Fishing continues to improve on the southside. I hit the lake twice this week and fished mostly from Flat Creek down to the dam. All the guides are catching fish on shallow bottoms, maybe 40-60 ft to start the day, but then note the fish move out to deeper water as the day wears on. I prefer the deep fish as these tend to be bigger so I've been fishing mid morning on through the day. This yielded fish in the 80 ft + water which I've been able to troll effectively. However, I'm not seeing any big schools yet so jigging has not been productive. Besides one fish Rick got on a sideways cast spoon out over the channel, there hasn't been much jigging to do. Hopefully that will change shortly.
After being on vacation for a couple of weeks, I finally got back on the lake to see what's happening. Though the temps are nice and high, I didn't really find many fish. I worked it hard from Aqualand all the way up to just above Browns Bridge and the most I could muster were a couple of small fish at the mouth of Flat. Doug struggled today too and we're thinking the boat traffic from all the activity over the long weekend could have taken a toll on the fish. Late last week the fish were starting to school up and show themselves in deep water but all that had changed today. All I know is that I couldn't get over any from 9:00 AM all the way through till 3:00 PM. This is the first time I've seen "nothing" this year and usually by July I'm able to troll fish consistently.
My boat was being serviced and I got to pick it up today. Seeing there were some fierce thunderstorms coming down from TN, I threw a spinning rod on board for the ride back from 6 mile to Aqualand. I launched at Charleston Park around noon and bringing the rod turned out to be a good call.
Hit the lake today for a last minute trip with David Shutte and Jonathan. Didn't expect to catch much but you never know. David had his summer vacation cut short and called me Thursday evening to see if there was anything we could do Friday. After 1/100,000.000 of a second I answered: Lets go Fishing!
Took a short trip on Lanier today to get my boat ready for the upcoming season. I didn't intend on fishing but if I got my work done quickly, I planned on wetting a line or two… After doing some cleaning and fresh water tank work, I took a closer look at my trolling motor problem. Looks like the deep cycle batteries may be dead as they won't hold a charge. Other than that, nothing major needs to be done. The boat will be serviced early next week and I'll get any replaced that don't measure up to the "load test" my mechanic will do.