I had a couple of good days trolling this week. Early week produced a few fish on the south end but Thursday was wide open. It started out slow down by the dam but when the generation cycle started I could see fish coming out of the deep timber to feed on the moving bait. Chartuese and blueback patterns caught the fish this week. In my opinion chartruese is the most effective color under bluebird skies. The blueback pattern runs a close second. I didn’t take any bait with me this week but it looks like the bait droppers are still doing well over bigger schools. Here’s a few videos I took this week.

The summer trolling bite is starting to pick up and the stripers are moving south. The summertime trolling pattern is starting to set up as I’m seeing more and more fish moving over deeper water and and hanging out around clouds of threadfin shad. Find the bait and start looking for fish hanging around the bait balls. My rule of thumb is if I see more than 4 fish on my graph at one time I’m probably going to fish that area. Here are a couple of early summer trolling videos.

Late Spring:

As I write this, the pattern on Lake Lanier is changing. The water temps are getting warmer as the days get longer and the fish get deeper. By late May the fish relate to deeper water as well as cruising around in 20 to 35 foot depths. Fish are starting to group up and prepare for the warmer months. Small through teenagers tend to work together on schools of bluebacks and shad on main lake humps and points. Some of the ways to target these late spring fish include just about every tactic in the arsenal. Planer boards will still work, especially in the early morning and late evening. I would use bluebacks out on the main lake and gizzards up the rivers. This time of year if I’m using planer boards with herring, I like to use a quarter to half ounce egg sinker at the swivel to get the bait down into the strike zone. Downlines work well as the fish start relating to deeper areas. As the spring rains subside and the lake water clears, you may want to size down those flourocarbon leaders to 12-15 lb test and be sure to paint those 2 ounce sinkers a flat color to cut down on the window shoppers. One thing I really like to do this time of year is drifting or slow trolling downlined bluebacks on main lake humps in the late evening till shortly after dark.

If you can fish a point that is holding fish early in the morning, pitching a blueback up to a point on spinning gear is a good way to catch a late spring striper mixing in with the spotted bass. Put a little split shot a couple of feet up from the bait to help get the bait down and help with longer casts. U-rigs will work better and better as we get into June. Groups of fish on main lake humps will be a great target for using u-rigs. Two of my favorite colors are white and chartuese. Four arm, two ounce, 20 inch u-rig frame rigged up with 1/2 to 3/4 ounce bucktails with or without curltail trailers will work fine. Since most of the fish will be in 20-30 feet of water you can run your rigs 75-100 feet behind the boat at around 3.0 mph. This should get the rigs into the strike zone.

Early Summer:

Early to late summer is a favorite time to fish Lanier for me. This is the time when I start putting away the bulk of my live bait gear and start concentrating on artificials. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be hauling around a few bluebacks to drop on a active bunch of stripers on a couple downlines. In june, one of my favorite tactics is to locate active schools trolling 1/2 to 3/4 ounce bucktails on my downriggers. The 2 basic colors work well for this application. When I find an active school, if the artificals aren’t working well I go to the downlined herring. U-rigs are peaking out during June as the fish are spending the last of early summer on the humps. I think we”ll start seeing fish moving closer and closer to the river channel and the bite will work it’s way south more and more through mid to late June. Using curltails on your artificials is a good option for trolling bucktails on the downriggers and on the u-rigs. As the summer progresses, the fish will start committing to paddletails more so than curltails.

Typically, this is the time of year when just about any tactic may work. With a few stray frontal systems still dropping into our area, during these periods of changing barometric pressure fishing just about any pattern will work in pre and post front conditions.

Well, spring is here and the freeline and planer board bite is in full swing. We’ve been catching some very nice fish on Bluebacks behind Planer Boards in mid-lake pockets and points. The water has been pretty clear where we’ve been fishing so be sure to set those baits 75-100 feet behind the boards and if freelining baits I like to run the baits a least 100 feet behind the boat. Here’s a little video of our fishing last weekend.

