A lot of people were thinking the fishing on Lanier was going to turn for the worse following this years Funfest. I happen to think the opposite. In fact, I’m thinking we might be in for some of the best fishing of the season and today was a bit of validation to confirm my belief. Rick and I fished from 1:30 to 5:30 and scored 12 bruisers including Ricks big fish of the year on the Main Office – a giant 21 lb’er!
Hit the lake for a “solo” trip to see if there has been any movement of the fish from their recent haunts. I noted they were moving quite a bit at the end of last week and I’m hoping they’re thinking about coming out of the trees. Typically we’re seeing a lot more of them out in the open by now in the summer but 2010 has been anything but typical. At this point we’re still catching them in shallow water, suspended just in and over the trees, which makes for some difficult jigging and/or trolling. Snags abound and it can get frustrating and costly when you have to fish the trees all day long.
Got back on the lake after being away on vacation for the past week. Rick and I hit the water around 11:00 and by noon were on fish. We caught them good from 6 mile to Young Deer. All the fish were big ranging from 10-18 lbs and for the day it was 50-50 trolling vs jigging. In all we landed about 16 fish. Here’s a pic of me holding a 12 lb’er while Rick fights another fish.
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.
Got out today thinking the fish would be rolling on the surface with the incoming storm. WRONG! I don’t think I’ve ever done more riding in one day as I did today. I went as far north as Wahoo and as far south as the Dam in search of fish breaking but all the gas I burned was in vain…