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