Last Sunday Lisa and I were in the backyard taking advantage of the beautiful day we had. While I was working around the yard I caught a glimpse of a few Jonquils coming up through the ground behind my boat shed. Those flowers are a good indicator that the days are getting longer and spring is right around the corner.
I call this time period “the dog days” of winter striper fishing. If there ever was a slow time of year to catch stripers, this is the time. The stripers have slowed down with surface feeding and when they have been eating, they’ve been gorging themselves on the plentiful shad kill. Sometimes we can entice a striper to chase a u-rig or gulp down a quick small bait if it is strategically placed in their strike zone. For the most part, right now the stripers are getting fat and very selective about their eating habits.

In just a few short weeks, things will start to change. We can finally add another pattern to striper fishing on Lake Lanier. As our days continue to get longer, the shores of the lake will begin to warm. The shad kill will be a thing of the past and stripers will start searching the warmer shallow water for food. The baits that survived the kill will move to the warmer shallow shoreline. Stripers will be patrolling those areas in search of an opportunity for a quick meal. This is the time of year I like to get my baits right up in the shallow water. Planer boards are a must for the spring. Stripers will be more in tune with shallow water moving up and down points and waiting in ambush in shallow structure close to the shore. I’m going to be fishing a combination of herring and big trout along the shoreline. That’s where the bigger fish will be.
Keep in mind, when you’re putting out your planer board spread, make sure your planer board closest to the shore is the longest line out. By this I mean when a larger striper hits a bait close to the shore, generally the first thing the striper does is head for the safety of deeper water. If the rest of your planer board spread is out further than the board closest to shore, the striper will gather every other board and bait on his way to deeper water (I hope that makes sense). That will cause a problem when trying to deal with a large striper. I’ve been burned by that mistake before.

In the early spring, stripers have big bellies and big appetites. When they decide to take a bait, it’s usually “game on” with planer boards flying through the air or skimming across the waters surface at break neck speeds. This is a time of year when drags need to be set and leaders need to be in good shape. These fish will be strong and they will test your gear. If there is a warming trend in March, some fish will move up river. One day they will be in the river and the next day they could be miles down lake. With the water warming, larger fish that don’t go up river will be on the move to stake their claim to a point or pocket waiting for an opportunity for an easy meal. Herring will become a popular bait for these fish. Another popular bait will be Gizzards, really big ones as well as BIG trout. Just remember, when fishing with big bait, make sure your gear can handle the kind of fish that eats big bait. You need big leaders. I use a 20lb Vicious flouro leader with 30lb+ Big Game. Sometimes I don’t even use a leader with really big baits. The bottom line is when bait fishing in the spring, be ready for some great pull downs and pull backs.

Using artificials during the early spring can be a lot of fun. Not only during the day but Bomber fishing at night can be an eye opening blast. My first suggestion for artificials is keeping my old standby the bucktail tied and at the ready. My color of choice would be white or off white in a half ounce size. Casting bucktails in shallow water a dawn is an effective way to hook up with a nice striper or two. I like working points with bucktails in the spring. A lot of times when a striper is on a point, he becomes very territorial and will strike a passing bucktail just for trespassing on his turf. The outer edge of grassy areas will often hold an early morning striper waiting for a bait or two to leave the confines of the grass line. I try and cast just into the weed line and work the bucktail back to the boat with a quick but steady retrieve.

Topwater type swimbaits are a good option in the shallows also. Just cast up onto the point with your topwater bait and slowly retrieve creating a “V” wake on the water. I recommend holding your rod very tightly when fishing “V” waked topwater baits. The strikes can be quick and brutal.
I know we’re all pretty burned out on u-rigs, but they will still work well in early spring. Fish will be moving up and down columns of water from 35 feet up to 2-3 of water. U-rigs work well in the deeper staging afternoon areas and the shallow points in late morning. For me, cooler cloudy days are days I generally break out the u-rigs in the spring. A color that will start to work well in the spring is Chartreuse. To me the Chartreuse color is more of a spring and summer color. I’d rather pull small baits in the shallows than pull u-rigs in the spring, but they will definitely work at times.

These are a few of my thoughts as I see signs of spring approaching and I’m looking forward to some great striper fishing!

