Well, it’s getting hot. Largemouth and spotted bass, crappie, stripers, and the few walleye are deep and difficult, major reservoirs are full of skiers and their boats, houseboats, sailboats, runabouts and those little single manned hotshot bullet boats. What to do?
Two things:
- First transfer over to night fishing. What’s your target? Easiest target is boat houses with lights shining down into the water. What is happening that makes it so valued? The lights attract the plankton, the plankton attracts the shad and herring and finally the shad and herring attract the game fish. All you do is toss in a live shad, minnow or even a bucktail jig and hold on. Wanna catch 10 instead of eight? What can you do to make it more productive? Keep quiet. No dropping rod box or live well lids and do not have a radio blaring loud music or even a radio podcast of a local fishing show. Then also, make your casts from a distance. In other words, stand back and keep your boat’s shadow away from the dock. Which docks? Lighted, as mentioned, then top it off with the ones with brush below. You can find them if you try.
- Secondly, go up the rivers into current. I mean WAY up the rivers that feed the lake. Not just the northern areas, I mean the flowing currents. No summer partiers up there and the gamefish do not know there’s a lake below therefore they spend their lives as river fish. Lastly, the water will be colored and not so clear so the fish will be more aggressive and hungry.
- OK, three. Visit the mountain streams of Georgia for rainbows, browns and the little brookies. If you did not know, the brook trout is the only native Georgia trout. Rainbows and browns are transplants, not that I’m complaining. It’ll be cool wading the mountain stream, you’ll rarely see another fisherman, the catch tastes great and finally, again, no skiers or houseboats. Where do you find these trout streams? The internet is awash with recommendations, Toccoa, Soque, Chattahoochee, the list is long and easily reached.
- OK, four. If you must fish the major reservoirs during daylight, pick one with a lake and dam upstream. From your lake or river, travel there and devote a day to it. You’ll learn how to make the best of that of the waters that flow from the dam. I’ve done that at Sinclair, Russell and many others. It provides a daytime fishery and again, not to repeat myself too many times, no skiers or houseboats.
Give it a try. Only thing to add is “take a child along” and make a memory for him or her.