Lake Lanier Fishing Reports – June 2021

Lanier: Level: Slightly over full pool. Temp: 70 on the lower end. Clarity: The water has been clear on the south end and slightly stained on the north end.

Spotted Bass: Guide Ryan Coleman reports, “Excellent, and the fish are eating. Most of the spotted bass have spawned, but there are some main-lake fish still left to move up. These fish will spawn on the offshore stuff, so don’t look for them in the creeks. I have been having some great trips on Lanier lately fishing up shallow and out on structure. My shallow fish are around reef poles and shallow, rocky points in less than 10 feet of water on rock anywhere you can find it. My best baits have been an electric-shad SpotSticker Finesse Stick and a 5-inch Senko rigged on a 3/16-oz. screwball shaky head. Work this rig very slowly around rocks up on the humps, and be persistent. As for the offshore fish, topwater has been doing well for a week now. I’ve been doing most of my damage on a Chug Bug or a Ima Skimmer in white or chrome. Not being too aggressive with these baits just yet has been key for me. Some of the herring are still spawning around the shallow stuff in the mornings. I can get them to commit to the topwater or a 3/4-oz. Mini-Me spinnerbait with silver blades. As long as the water is in the 70s, we will have a spinnerbait bite on Lake Lanier, so keep it rigged and throw it as much as you can.”

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Stripers: Capt. Clay Cunningham reports, “Now that June is here, look for the stripers to progressively move deeper as the water temperature rises. At the beginning of the month, look for them to be 10 to 20 feet deep. You will still see some topwater action as the stripers push herring to the surface, so be sure to have a Sebile Magic Swimmer or a Berkley Cane Walker ready to cast. Day in and day out it is hard to beat these two baits. All the colors in the Magic Swimmer work. Early in the morning, the Magic Swimmer in white liner is hard to beat. On sunny days, try the chrome Magic Swimmer. The chrome is the hot new bait. Cast these lures on 10- or 12-lb. Trilene Big Game on a spinning rod. A good setup is a 7-foot medium-action Fenwick spinning rod paired with a Penn Conflict 3000 spinning reel. As the fish move deeper, look for the downline to take over. Spool up a Penn Fathom Line Counter reel with 15-lb. Trilene Big Game on a Shakespeare medium-light action striper rod. Tie on a Capt. Mack’s 2-oz. Swivel Sinker, a 4-foot leader of 15-lb. 100% Trilene Fluorocarbon and a 1/0 Gamakatsu Octopus hook. Herring from the local tackle shops will be the key bait. Look for the stripers on your electronics before you drop baits. You can use traditional 2D sonar or Down Imaging to see these fish. Great electronics like the Humminbird units are a must. You can see your bait swim around the sinker. Overall, June is usually a great month on Lanier for stripers. The spawn will be over and the striper metabolism is wide open. See you on the water.”

Stripers: Capt. Ron Mullins, of The Striper Experience, reports, “June means the fun is over, at least the fun of watching Captain Mack’s Perfect Planer Boards skipping across the lake and drag screaming flatlines bent double behind the boat. It’s downline time on Lanier and the excitement of four to six rods buried under the boat and the Humminbird SOLIX looking like someone threw a can of SpaghettiOs on the screen is just ramping up. Downlines are very simple rigs to set up. Rods are 7.5-foot Okuma Striper Rods that have a very fast action, Okuma Coldwater 203 Line Counter reels with 17-lb. Hi-Seas mono main line. Attach a 1.5- to 2-oz. Captain Mack’s Swivel Sinker to 5 or 6 feet of 10- to 12-lb. Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon leader and tie on a No. 1 or No. 2 Gamakatsu circle hook. We will be adjusting leader length and line test as the summer progresses, but this will be the rig for bait fishing until November. Stripers will start to get in bigger schools this month as they start to move to the south end looking for cooler, better-oxygenated water. More fish on less water means bigger groups. The feeding areas they are looking for are main lake and major creek pockets that have big bowls toward the back of them that have 40 to 60 feet of water. The stripers will be using these areas to push bait into and essentially trapping herring and shad in these bowls so that they cannot escape back to the big water. Move around in these pockets with your Minn Kota Ulterra i-Pilot Link at 0.4-0.6 mph looking for multiple fish with your Humminbird electronics with your downlines 20 to 30 feet down. Once you see a few fish, hit your Spot-Lock button, and dangle your herring in front of them and start tapping the deck with your thump stick and get ready. Take a look back at last year’s Lanier striper report at www.gon.com/fishing/georgia-fishing-reports/lake-lanier for what a thump stick looks like. Heck, look back at those for great historical info as well. Don’t put your herring pitching rods away either. Put a small No. 7 split-shot on your main line in front of the swivel and drag these behind the boat about 50 feet back with your downlines. These flatlines will get you an extra bite or two on the fish that haven’t gone deep yet and will drift down when you hit Spot-Lock and give you a couple more baits in the water. Remember, today all you need to do is ask for forgiveness for all of the ways you have messed up in your life and Christ will forgive it all.”

Crappie: Capt. Josh Thornton reports, “Crappie fishing is good. The hot bite target zone is 10 to 15 feet deep. The crappie are on the docks and also can be found on open-water brushpiles and blowdowns. I always put out a crappie minnow. If you have LiveScope or ActiveTarget, set the minnows just above the fish. Right now I am setting the minnows around 10 to 12 feet deep. For best results, use a live minnow. Look under docks that are in 20 to 40 feet of water near a main channel and have brush or structure. Use your electronic charts to locate these areas. Remember crappie love the shade, so cast into the shadows of a dock. Try different jig colors and styles that can be used for short casting, vertical jigging, trolling or dock shooting. When dock shooting, the biggest fish are usually the first to hit. Let your jig sink and give it time to get down to the fish and retrieve your jig slowly. The most productive jig colors for me are chartreuse and green (blue grass) and the white with chartreuse tail (monkey milk). I’m using ATX Lure Companies plastics that can now be purchased at Sherry’s Bait & Barbecue or The Dam Store. I use the K9 5-lb. test high visibility yellow braid for my line (unless I am using a bobber) and a Piscifun reel on a  ACC Crappie Stix. I use Garmin LiveScope and the Navionics Boating app. Find me on Facebook and like my page @crappieonlanier.”