake level is less than a foot below full pool and the corps is only generating for a couple hours a day if that much. The water is still stained back here in the back of the creek and the water temps on the surface in the creek was 48-49 early and 51-52 by late afternoon.

It was 10 years ago that Lisa and I purchased our property on the lake as a 10-year anniversary gift and investment property. When we first looked at this property, it had been on the market but there we no takers after the 3-month listing. It needed a lot of work on the inside and the dock was on dry ground because the lake levels were down around 10-11 feet lower than full pool. Some of the shallower water property values around the lake were dropping because of the low lake levels. I myself was skeptical but we purchased the property with the understanding that it would be an investment. It seemed like just a few days after our closing, then came the rains. It rained and rained that first year and our dock never saw dry ground again for years. Since then, I’ve learned the lake levels always trend one way or another but we’re heading into a period that levels usually trend upward, and I would look for the lake to be on the rise over the next few months. When lake Levels rise, fish will forage the newly submerged shoreline on the warmer sunny days so hopefully it will be a good winter for the shallow meat-eaters.

This week I was able to get out a couple of days, but I had to alter the game plan due to the rise in lake levels over Christmas day and into Tuesday. The back of the creek looks like my Carmel Macchiato coffee right now and that definitely throws off the bite in the back of the creek. I cringe every time the water gets this discolored because ultimately, it’s just more silt coming into the creek and over time silt can turn a body of water into a marshy pit. Construction near the creek is a big culprit and a lot of the silt can come from washed out construction areas during heavy rains. It’s an ongoing problem on the lake but it’s hard to stop the runoff during very heavy rains. Usually when the water gets stained like this it’s hard to get the fish to bite. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that they just can’t see the bait or they just don’t want to bite. There are still fish in the area but for the most part they are rather inactive or disinterested in whatever I’m throwing. For that reason, I choose to find the cleaner water areas that don’t have the run-off that the back of the creek has.

I was able to get out mid-morning on Wednesday and I spent 4-5 hour in the creek. I checked the shallow shaky head bite and didn’t really like the way that was going, plus the sun was behind the clouds most of the day which kinda negates the shallow rock bite. Luckily, while trying to put a pattern together in the early afternoon I saw 2 loons hanging out in a cove about the size of a football field. I noticed that the loons had 3 gulls circling above and sometimes the gulls would dive bomb the water’s surface around the loons. I could see that the gulls were successful and coming away from their dive with a bait most times, so that told me that there was bait present around the loons. As I watched, I saw some big swirls and splashes that were not coming from the loons or the gulls, and I knew the bite was on back in the cove. I abandoned the shallow rocks and made my way to the cove, picking up the little 2.8 Keitech swimbait on a 1/4-ounce Greenfish “Bad Little Shad” Albino colored swimbait head. I had the bait tied onto 20lb Cast Co. braid and a 6-foot leader of 8lb fluorocarbon. I can cast the Cast Co. 20lb braid a mile even with the lighter finesse baits and the longer cast comes in handy when you want to cover a lot of area per cast. To be honest, the swimbait bite is a lot easier on my shoulder than jerking on the spoon all day in a ditch.

As I eased into the mouth of the cove, I started marking fish under the boat at 21 feet and I started making casts up shallower with the little swimbait. I could see swirls that the fish were making around the loons here and there and shortly after my little swimbait found the bottom on my first cast right down the middle of the cove, a nice 4lber found my little swimbait. The trick is to keep just a little tension on your line at all times because when these bass hit the little swimbait it can be very subtle, or very noticeable. It can feel like your retrieve just got a little heavier or it can feel like a very pronounced pop. After landing the 4lb fish I very quickly readied my bait for the next cast. I could see some larger fish coming up in the shallower areas along the shoreline and I thought that a few of the bigger ones could have been stripers or very large bass. I worked my way towards the back trying not to disturb the feeding bass and birds and for the next couple hours I caught fish in the cove just going back and forth from about 25 feet up to around 5 feet of depth. The loons were working bait very shallow, and the bass were right there with the loons, but it was hard to catch them very shallow with the swimbait. Most of the fish came from a depth of 10-20 feet with a mix of smaller fish here and there. I ended the day shortly after 3pm and headed for the dock. I caught around 8-10 fish total with a few nicer fish in the mix. Lots of fun in shallower water with the finesse tackle. Here’s a couple pictures from the afternoon fun.

