Hit the lake today with Rick and Nick. With all that’s been happening in the family and business, I haven’t had the time to fish this year so I’m way behind on the “where and when” to fish. Fortunately it’s all the summertime haunts so the learning curve is steep and fast!
Overall the day wasn’t bad. We boated 15 fish and all but one were jigged. Fish are being found anywhere below Browns Bridge and for now, the best bite is in the late PM. I believe this will change with the coming moon phase; full moon will hit this weekend and I expect we’ll start seeing much larger schools compared to what we saw today.
As for today; the fish were scattered and thin with nothing too exciting on the sonar screen at one time. We really never got over a big school but with three fisherman aboard the Main Office, it only took 1-2 fish for us to zero in on what we were seeing. Making it more tricky was the fact that we couldn’t troll a bite. Usually by now I’ve got them dialed in so I have some work to do here as I know they’ll be on some patterns based on where we’re seeing fish.
So what was working? Silver spoons. Heavy spoons jigged off to the side were the ticket. With the fish scattered, it was important to cover more water than normal and if we got one on the line, others came around seemingly interested in all the action and in most every case a second fish was hooked right after one was boated. No doubles on the day but again, it wasn’t thick enough for doubles to click. That will soon be changing.
I expect to be out at least once more this week and with July coming to an end and the full moon hitting this upcoming weekend, fishing will only get better.
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.
Fishing continues to be strong on Lanier with lots of fish boated this week on the southside. The water quality is awesome and the cooler temps up top is bringing the fish to the surface most every day. It also allows the fish free roam throughout the water column and no doubt they’re taking full advantage. The good news is I expect this pattern to hold another 2-3 weeks and though the fish will move to shallow water again when on the prowl, they should continue to be catchable.
I was on the water 3 days this week and all were successful trips. Fish were found down by the dam and the numbers were impressive. 15 + on Tuesday by myself, 15-16 with Rick on Wednesday and another 10-11 Friday with Rick aboard again. The fishing was clearly an afternoon bite with the prime running from 4-8 all week. The big fish of the week was my 16.5 lb’er but we had several 14-15 lb fish as well including two bruisers Friday afternoon on a double.
The one trend the fish are following seems to be that they’re going shallow. Humps off the main channel seem to hold the most fish and if they are smooth, the fish are easy to find. So far they’re still biting the jigs, spoons and swim baits so for the most part the bite has been good when over fish. The troll has been tough this week with no fish out over deep water and I haven’t yet figured out how to catch them using this method right now so I’ve got to adjust my technique. I’m thinking I might try going to a u-rig but I’m not sure just yet.
Next week the fishing should be good again. The new moon phase peaks Thursday with primes starting around 10:30 Monday. This means the mid day bite should be on and if conditions are right, we could see a lot of surface action. Can’t wait!!
I’ve seen some guys get all excited about nothing when it comes to what they’re seeing on their sonar screens. A recent image sent to me demonstrates this exact scenario. In the photo below, one might think there are hundreds if not thousands of fish under the boat on which this Lowrance was affixed. Take a look:
I know it seems like one should get excited when viewing a screen like this on their Lowrance but in fact interpreting this image can be quite tricky. The bottom line is this boat wasn’t moving. And because it was sitting in one location, one cannot be sure if there is one fish moving back and forth during the 2-3 minutes it took to write the entire screen full or if there are 1000 fish around the boat and no matter where it turned the image returned would be the same. I would venture to say it’s neither but instead a small school of maybe 5-10 fish that stayed under the boat for several minutes. Having seen this happen aboard the Main Office, I know the way a screen writes when you aren’t moving can be confusing. Here is my response to the message my friend sent with the photo where he asked if I had ever seen so many fish on the screen at one time.
“..Don’t be tricked by this pic. Remember, it takes a couple of minutes for an accumulated image like this to write across the entire screen so don’t think you’re looking at a “snap shot” of what was under there at one point in time. In fact it’s more like a “time lapsed” image of what was under the boat during a 1-2 minute window. I don’t know how big this screen is or how fast he has it set to “write” but I’m sure it will take at least 1 minute if not 2-3 minutes to write across the whole screen. It’s kind of like setting an old 35 mm camera out pointed to the night sky with lots of stars out. If you let it sit all night, you’ll see a similar effect. Here is a web site with lots of good examples:
http://weburbanist.com/2009/02/18/12-long-exposure-time-lapse-photographers/
Additionally, if you look at his boat speed, you see it’s just .3mph. That means he was barely moving. And based on the consistency of the entire screen, it’s safe to say he barely moved during the time it took to write this image.
So now that you understand he’s actually sitting still in one place for 2-3 minutes while the screen writes, do you honestly believe that every arch you see is a new fish entering the field of view for his transducer? As I’ve explained to you before a lot of “bogus” information can be written when you stop a boat. I know, it is possible that a giant school with thousands of fish swam under his boat taking 2-3 minutes to pass him all the while his Lowrance wrote on the screen what you’re seeing. But it’s a lot more probable that a small school of fish kept passing back and forth under his boat over and over again as the boat gently floated during the same time.”
In summary, one must be real careful when trying to interpret what the sonar screen means if you’re sitting still. The list of options is a bit overwhelming. Now if you’re moving, say 3-4 mph while trolling, the resulting images would be quite valuable. So in the end, I wouldn’t get too excited about what I see on the screen. What really matters is what you put on the boat and I can tell you I’ve caught lots of fish without any indication from my fish finders that fish were anywhere near!
Hit the pond today with my bud Steve Buck from the old neighborhood. Steve’s been on the Main Office a few times and knows the deal. The day started “hot” and with the projected high around 95, I wanted to get on some fish fast before we got burned out. We set out looking in the usual haunts and were able to find fish in most locations but they were a little sleepy. It seemed they weren’t quite awake yet but as soon as the wind kicked up by late morning, they started biting. And from noon till we left, most everywhere we found fish they would bite our offering!
Steve hadn’t done a lot of down jigging prior to this trip but after a 5 second crash course he was well on his way to both hooking and landing big Striped Bass. I lost count of how many he hooked on his own but it was somewhere around 4-5. Nothing like the pull of a big Striper when they take the lure! Our fish today were all big with most every one between 10-12 lbs. We might of caught 1-2 that were in the 7-9 lb range but overall the size was just about the same no matter where we went.
Here’s Steve reeling in a Striped Bass that bit while trolling. To see all the images from our trip, click the one below:
