July 22nd and 23rd, 2010

Got out with Rick Thursday the 22nd of July and we did well. We scored fish by trolling and jigging. All the action came mid morning and mid afternoon. The total to the boat on the day was "lucky 13" with 8 fish trolled and 5 jigged. I feel we did exceptionally well since we really weren't on a bunch of fish at any one time. However, where we fished we seemingly fished well based on our results. Additionally, the fish were big. Most were 9-12 lbs and I jigged up my big fish of the year thus far – a Monster 23 lb'er!

This guy didn't want to hold still for the camera so I struggled getting a good shot. With the water temps up around 90 degrees, I didn't want to keep him out of the lake too long so we got this one image and let it go. Rick took a cooler of fish home today so I'm sure he got some excellent fillets from our harvest; all the fish we released swam off fine even though the water is extremely warm. According the DO reports from the Corp, we still have plenty of oxygen in the upper level water column.

Banking on the solid PM bite we've been seeing this past week, I ventured out with Jonathan Friday mid day as the air temps broke into triple digits. Jonathan struggled in the heat for the first part of the trip but I was banking on seeing fish from 3:00 PM on. The good news is they didn't disappoint. Right before 3:00 I found fish – the first of the day – and we proceeded to jig them hard. Over the next two hours we boated 13 and all were caught on spoons, swim baits and jigs. 11 fish were 12-15 lbs, 1 fish was 7-8 lbs and the big one of the day Jonathan hooked that tipped the scales at 16 lbs.

We left the lake still over some fish but with the extreme air temps we were both pretty much shot. Today's fish were more aggressive compared to what Rick and I caught Thursday. We were also able to find them out over deeper water which is what the summer pattern is all about. I expect the schools to get even bigger as we move to August and the next 2 months on Lake Lanier should be killer for Striper fishing.