Lake Lanier Fishing Report – June 2007

Lanier: Level: Down 2.9 feet below full pool. Temps: 74 degrees. Clarity: Clear.

Spotted Bass: Good. Some spots are already setting up on a summertime pattern in the deep brush and timber, but there’s a good topwater bite around the main-lake flats and humps that are 15 to 20 feet deep and drop off into much deeper water. Big spotted bass are being caught on Chug Bugs, Zoom Super Flukes and other topwater favorites. Also try a big swimbait. On windy days — and there have been a lot of those lately — try a spinnerbait. Burn it, and hang on. If you aren’t having success calling up spotted bass, find some brushpiles off the reef markers in 15 to 25 feet of water, and use a drop-shot finesse worm or a 1/4-oz. Texas-rigged finesse worm.

Largemouth: Good, with fish just starting to move out on the ledges and points, and they should be hard on the structure by the second week in June, according to tournament pro Billy Boothe, an expert on fishing the upper sections of Lanier. “Start out in the mornings with a pearl Pop-R or white buzzbait fished fast around laydowns and flats in 4 to 10 feet of water. Most of those fish are just keeper sized, but the action is pretty fast,” Billy said. Once the sun gets up, he recommends flipping the main-river docks and blowdowns with a 1/2-oz. green-pumpkin Mann’s Stone Jig or a junebug Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver. “Most of your bites will come on the initial fall, so make multiple pitches to each float. The largemouth that are holding on laydowns and docks are feeding heavily on bluegill, so there’s the ticket to the dock bite. If the floats are not holding bluegill, keep moving until you find the ones that are,” Billy said. “As the month progresses, most of the fish will pull out on the river ledges and points and it will be time to crank them up. The best ledges will be on channel bends on the main river in 12 to 20 feet of water and will be loaded with bait. Watch your graph, and if you’re not seeing the big balls of shad, pick up and move to the next ledge. I’ll be throwing two baits for the ledge fish, a Mann’s 20+ in the gray-ghost pattern and a Carolina-rigged, green-pumpkin Reaction Innovations Flirt Worm. If you don’t get bit on the crankbait work back down the ledge slowly with the Carolina rig to pick up the inactive fish.

Stripers: Fair. The fish are widely scattered from up the Chestatee and Chattahoochee rivers north of Browns Bridge to down at the dam. During the week when boat traffic is low, try a Red Fin at reef markers, “v-waking” it during the first two hours of daylight. Freelines and planer boards with live trout, herring or shad are the best bet right now. Slowly pull your baits over points and reefs that have 15 to 30 feet of water over them. The umbrella rigs are beginning to produce, as are single-trolled bucktails. Watch for surface activity early and late. Expect the bite to get much better and more consistent as the stripers set up on a summer pattern, when umbrella-rigs and downlines can produce big numbers.