Lake Allatoona Fishing Report April 2013

Allatoona: Level: 0.6 feet below full pool. Temp: 54 degrees. Clarity: Stain to light stain.

Bass: Good. Tournament angler and Pro Angler Radio host Matt Driver reports, “Fishing is excellent. The month of April is as good as it gets. Get out your favorite bait, and go fishing! This month largemouth and spots will begin to spawn. Largemouth spawn first, and spots will be the last to finish the spawn. Concentrate your efforts in spawning and staging areas, stump flats and protected coves. Soft-plastic jerkbaits like the Big Bite Jerk Minnow, scrounger, spinnerbaits and A-rigs tipped with Big Bite Cane Thumpers are perfect search baits for schooling fish. Once staging fish are located, a shaky head with a Big Bite Shaky Squirrel, a Kacys Kustom jig and a Carolina rig work great to boat good fish. My favorite thing about this time of year is that the topwater bite fires up, and schooling fish can be targeted. For Allatoona, the Spro Dawg and the Zara Spook are hard to beat. I am turning on the heat and fishing these baits very fast. Don’t give the bass too much time to look at the bait. It is all about making fish react to the bait. Also, the month of April is prime time for swimbait fishing. The numbers are sometimes lower, but the size is hard to beat. I throw a Spro BBZ Shad and the 6-inch Spro BBZ-1 in shad patterns. Long casts are key with this pattern, and vary your retrieves.”

Linesides: Fair. Guide Robert Eidson reports, “The river run has started and should be in full swing by the first week of April. These fish will start to stage between Little River and the Delta and then will make their run up both the Etowah and Little River. Look for these fish from Fields Landing all the way to the ball park in Canton on the Etowah and from Little River all the way up to Rope Mill on the Little River side. Both live bait and cut bait work well on spawning fish. If the river isn’t your thing, remember even when the spawn is in full swing, the majority of the fish are still in the main lake. Kellogg, Stamp, Clark and Tanyard creeks are all holding fish right now, but the best bite going along with the river bite is a half mile on both sides of Bartow Carver. Shad are working best fished on freelines and planer boards early. By 9 a.m., I am changing over to all downlines. The downline bite is best from 18 to 24 feet. Remember to match your hooks to the size of your bait. This is key to catching numbers from now to the end of summer. Trolling is also picking up and should be going strong as we go into the month of April. I am having my best luck on a Mack Farr full loaded, four-arm U-Rig right now. I am pulling my rigs 100 to 140 feet behind the boat at speeds between 2.4-3.1 mph. Play with your lengths and speeds until you find what’s working best. For topwater, there is a bite, but it is fair at best at sun up and then again at sun down. Both the flats at Harbor Town and the flats at the Delta are good for small hybrids and white bass. There is also a good spoon bite going on for white bass in the river channel from Little River all the way up to Fields Landing. A 1/2-oz. Flex-it spoon is very hard to beat on Allatoona this time of year.”