Lake Oconee Fishing Reports – August 2022

Oconee: Level: Full pool at 435. Temp: High 80s to low 90s. Clarity: There is some stain above the I-20 bridge, a little color in Sugar Creek and clear to the dam. Expect the rivers to stain up with the thunderstorms coming through.

Bass: Tournament angler Karl Pingry reports, “Donald Peppers has done well in the weekend tournaments this summer, despite the disadvantage of not getting to practice and only fishing the weekends. He is like a lot of our readers in that he’s got to put a pattern together while on the water competing with other fisherman, the recreational boaters and the ‘waves of the weekend.’ Donald starts his day fishing main-lake points and seawalls that are near deep water. He’ll alternate with a spinnerbait, Zara Spook, buzzbait and a Pop-R. He’ll keep an eye out for shad, bluegill or a mayfly hatch. He said he has seen very little mayfly activity this year. He will use this pattern until the sun is high overhead. Here are his two keys: 1) he moves around a lot. He fishes fast and covers water. 2) If he’s not getting bit, he changes lures frequently until he gets bit. He lets the fish tell him what lure they want and where they are located. If he gets bit on a point up against a seawall, that is what he will target as he moves around the lake. Once the bite has slowed, Donald focuses on docks near deep water the rest of the day. This time of year, he’s looking for docks near a creek channel, river channel or simply near a drop-off. He prefers a shaky-head worm in junebug, redbug or green pumpkin, depending on water color, but he will alternate colors until the bass tell him what color they prefer that day. Once again, Donald emphasizes to pay attention to where you get bit. What part of the dock? Near the seawall, off a corner, or near the last piling at the front. Two bites in the same place is a pattern! Once you can narrow that dock down to a few specific spots, you can really be efficient and fish more docks during the course of the day. These baits and locations will work for the next couple of months during the dog days of summer. In my opinion, as well as Donald’s, the hard part for most fishermen is changing baits frequently until you get bit and moving from place to place often. The reason for fishing fast and moving a lot was summed up by Donald when he said, ‘I think the fish move a lot this time of year, and I’m just trying to run into them.’ Fish fast and move often. Let the fish tell you what to throw and where to throw it. Good fishing!”

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Crappie: Capt. Kevin Alexander, of Crappie Time Guide Service, reports, “We are catching them off deep brushpiles and submerged timber. Use your Down Scan to locate schools of them in the timber, throw out a marker buoy and drop minnows on a No. 2 gold aberdeen hook down to the depth they are holding at. You should catch a lot of numbers of fish using this method. If you can spend some time looking for new structure in deep water that hasn’t been fished, then your chances for larger crappie will be greater. This pattern should continue all throughout the summer and into early fall.”

Capt. Doug Nelms with BigFishHeads Guide Service reports, “August is the month the brushpile crappie bite peaks on Lake Oconee. Over the years I have developed two different types of crappie fishing trips. If I have kids, and they just want to catch a lot of fish and really don’t care too much about the size, I focus on the brushpiles in shallow water (no deeper than 20 feet). When I get guys who want to catch bigger fish, I head to the standing timber in deeper water. There are some trees that I’m fishing right now that are in 65 to 70 feet of water. The fish are in the tops of the trees, from 15 to 20 feet down, but these fish are normally much larger than the ones on the brush. These types of sites are the trees that were left during the time of the impound, not brush that locals may have tossed out in shallower water. There is an easy way to find all these sites. Just buy a paper Lake Oconee map and look in the legend under fish attractors. There are GPS numbers right in there. However, I caution you that while the numbers are correct, I feel like they’re all about 75 yards off. You won’t find any sitting right on the numbers, but just know they are not far from them. Maybe it was because in 1979 when these places were marked, GPS wasn’t as accurate as it is today? But they are all there, and this month there will be crappie sitting on most of them. The second thing you’ll need is really good electronics, and you’re going to have to spend a few dollars to get this right. I use Humminbird products, and they have never let me down. My units are Solix Gen 3s. The clarity in Side Imaging and Down Imaging is unmatched. After you find the trees, set your waypoint on them, and you can come back year after year and get the same results. There are some trees I have been fishing for five years now, and they still hold lots of big fish. After that, it’s just a minnow on a hook, with a 1/2-oz. weight dropped down into the group, and hold on.” 

Stripers: Capt. Doug Nelms with BigFishHeads Guide Service reports, “There have not been many times that I have written a report like this for our stripers on Oconee but the truth is they are terrible right now!  Yes, they are supposed to be on the pumpback every morning, and yes customers are wanting to go out and catch them, but I’m scratching my head. They could start tomorrow, but at the time of writing this report, they aren’t anywhere to be found. Several of my buddies are pulling Mini Macks and u-rigs with limited results, but this is the time we usually have 30-plus half-day catches. Maybe they will soon be enjoying the new feeling of being able to breathe in the summertime from the oxygen system that Georgia Power has installed. I was down there the day they were testing it, and I spoke in detail to one of the guys in the boat. I got the pics of the oxygen bubbles on my Humminbird. However, over the past couple weeks I haven’t been able to find the oxygen releases, but after reading the GON article it sounds like they won’t be fully running until sometime later this month. It might take the stripers a few years to figure out that they now have oxygen and they can stay down at the dam. Then we could give all my guide buddies on Lake Lanier a run for their money for the summertime bite.”

Capt. Doug Nelms was on Oconee when Georgia Power was testing the new oxygen lines and captured a pretty neat photo of what it looks like on his Humminbird. Expect the lines to be fully operational this month.