Thursday morning, I wanted to get out a little earlier than the previous morning, so I left the house around 8am going right back out where I left off the afternoon before. I wondered if the group of fish I found the day before had spent the night in the cove or moved on from where I had left them. One thing that I think was very significant about this area is that the cove was very near deeper water. By deeper, I mean water in the 40–50-foot depth very near the mouth of the cove. I believe the fish moved back and forth from the deeper water to the shallower water depending on the conditions and to prove my theory I started marking fish in the 35–40-foot depth early in the morning and the fish were scattered, lying motionless on the bottom up to about 20 feet in depth. There was no bait or loons in the area and the fish were just shut down for the most part. I could bounce the little swimait off their head underneath the boat in the shallower areas and they would just swim away from the swimbait like it was an annoyance to them. Finally, after a dozen worthless casts my first taker of the morning popped the swimbait at around 20 feet in depth. It was a nice keeper in the 3lb range to kick off the morning. I saw a swirl on the surface not far from the boat and I threw the little swimbait right where the swirl appeared and let the swimbait sink. Nothing hit the swimbait and just as I was giving up on the cast very near the boat a bigger fish whacked the little swimbait on the retrieve. Best fish of the day came from the bass pictured below chasing down the swimbait very near the boat.

After just a few fish to show for the shallow bite, I elected to go back out and work on the deeper fish in the 30–40-foot depths and that’s where I found the most active fish. It wasn’t much in the deeper depths but every once in a while, just fan casting around the mouth of the cove in the 30-40 depths produced a good fish. The key to getting the fish to react was to drag the bait very very slowly. This is “Three Toed Sloth Season” which means to slow your presentation down, whatever that presentation might be. There may be a few exceptions in certain circumstances where a faster moving bait may create a reaction strike in certain areas but my focus was on the sure thing and there were enough fish around the area that I didn’t leave for the 4-5 hours I was out. It was in the sun, not much wind to fool with, and the occasional fish fell for the little swimbait on light tackle. What’s not to like about that? I ended my day in the early afternoon hours with 7-8 decent fish for the trip. Here’s a few more from my day.

The lake levels continue to rise, and we are sitting at 6.61 feet below full pool right now. The back of the creek is very stained and water temps are in the lower 50’s right now out in the creek. This time of year, it’s a good idea to watch your surroundings and if you see loons and gulls working around shallower areas there’s a good bet the bass could be working beneath and around them. It’s always worth a look.

Every once in a while, usually after a trip to the sauna very early in the morning, I make a biscuit run out in town. (Ha ha, like we live in the country…) One of the main reasons I make a biscuit run, besides the delicious biscuits that the various gas station deli’s offer, is the little tackle store on Buford Dam Road. The Buford Dam Bait and Tackle usually satisfies my craving for purchasing tackle and a nearby gas station satisfies my craving for a gas station biscuit and a can of Red Bull. All of which can be bad for me, but I pretty much live by the motto “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing”. That’s probably how I came down with the Man Flu 10 days ago, out fishing in the cold rain….

This week my fishing report is pretty simple since I only fished one day, which was yesterday. I’m recovering from a nasty sinus infection and all the other stuff that comes with the debilitating Man Flu. I hadn’t been on the water for 10 days and yesterday I finally felt like fishing again. I gotta say that I’m truly blessed to be able to fish such an awesome fishery here at Lanier. The first place I went yesterday was the last place I fished before I got sick and it was like the fish were there waiting on my return. If you read my last report, I described a location I call “the Spa” and it was pretty much the last area I fished before coming down with the flu. The Spa is the first place I went yesterday, and I spent well over two hours fishing a ledge and a point that held some bigger fish. Now that I have sonar again, I was watching my sonar as I idled into the area that was around 40 feet deep and sure enough, right when I hit the sweet spot the graph started sounding suspended fish under the boat. I saw a small group of maybe a half dozen nice thick returns and I thought they might be stripers because the area I was idling over was actually the very end of a point in 35-40 feet of water. I had purchased a couple Flex-it spoons on my biscuit run and I had one tied on my big 7’6″ St. Croix MH Triumph and Penn Fierce 2500. Once I got past the fish I made a mental note of where the were and I dropped the trolling motor to target the marks I saw on the sonar. I got into position and made a long bombing cast with the Flex-it spoon out on the end of the point where I had marked the fish. I let the spoon flutter to the bottom in a controlled drop and when I saw the line go slack, I made my first long pull, making the spoon jump off the bottom and flutter back down. I was mildly surprised when I felt a quick pop on the spoon after just a couple of pulls, and I reeled down on a fighting fish. It was good sized, and I thought it might be a striper out of a small group sitting out on the end of the point. The fish ran towards the boat, and I got a quick glimpse when it got to the boat, it was a nice 4+ spot and probably my biggest of the day. The fish peeled some drag off that Penn reel and that stout St Croix Triumph rod man-handled the fish to the boat perfectly. Here’s a picture of the fish, my first fish in 10 days. It was a good one!

