10/8 Lanier Report w/pics

I managed to get out a few times last week. It was mainly short topwater runs but Friday I was out a little longer with a couple of friends and Saturday we fished the UGA fishing team trail. As far as the fishing goes, it's been mainly topwater for me but there are other things working right now. All week long the stripers and the bass loved a bone Vixen knock-off walking bait that I make and also they have been hitting my little bone Hump Buster walker but on Saturday (tournament day) they refused to hit them. Figures!

A few other baits that have been working are the spinbait and the Sebile Magic Swimmers. A variety of colors have been working on the spinbait as well as the Sebile. I dropped by Oakwood Bait and Tackle Saturday morning and Dillion had some sweet looking Sebile's so I picked up a couple that I know are going to be good baits. The underspin/fluke combo has been producing some fish and also the shakeyhead and crankbaits have been producing a few. We're getting into that season in which I love to throw crankbaits up onto rocks. The bass love to chase shad up into the rocky points and a good shad crankbait will definitely work this month.
Water temps were around 75-77 at weeks end and the fishing was a little slow overall. I think this full moon had them eating at night because I didn't see as much daytime schooling as I had in the previous 2 weeks. Saturday was a tough day for us in the tournament and all we caught was little fish but on Friday I had a fun day on the water.
On Friday I took out my friends Chris and Bucky, a grandfather/grandson team from over towards Lake Hartwell. Chris is a Youth Minister and Bucky was retired and they both wanted to check out a few fall Lanier fish. We had a good time with Chris working the topwater walkers and Bucky using the swimming baits. Everyone caught fish but with the full moon it slowed down the topwater bite. Here's a few pics of Chris and a few of our biggest from the day. Chris even caught 2 bonus topwater stripers.

Looks like a lot of fun mixing in the topwater! Maybe Nate will put them schooling again.

Sounds like a good day on the water Jim!

Q2gyro said:

Looks like a lot of fun mixing in the topwater! Maybe Nate will put them schooling again.

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I think it's the sun more than anything right now. When we had all those sunny days the fish and bait were up on the surface but the cloud cover may have kept the bait from coming up on Saturday.

Lanier Jim said:

Sounds like a good day on the water Jim!

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Thanks LJ. We had to make a lot of casts but it paid off.

That explains all of the bass boats zipping around on Saturday! Kind of figured there was a tournament on.

I got into them OK down South. Put 8 in the 'yak, seven cookie cutters, and one decent one, about 17" on the measuring board. I got the impression that they were relating really strongly to the bait, and not so much to the cover. Found lots of roaming fish in the 15ft range over a 20-30ft bottom. The seemed to be liking the areas that were a little more exposed to the wind as well.

Got mine on a mix of topwater, and crankbaits(trolled). I did notice that when they come up, you've got to get on them QUICK to have reasonable expectation of a bite / hook up.

Any fish still around brush or humps or are they all following the bait now?

Coenen said:

That explains all of the bass boats zipping around on Saturday! Kind of figured there was a tournament on.

I got into them OK down South. Put 8 in the 'yak, seven cookie cutters, and one decent one, about 17" on the measuring board. I got the impression that they were relating really strongly to the bait, and not so much to the cover. Found lots of roaming fish in the 15ft range over a 20-30ft bottom. The seemed to be liking the areas that were a little more exposed to the wind as well.

Got mine on a mix of topwater, and crankbaits(trolled). I did notice that when they come up, you've got to get on them QUICK to have reasonable expectation of a bite / hook up.

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Saturday was terrible for us. They had the Skeeter Championship going plus the UGA tourney and who knows what else. All I know was there was a bass boat on every point and hump on the lake and it was just a game of musical points and humps with rotating bass boats all day. Glad you got a few.

Jeremiahisbrown said:

Any fish still around brush or humps or are they all following the bait now?

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Yes, there are still plenty of bass on my brush piles on humps. A lot of the humps I fished last week had big schools of bluebacks drifting around them in a little deeper water. There are plenty of threadfin pods out over deeper water right now and there are some in the creek also. I think the shallow bite is just a cold front away.