Lake Oconee Fishing Report June 2012

Oconee: Level: 0.1 feet below full pool. Temp: Low 80s. Clarity: Light stain.

Bass: Eric Perkins reports, “Look for a good early morning topwater bite on main-lake walls first thing. I like a prop-style bait or a popping bait such as a Rico or Zell Pop and a white or black Lunker Lure buzzbait. After the sun gets up, you can either skip and flip a Net Boy Baits Flipp’N Jig under main-lake docks or fish a shaky head under the same docks. If you have any mayflies, a black/brown Net Boy jig with a Zoom Pro Chunk is hard to beat pitched and skipped around them. There have been a ton of mayflies lately, and some good fish have found them.”

Crappie: Guide Al Basset reports, “Fish are holding in deeper water over brushpiles, standing timber and deep drop-offs. Night fishing under the bridges and in the timber has started to pick up and will be good though the summer months. Use your Lowrance HDS and LSS-2 to find the fish on the brushpiles or the deep drop-offs before you start fishing. Mark the area where you find the fish holding with a marker, and either use live bait or cast to the area using Jiffy Jigs Super Grubs. When you find the fish, work the area very good as the fish will school up in big schools during this time of year. If you plan to keep fish, make sure you have ice on hand to put these fish on before they can spoil.”

Linesides: Guide Doug Nelms reports, “We are getting into our early summertime bite already. You can still catch lots of linesides down at the dam when the pumpback is going on by dropping live shad to the bottom. The umbrella-rig bite will be taking off this month, and on some days it is just silly how much the stripers love these things. I use a 3-oz. Capt. Macks four-arm fully loaded. Two more things: The tailrace bite should become red hot any day now, as stripers swim north in Sinclair to get below Wallace Dam. The oxygenated water is paramount for their survival, and they will stack up in the current and become very easy to catch. Remember to wear PFD when fishing below the dam. Finally, there will be a large number of fish going up the Apalachee and Oconee rivers looking for cooler water. This is specialized fishing that requires a boat that can run in shallow water. When you find deeper holes, drop down live bait and hang on.” Guide Mark Smith reports, “As of May 24, the striper fishing on Oconee is still good to very good. The fish are hitting downlined shad on the south end of the lake. Schools have been showing up at the pipeline, Double Branches and still at the dam. The dam bite is a very early morning bite. Humps on the south end of the lake also have fish on them. As the water temp increases, I will start pulling the umbrella rig on the south end of the lake. Look for this to start when the water temp climbs to the mid 80s. The U-rig bite in June is some of the best striper fishing of the year on Oconee.”