When I brought the fish in, I noticed on the sonar that several other fish came with it, so I quickly unbuttoned the first fish and dropped the spoon straight down under the boat. I watched the group that came with the caught fish chase the spoon down to the bottom, and as soon as I lifted the spoon, the rod loaded up with another fish, only this one was from a vertical presentation. I kinda figured out that these fish hadn’t been messed with much because they were not boat-shy at all and I spent the next 3 hours fishing a small stretch on ledge and a point. Every once in a while, I’d mark a small group of fish moving around under the boat and every once in a while, I’d catch one casting the spoon or throwing the shaky head in the same general area. I think all of my fish, with the exception of the last fish came from 30-40 deep water and the fish were generally oriented to the outer areas of a point. Here’s a few pictures of the bigger fish from the Spa yesterday.

I probably could have finished my day there at the Spa, but I wanted to run one more little stretch of secondary points in the creek that faced the southwest. There is a stretch of 3-4 points that are in the sun for most of the day and by mid-afternoon the fish are cruising these areas of shallower water, but very near deeper water. I ran the whole stretch of points in the last hour of my trip and in the last few minutes, probably my last cast on the last point I caught my last fish of the day, and it was a good one to end the day with. I caught it on my favorite shaky head rig.

I would say that 3 of my biggest fish, including the biggest yesterday came from the Flex-it spoon pictured above and the other two big ones came from throwing my shaky head rig into 30-40 depths out on the ends of points. Same with the spoon. Water temps were 52 in the morning and 54 in the afternoon. Water levels on the lake are dropping again and a little over 8 feet below full pool.

That’s what it all boiled down to this week. I can honestly say that about 95% of my fish came from an areas not much larger than a football field this week. It was just a matter of locating the school and figuring out what they wanted to eat. The menu this week consisted of a succulent little shiny silver spoon, a fat stubby looking worm crawling across the bottom and slathered in stink juice, or a delicious little Keitech Damiki rig, hopped across the bottom to mimic an unsuspecting little shad. That little triple threat buffet provided me with some well needed excitement for the week and I finally got a working sonar this week after going without sonar for a couple months. My week started on Tuesday, and I basically worked over a mega school all week.

If you’ve known me very long and had the pleasure of fishing with me for any length of time, you would probably know that I name different areas that I frequent in the creek. For example, there is a ditch called “Kenny Bunkport”, a name we gave to an upper-class area where the owners made sure we knew that the area was catch and release only. They were a bit snooty with their Polo shirts and sweaters draped over their shoulders like something out of the Hamptons and Lisa and I got a big kick out of that. There is also a magical place in the creek I call “The Horseshoe” because someone placed brush on a deep flat in a horseshoe shape and it is the perfect trap for bait drifting into the horseshoe when the wind is out of the east. There is another area of the creek I call “The Spa”. It’s always been a place where fish congregate in the winter, spending days unmolested by anglers and all it takes is a little wind out of the north or west to get the bait moving. The place is very unsuspecting and to this day I can’t figure out what the attraction is, but they congregate in this area every year in big numbers. It’s like they go there to chill, and you’d never know they were there unless you woke them up or you hit it when they were feeding. Sometimes it’s like raising the dead on a calm day, but once you start pulling schools off the bottom it’s on and fish start moving everywhere.

