Lake Allatoona Fishing Report – June 2024

Allatoona: Level: 1.3 feet above 840. Temp: 78-81 degrees. Clarity: Clear with a visibility of 5 feet.

Bass: Tournament angler Matt Driver reports, “Fishing continues to be good.  There is a great swimbait bite throughout most of the day. Main lake, red-clay banks are what I’m targeting with a shad-colored, 6- or 8-inch glide bait. Several stripers have been mixed in. The bass are transitional, and some fish are bait transient, and a few are moving to mid-level brush in the 12- to 15-foot range. Shaky heads, Texas-rigged worms and jerkbaits are the baits to target these areas. The Picasso Shakedown and Little Spotty are very productive. As the sun goes down, I’m switching over to a 5XD crankbait and a Picasso Inviz-Wire Pro Night Thumper in black or purple. The bite is good right after dark, slows down around 9 p.m. but has gotten better after midnight. Be careful. Boat traffic is getting pretty busy.”

Linesides: Guide Robert Eidson, of First Bite Guide Service, reports, “Fishing is good! The fish are back on the main lake and are feeding well. The bite is good from one end of the lake to the other. Up north, there are good numbers of linesides being caught at the mouth of Sweetwater, the flats at the Delta and in the S-turns. Mid lake is also producing good numbers from Kellogg to Bartow Carver. The south end is also fishing well from the dam all the way up Allatoona Creek to the Lake Acworth spillway. Freelining shad early is the ticket to getting your day started off right. After the sun comes up, look for schools of hybrids on your graph off of main-lake points and humps. We are catching most of our fish in less than 30 feet of water fishing right on the bottom. The key to loading the boat is fresh bait. Change your bait often, and be sure to take plenty with you. Summer is an awesome time for numbers on Lake Allatoona, so grab a kid and go fishing.” 

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Crappie: Robert DeHaas, of Red Rooster Custom Baits and an OG from “Team Geezer,” reports, “The lake is about to be plenty busy from Memorial Day until Labor Day, so your best bet for fishing uninterrupted will be from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. After that, the boaters, skiers, tubers and jet skiers will own the lake until right before the sun goes down. Wear your life jacket, watch out and be safe! The crappie spawn is clearly over, and there will be lots of recovering skinny crappie being caught in early June. From June until September (possibly October), the crappie will be holding close to brushpiles. Summer brushpile fishing can be great in terms of quantity and quality of the crappie. During the early part of June, the crappie can be found on shallow brush in 12 to 14 feet of water. The crappie will remain at this depth as long as the water temp is below 80 degrees and/or the water level stays above 840 feet. Around the middle to end of June, the crappie will be looking for deeper brush where the water temps are cooler and there is more dissolved oxygen. You will need to have your milk-run locations in mind when you hit the water and go from one brushpile to the other until you find the active fish. Some of these brushpiles have aggressive crappie and will take the rod out of your hand. Let’s talk summer brushpile techniques. It’s time to get your spider rigs out. The common setup is four to six 12-foot rods positioned out the front of your boat. Each rod should be rigged like a mini Carolina rig, which is a 12- to 14-foot leader,  a 1/2-oz. egg sinker, bobber stoppers, bead(s),  a No. 2 to No. 4 aberdeen hook and plenty of minnows. Troll in and around the brushpiles and wait for the rods to go down. If you’re using FFS or marking brushpiles with a buoy marker, you want to stay 25 to 30 feet away from the brushpile and cast 1/16- to 3/32-oz. jig heads with a tiny, 1.5-inch minnow-looking bait, like the Red Rooster Dagger, toward the brushpile. Count it down five to 10 seconds and slowly retrieve your jig back the boat. Make sure to use clear-water colors, which are natural colors, such as watermelon ghost, mayfly, uv ghost, splatterback and gray ghost. On bright days, use bright colors, like bluegrass, Mardi Gras, chartreuse pepper, etc. While trolling around, make sure you mark any structure on your electronics that you run across, as it will have fish on it if it’s deep enough. Even if you don’t see fish, mark it anyway and fish it. Lots of times we don’t see fish until we fish it. They could be in the brush and don’t come out until they see a swimming jig or minnow. We had 20 really nice crappie the last time we went out, and we released them all since we had plenty in the freezer. Don’t forget to be a conservationist and keep only the crappie you can use and release the rest to fight another day. Only we can make a difference with the marvelous fishery the Lord has given us. Let’s all be thankful for this gift and use it wisely. There are several people who help with this report, and we fish the lake two or three times a week from the north end to the south end. The goal is to help you find fish and catch them. Good luck and God bless! Proverbs 3:5-6 says, ‘Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.’”