Lake Oconee Fishing Reports – November 2020

Oconee: Level: Full pool. Temp: 72 in the mornings and up to 76 during the day. Clarity: Various levels of stain exist up the Apalachee, and heavy stain can be found in the Oconee River to the I-20 bridge. There is varying levels of water color from almost clear to light stain to the 44 bridge.

Bass: Tournament angler Karl Pingry reports, “The bait and the bass are scattered. The shad are located from the surface to 7 feet deep. Bluegill are still shallow, and there were mayflies on the grass and trees on Oct. 25! Grassbeds on the main lake and in the pockets are holding bass on the outside edges. Buzzbaits and plastics are producing the most bites. In addition, I’ve caught bass near the fronts of the pockets, as well as all the way in the back. Keep your eyes on the surface and on your graph. The bait will tell you when they are present. Bandit 100 and 200 crankbaits, spinnerbaits, small Rat-L-Traps and small buzzbaits are my baits of choice. I have not found a consistent bite on the docks. You’ll need a jig, shaky head and a creature bait. A shaky head with a worm worked for me on Sunday, Oct. 25. Let the bass tell you which one to use that day. Pay attention to where you get bit. That will let you be much more efficient fishing docks. The walkways of the docks seem to be better on most days. The other pattern I’ve found is isolated, overhanging limbs and grass growing out from the bank and into the water. A shaky head with a speed worm or something small with a curly tail or a small jig with a lively trailer are the baits to try. Laydowns are also a pattern, but not on consecutive days. Spinnerbaits or shaky heads are the baits of choice since the fish are suspended. Look for the shad to move all the way back in the pockets as the water cools and start their way out by the time November is over. If you are fishing deeper than 8 feet for most of the month, you are too deep. Most of your arsenal—topwater, spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, frogs, cranks, Rat-L-Traps, jigs and plastics are all going to work this month.”

Linesides: Capt. Doug Nelms reports, “November is the month when the gulls return to feed on shad and most of us striper fishermen began bird watching. If you’re running down the lake and you see them just sitting on top of the water, it will always pay you to stop and see why they are sitting there. Normally, directly under them will be huge schools of bait that are maybe a little too deep for them to feed on, but they are waiting for the stripers to began to push them up to the top. On the days that you see them flying and concentrating in a certain area, that’s when you can be sure the fish are feeding. There are a lot of different ways to catch stripers this time of year, but most of us will be throwing artificial lures. The small, three-arm A-rigs or Captain Mack’s Mini Macks are always a good choice when you see these feeding fish. I also use jigging spoons, Ripple Shads and Sassy Shads, most of them in white, on a good medium-action spinning rod that you can throw a mile. Every year I see anglers run too close to these birds and spook the fish. They fail to realize that these schools of stripers are huge and stretch out over the bottom of the lake more than they know. It is important to watch you graph instead of the birds when you are coming up on activity. As soon as you begin to mark fish, turn you boat off and start casting. You could be as far as 50 yards away from the activity, but the fish below you could be feeding hard. You want to look around the middle of the lake, all the way to the south end. There haven’t been many times I have seen the fish above I-20, so that increases your chances if you stay south. There always seems to be a huge group of fish that will be in the mouth of Sugar Creek. From there all the way to the dam, you never know what you will run into.”