This week I hit the Spa for the first time this year and the fish were stacked in the area. I had the perfect west wind on Tuesday and as soon as I idled into the spa, I started marking bait and fish. The area is 30-40 foot deep flat close to a creek swing and not a lot of structure in the area, just a deep flat that holds fish. As soon as I marked a good group of fish under the boat, I laid my first waypoint down on my new Humminbird Helix and sat down on the waypoint with Spot Lock. I pulled out the 1/2-ounce silver War Eagle spoon and started fan casting. The first few casts were uneventful, and I started wondering if the fish were going hit the spoon. Not long after that I got my first fish and as I got the fish to the boat, I noticed on my graph that several other fish came with the caught fish. After dropping the first fish in the livewell I just dropped the spoon straight down under the boat to the bottom where a few of the fish from the group were still lingering. I immediately caught another from under the boat while jigging the spoon up and down on the bottom. I took care of that fish and made a long bomb cast with the spoon, letting it sink all the way to the bottom before starting long hops on the bottom with the spoon. Once again, I felt another fish pop the spoon on a controlled fall and I boated another. This went on for a good 2 hours and in that time period I caught and released well over 20 fish, most coming from the spoon and a couple from the Damiki. Here’s a few pictures from the Spa on Tuesday. These were all what I call the “Keto” bass because they are on a strict diet of little shad and smaller bluebacks drifting around over the deeper water.

On Wednesday a cold front had pushed through overnight, and it was very cold and windy in the morning. I made a quick circle through the creek but with post front conditions it was slow, and it didn’t take long till I was back at the house. I only took a couple pics on Wednesday after catching a handful of fish in a 2-hour trip. We also recorded the second episode of the Friday Fish Fry podcast and I put a link to the podcast below the pictures.

On Thursday I was back at it, mid-morning with spoon in hand and ready to do battle again at The Spa. The wind was back out of the west but not a lot of wind, just enough to keep the bait moving out on the flat. If the bait was there, the fish would be there. As it turned out the bait had moved and The Spa was just about empty. I did manage one bright spot when a beefy 3.5lber sucked in my little Damiki rig on a long cast, hoping it on the bottom. There are about 3 different ways I like to use the Damiki this time of year, first is vertical, straight down under the boat till it hits the bottom and then long, slow controlled pulls, up and down. Second is casting it in the center of a ditch and letting it sink to the bottom, followed by long slow pulls across the bottom with the rod tip down and no slack in the line, stopping it very frequently. The third is casting it, letting it sink to the bottom and then making small hops across the bottom with the rod tip up so the Damiki will jump up a foot or so. On Thursday the fish reacted better to the hopping method than the dragging method. The biggest problem was the lack of fish at the Spa, so I went with plan B and pulled out the trusty ole worm on the rocks. I shifted my focus and was on the hunt for the “Meat Eaters” that frequent the warm sunny rocks that are generally south facing and near deep water. That’s been the whole key this week, the fish I found were either “near deep water” or “in deep water”. On Thursday the meat eaters I found were cruising the steep rocky bluffs, in or near deep water, in the middle of the day. Here are a few pics from Thursday. The good part was that there were some beefy fish jerking on my rod on Thursday.

Before I get into yesterday, I gotta say that it was an awesome day and I knew it was going to be before I even got started. The clouds were going to be moving in and we were going to have a west wind to work with. One thing that was kinda problematic was that I was running low on my War Eagle spoon supply. It had dwindled down to a total of 3 half-ounce succulent chrome beauties and that was going to be a problem. We were expecting some cloud cover, and the spoon was probably going to be the ticket if the wind blew at the Spa. I got out about 8am and when I pulled into the Spa it was loaded with fish and bait. As I pulled up, I saw a large boil just to my left and within casting distance. I thought it may have been a striper, but I let the little spoon fly right into the center of the circle from the boil. I felt the spoon fall for about 2 seconds and then go slack. When it goes slack that quick over deep water it only means one thing, and it took this 63-year-old caffeine jacked up brain about a nano to set the hook on my first big fish of the morning. That was the kind of fun I was looking for, so I started making casts in the area for more fish. It didn’t take long, and I had another on the spoon, just making some fan casts in the general area of the fish that surfaced. The area I was in had some fallen timber on the bottom and I finally found the wood with the spoon, and I couldn’t get it out of the timber, so I had to break it off. Now I was down to only 2 spoons left and that’s when it hit me that I need to conserve the spoon, or I might be out by noon since it wasn’t even 9am. A lot of the fish that I was marking were in the 40+ foot range and typically I wouldn’t be using a shaky head this time of year for such a deep application, choosing to use a spoon or Damiki, but I had a ton of shaky head supplies so out of necessity I started throwing the worm into the deeper areas of the Spa. The wind had kicked up and I was able to Spot Lock and make very long casts downwind with the shaky head into 40+ feet of water. The wait for the worm to get to the bottom was pretty painful in the wind, but once I felt the worm hit the bottom it was a very slow crawl, and then about a 10-15 second stop, dead sticking it with slight pressure. I’d say that most of the time the fish would pick up the bait on the dead stick rather than moving it. The best part was that the fish were all over that worm down in that deep water like a rat on a Cheeto.