Got out this morning with Mike D from the Oakwood club. I met Mike a few weeks back when he bought some tackle, and I found out he’s an old retired Navy guy like me. I invited Mike to go out and check a few of my early winter holes. It’s still a little early but we managed a few fish. We got over a nice school and I hooked up on a downline and he broke me off. When we got over the school with the planer boards Mike brought one in off of a large trout on a planer board. We left that hole after a while and ran north to pulled a long flat. I thought maybe we could get one decent fish off the flat and darned if Mike didn’t catch another one on another big trout on a planer board. It was a good morning on the water. We just fished a few creeks from Browns Bridge to Gainesville Creek. All in all it was a slow morning but nice to get out after making tackle for the past 2 weeks. Here’s a picture of one of Mikes fish.

My Dad and I just got back from our annual trip to West Point. We had a really good time and caught plenty of fish. We stayed at the Highland Marina floating cabin and the accommodations were great as usual. Bait netting was no problem with the Hydro-glow at the cabin and in the back of the creek at Highland. We netted alot of gizzards and threadfins with some very large hybrid threadfins mixed in. I hadn’t netted any hybrid threads in 3-4 years but we got a bunch on this trip.

Yesterday was pretty slow and we only caught around 8 fish between the morning and afternoon. The lake was down about 4 feet and they didn’t generate yesterday. I really wanted to get my dad on some numbers so I used a technique with the netted bait that we used last year that worked out great. We found some large schools of gizzards in the back of Highland in 2 feet of water. We filled the net with gizzards with one throw and filled 2 five gallon buckets with 3-4 inch gizzards in water and put 6-8 dozen in the bait tank. We headed to the large flat we planned to fish and with the wind blowing into the flat, we released the gizzards in the buckets across the mouth of the flat and let the wind push the released gizzards across the flat.  We waited about 30 minutes and it was on. We guessed we caught 30-40 stripers this morning on the flat. Most of the fish we caught were on downlines on the bottom in 25 feet of water. Most of the fish were between 3-6 pounds with the biggest striper around 10 pounds and a hybrid that was very close to 8. After the morning my dad was pretty much wore out so we grabbed some lunch and headed back home. My dad doesn’t have to many fishing trips left at 71 and smoking like a chimney so it’s really great to get him out and put him on a few fish.

Sorry fella’s, I’m getting everything ready for a 3 day trip to West Point next week with my dad so I’m doing some service and repairs on my boat this week. I’ll be back on Lanier after our WP trip and hopefully find a few fish for the National Championship on Lanier.

I got out with my good friend Brett W on an invite to fish in the Lanier Striper Club tournament. We started the day slow trolling leadcore and downriggers just looking for active schools. We marked plenty of fish up on points, but most were inactive fish and small groups of Spotted bass. We finally found a decent school of fish in the back of a large cove area. We trolled a set-up of 2 leadcore and two downriggers through the school without a sniff. We quickly turned around, brought in the trolling gear and dropped the herring down and tried power reeling the herring to no avail. Brett had a big 2 ounce Bucktail jig with a 6 inch swim bait tied on and I had a ounce and a half with a 5 inch swim bait. We both dropped down past the school and climbed the ladder with the jig stopping it every couple of feet. That was the key. We both hooked up at the same time using this method but mine broke off. Probably a 30-40 pounder. lol 

The action was fast as we managed 2 good keeper fish before the school moved on. These two fish were enough to win the tournament.

Guys, when you get over a school like we did, sometimes you have to act fast because a lot of these schools are moving quickly and you only get one good shot at getting a good fish or two. Just like a lot of schooling stripers, the larger fish will generally be below the smaller fish so dropping a heavy 2+ ounce bait gets it down fast into the target area for bigger fish. In our case, we dropped all the way to the bottom and worked it up from there.

One last thing I wanted to add is that after the tournament the club meets for lunch at a little restaurant in the back of Flowery Branch. It was a lot of fun with a great bunch of guys! I saw a lot of laughs and a lot of smiling faces. That’s what it’s all about.

Good Fishing!

Jim