Thursday August 11th Trip

Nick, Rick and I hit the lake again this past Thursday and had a decent day. The bite is no doubt slowing as we approach the full moon that’s about to hit Saturday the 13th. I fully expected our day to have a limited window of opportunity and I was right. My Striper instincts said we’d have the best shot sometime between 3-7 and I was right. We found fish immediately and as it turned out, we were lucky we did! The first fish came on a shallow spoon trolled over the trees out in the front of Big Creek.

We then spotted a few fish on the graph and decided to try jigging. This turned out to be the right move with Rick getting a quick hook up. After that it was rough for Rick and Nick. For some reason they couldn’t buy a bite! From 4:00 to 5:00 I was the only one the Stripers were interested in “hooking up” with and during this time I boated 6. All the fish came on a light St. Croix rod vertically jigging a Capt. Mack’s bucktail. They were all over this bait and every fish but one was over 10 lbs.

Unfortunately all my “catching” got the eye of several boats out over the channel. One by one they filtered over trying to cash in on our honey hole.  We saw two fish caught once the boats arrived and then it was over. When we left there were 6 other boats in our wake. I knew several of these guys and they told me the day had been rough so they were in “desperate” mode. That being said, we only saw 2 fish boated by the flotilla so clearly we got the lions share of what little action was available.

From 5:00 to 7:00 we scoured the lake looking for more action but it wasn’t to be. I expect Friday through till next week might be a tough time on the lake till this moon phase passes but then once we get past it, things should improve. I fully expect some of the best fishing is yet to arrive and from next week on we should see some excellent catches on Lanier for at least the next 4-6 weeks.