It was funny because I caught a lot of fish yesterday and at one point, I caught a fish that was so small it could barely get the worm in its mouth and then I followed it up on the very next cast in the very same place and snatched out a stud 4+ pounder. It was unpredictable but as the afternoon progressed the clouds moved in, and the west wind was picking up. I moved around the same area, the size of a football field and had a field day yesterday. Big fish, medium fish and small fish, off and on all day and with the worm in 40+ water. It was a blast and a great way to end the week. Water temps were in the upper 50’s and the water level is down a little over 8 and a half feet. Finding the bait is key right now because a lot of times the fish won’t be far away. This week the deep bite prevailed because the bait was prevalent and deep in the location I was targeting. Here’s some of the pictures from yesterday.

This week I’ve gotten out every day in some capacity and the bite has been somewhat transitory for me. The way I view the fishing pattern from fall to winter and spring to summer is pretty simple, when we go into winter the fish start looking down for their meals, vice looking up. During the transition from spring to summer, the fish start looking up for their meals, vice looking down. This transition occurs around the time of the turnover, both fall and again in late spring. For me, this week was the transition.

On Monday we had very fair weather, but I could sense that the changes were coming, mainly because of my weather apps on my phone, but changes were in the air. When Lisa and I were returning from our tournament on Saturday afternoon we ran into a fisherman in the back of the creek that said he had caught 15 fish around the area we saw him so that prompted me to check the back areas of the creek even though the water is still pretty clouded back here. I spent most of my morning in the back tossing the worm around and (as my grandson puts it) catching Jakes. I made a quick swing through the creek but I wasn’t very impressed with what I found so I called it a day with nothing but smaller fish to show for it. The best thing about Monday was the shrimp boil we had for dinner.

On Tuesday the front was still coming through and the fish responded well. I got on a little pattern where the fish were coming out of the brush and slamming the Lanier Baits Hard Swimmer in the pearl white color and if they missed, I could follow it up with the shaky head and usually get them to hit that. It was a 1-2 punch that worked around the brush for some pretty fun fish. Here’s my best five from Tuesday. The three biggest came from the Hard Swimmer.

Wednesday was the first day of post front and it was bone chilling cold, and the wind was getting it, kinda like the perfect day for the SpotSticker Mini Me spinnerbait on points. I didn’t last long out in the cold, and I took it back to the house but not before catching a couple nice fish a white bladed Mini Me. Here’s my two biggest from the spinnerbait outing.

Yesterday I was back at it and I brought my video camera to see if I could get a little shaky head footage. It turned out to be a good 4 hour trip, from mid-morning till mid-afternoon. Nothing but shaky head in the wind using Minn Kota Spot Lock upwind of the brush and just making cast tight around and through the brush. My worm of choice this week was the Big Scented TRD from Zman with a Boss Outdoors 1/4-ounce jig head. Boss Outdoors is an “American Made” company, and they have the best keeper I’ve found for Elaztech plastics.

Here’s a video I made yesterday using the TRD and the Boss. If you watch closely on the video, you can see that most of the time the fish hit the bait right in the structure.

Probably the Big TRD was the best bait this week with the Hard Swimmer and the Mini Me doing well for me too.

I’m still without sonar so I don’t really know what the water temps are, but I’d guess it to be in the low 60’s to upper 50’s right now and the lake continues to drop. Right now, it’s over 7 feet below full pool and I’m just about ready to give up on moving the dock out to chase water. Unless we get substantial rain soon our dock will be on dry ground.

On another note, be sure and check out our new Friday Fish Fry podcast a week from today. We’ll be launching our first episode at 8pm next Friday, the 10th of November. We’ve been in the Cast Away man cave recording for the past few weeks, and we should have a good show for ya’ll. We’re looking forward to it!

Also, we will be doing another seminar for young fishermen over in Dallas in 2 weeks so be sure and check out the flyer for more info.

