Friday October 15th, 2010
This past week the fishing has really changed on Lanier. With the temps dropping below 75 degrees on the surface, the fish are on the prowl. I’ve had some tough days with only 1-3 fish boated. I’m still finding schools of fish up top on the southend and no doubt these are bigger fish. On Wednesday the 13th I was out and the lake was like glass with warm temps, bright sunshine and no wind. Fishing was tough. I stopped at cocktail cove for a moment to send a text and a large school surfaced yielding this fat 11 lber:
Last Friday the 8th I struggled to catch just a few including this big 16.5 lb’er trolled really deep on leadcore:
And yesterday the wind was ripping at 15+ mph most of the day so I was able to get over and stay over more fish compared to when there is no wind. At one point I “bumped” into the school shown below. I was able to boat 7-8 fish over a 30 minute period via a fast retrieved spoon before I lost them.
The bottom line is that right now the fish are on the prowl. They seem to do this every year in October and it usually lasts till November. I believe it has something to do with their natural instinct to migrate which is happening right now out along the Atlantic seaboard as massive schools of Stripers move from the Northeast down to the Carolinas. Here on Lanier, there is no where for them “reach” so the net effect seems to be some schooling and fast movement over a period of 2-4 weeks. During this time I’ve seen schools moving at 20+ mph as they wind their way through bay after bay with no real destination in mind. I also believe where they end up is more due to a random occurence than anything else and no doubt some will be up the lake. But I’m sure there will be plenty of fish down south too. I also notice all the fish doing this seem to be in that 10-15 lb class. The smaller 5-10 lb fish schools don’t move quite as much and they tend to be more in the middle to the back of the creeks. And on the northside we find smaller schools yet of fish ranging from 2-6 lbs. These fish seem content just hanging out in schools and don’t seem to migrate at all.
At some point this month the night bite should get going. With the lake in excellent condition oxygen wise and visibility at an all time high, I’m sure they’ll be foraging up on the shores and islands any day as the abundant supply of threadfin shad die off and their schools are broken up. And though we’ve had some reports of night bite success, Rick and I have been out a couple of times with very little to show for our effort. Hopefully that will change shortly.