Just a few weeks ago I can remember sitting out on the main lake in the sweltering afternoon heat, just daydreaming about October and the changing of the season, and here we are. With each passing day, I can see the changes out on the lake. The colors of fall have arrived, and we’ve got the next few weeks to enjoy them. October is always a favorite month of mine for a lot of reasons, some sports related and others, a more seasonal nature. Here on Lake Lanier, it’s just about guaranteed that between Nov. 1st and the 15th the leaves will fall off the trees. It happens every year and it seems like every year I start wondering if the leaves will stay on the trees till Thanksgiving, but it never happens. The trees always shed their leaves in early November. That gives us a few short weeks to enjoy natures artistry and fish a lake surrounded by the backdrop of fall colors.

Don’t ask me why, but there’s another lock for fall and the changing of the season, and that is the fall swimbait bite. Just a couple of years ago and almost to the day, I wrote an article in my blog about the October white Sebile bite. At the time I was buying the Sebile’s when I could find them, and I was sanding them down and painting them pearl white. For whatever reason, these bass and stripers really start hammering that color and that swimbait pattern throughout the fall. I put a link to the blog entry below. It’s called Jonsin for a Sebile.

https://castawayblog.com/2021/10/22/jonesin-for-a-sebile/

Another lock for late October to Mid-November is the turnover. Some may say that it’s later in the winter but living on the lake gives me the opportunity to see the changes firsthand and every year it starts the same way. Turnover starts in the back of the creek near my house in September and works its way out of the creek. I can always tell by the condition of the water on the surface. Right now, it’s in a lot of areas in the back half of the creek and I’ve noticed a decline in fish activity in these areas. I’ve also noticed some discoloration in the water in these areas. This week the front third of the creek has a richer, deeper green color to it while the back 2/3 may have a lighter green tint under the surface. That doesn’t mean these areas are void of fish, but the bait may move closer to shallow waters during these turnover periods and the predators tend to follow the bait. Yesterday I saw bass and stripers pushing bluebacks onto shallow rocky areas and pinning them to the rocks. There was wind blowing right into the rocky point and I pulled back to casting distance to the rocky area of the point and put the Minn Kota on Spot Lock up wind. I started fan casting the Lanier Baits hard swimmer in pearl white down wind, around the shallows and every once in a while, the rod would load up. With the wind out of the east yesterday I found 3 points that had wind blowing onto the point and I rotated between those 3 points, spending about a half hour at each point. I used Spot Lock and sat upwind fan casting each time and I caught fish off and on for 4 hours straight on the same 3 points, using the same bait. Here’s a few of my fish from Yesterday.

Another lock for October, especially when we have these fronts that come through, is the spinnerbait bite on windy points. On Monday morning it was post front and the wind was blowing when I walked down to the dock. I can always tell if it’s going to be windy out in the creek by looking and the tree tops around the bay. If there’s a ripple on the water in the bay and the tree tops are moving, the creeks going to be windy. On Monday when I saw that, I tied on my SpotSticker Mini Me and looked for the first windy point I could find. At my first point and it very well may have been my first cast with the Mini Me the bass pictured below just hammered the spinnerbait.

Here’s a link to find the Mini Me spinnerbaits. The 1/2 ounce “Ghost” is a favorite of mine and a great bait for Lanier.

https://spotsticker.com/product-category/spinnerbaits/mini-me/

Another bait I had good luck with on Monday was the Lanier baits chrome hard swimmer. On Monday I couldn’t get the fish to commit to the pearl white hard swimmer so I switched up to the chrome and I found that they would commit to the chrome better than the white. Later in the day I ran into Scott Jackson and he told me he had just the opposite reaction which was kinda funny, but I kept that in mind all week and it was one of the biggest reasons I used the white pearl yesterday. Between the Mini Me and the chrome hard swimmer Monday was a good day. Unfortunately, I got some stomach bug on Monday and I didn’t really get to fish again till yesterday. Here are some of my fish from Monday.

One other bait that recieves honorable mention and that bite is right around the corner, and that’s the shaky head bite. Yesterday morning my first fish came off a shaky head and it was a pretty nice fish. It felt good to fight I feisty 3lber on the shaky head and I’m very excited for the bottom bite to pick up as soon as the turnover is complete. I good way I look at it is that after the turnover occurs the fish start looking down instead of look up for their meals. Jigs and worms are on the horizon. I don’t know the water temps right now because I have no sonar but the fish feel kinda cool to the touch so I’m guessing close to 70 for the water temp and the lake is 6.5 feet below full pool and still dropping.

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.