About Dawson County news. (Dawsonville, Georgia) 2015-current | View Entire Issue (July 10, 2019)
2B I DAWSON COUNTY NEWS I dawsonnews.com Wednesday, July 10,2019 LAKE LANIER FISHING REPORT Biggest bass caught in deeper water Lake Lanier’s water level remains healthy at 1,071.22 or .22 feet above the normal full pool of 1,071. Lake sur face temperatures are in the mid-80’s. The main lake is clear. Creeks are slightly stained. North of the Dawsonville Highway bridge, the water is slightly stained to stained. The Chattahoochee River below Buford Dam is clear. Check generation schedules before head ing out to the river at 770-945-1466. Bass fishing rates good to very good. We have found some shallow fish in the mornings around banks located close to deeper water. Once the sun rises, we head away from the banks. Lake Lanier’s spotted bass are settling in to their offshore haunts around brush locat ed from 15-30 feet deep. Start your day casting topwater plugs. Keep one locked and loaded all day long. Larger chugging or popping plugs have been working best. Cast a Saltwater Chug Bug or a larger Pop-R to the attention of bass that are posi tioned in the deeper brush. Some days we have seen fish thrashing the surface, even during the hottest part of the day so keep a topwater plug on deck. Running and gunning and hitting as many brush piles as possible is the way to go. My Lowrance Carbon 12 and 16 allow me to quickly find these offshore honey holes. If you set your Structure Scan down at 60 feet, you can scan a 120-foot wide patch. For the most part, users should just trust factory settings. Reducing the width of your side image will allow you to see you more details. Cast a larger topwater plug over the brush before moving in to dissect it with your drop shot rig. Other lures may work better when casting to the brush. The Spybait has been producing some nice fish. Cast your spy baits past the brush and allow them to sink for 10 sec onds. Then, simply reel this finesse lure with a slow and steady retrieve. These tiny lures catch big bass. I have also been casting a SPRO Little John DD and worked it through the brush to trigger bites, even when the fish are inactive. For the most part, the drop shot bite has been the way to catch lots of bass. I have been using a Lanier Baits Fruity Worm or the smaller Runt and have had great suc cess. Dip your worms in chartreuse JJ’s Magic to add some scent and color to your lures. Look for fish in the brush with your electronics, but drop down into the brush, even if you do not see fish. Night fishing has been decent. Either hit the steeper rocky banks with a deep-diving crank bait or large spinner bait or target the same brush you have fished during the day. A black-and-blue jig works very well in the brush. Add rattles to your jig to attract fish to your lure. Striper fishing remains very good. That being said, you must find the active schools of stripers to enjoy success. Start your trip in the back of a creek channel or large ditch and follow the channel out until you mark fish on your Lowrance units. You should encounter stripers somewhere along the way. Fish appear as arcs when the boat is moving or wavy lines when your boat is stationary. Almost all of the stripers have moved offshore in water deeper than the thermo- cline (which is around 25 to 30 feet deep). The majority of stripers will be from 35-70 feet deep close to the creek and river chan nels. Set your Lowrance units on a split screen of 2D and Structure Scan and you will be able to see directly below the boat and out to both sides. In this instance, set the scan area at 200 feet which allows me to scan a 400-foot wide path. Stick with the same down line and spoon techniques that have been working. Purchase as many herring as you can keep alive. The fishing can be fast and furious. Set your down lines to just above or at the level where you are marking fish. If your herring are lively, it shouldn’t take long to get a strike. Switch out herring every 10 minutes. Ben Parker spoons have been triggering lots of bites this week. Drop these spoons to below the level where you see fish, then reel them as fast as possible up through the school. A high-seed reel is a welcome asset when using the power reeling technique. Power reeling will produce some arm breaking strikes so make sure your drag is set correctly. Use 20-pound Sunline Monofilament. This line stretches and is extremely strong, which is important when a big striper hits your lure. The night bite around dock lights has slowed a little as the majority of stripers remain deeper after dark. Your best bet after dark is to anchor in a creek channel and drop a Hydro Glow light below your boat. I like to chum the area with some cut bait. This will pull in stripers. Crappie: Your best bet for crappie fish ing is to fish after dark. Anchor under bridges with at least 25 feet of water depth. Put out lights which attract bait fish and the predators that eat them. Drop crappie min nows on down line (just a hook, bait and a medium-sized split shot) or cast small crappie jigs around the outer edges of your lights Bank fishing: My daughter used to get bored with me while bass fishing but there was one fish that would bite all day long — Bream. The bream stay relatively shal low during the summer and they can keep kids entertained. All you need is a Zebco 33 and a hook, bobber and earth worm or cricket. If you use crickets, then add a small split shot about six inches above your hook. Bream can be found along the banks that have laydown trees or rocks. You can also throw out bread or cracker crumbs to get these fish to come to your location. Your kids may enjoy feeding the bream as much as they do catching them. This weekend will be busy on Lake Lanier and these same techniques will work on farm ponds, subdivision ponds and even in local rivers and streams. Eric Aldrich is an outdoor writer, marketing specialist and bass angler. Reports are based on personal experience and permission from a close network of friends. Contact him at esaldrich@yahoo.com or visit his website at aldrichfishing.com. ERIC ALDRICH Columnist Bob Christian Dawson County News LiamTaylor takes the lead July 6 in his heat of the 25-ft. freestyle at the final tournament of the summer. FROM 1B Racers over two days to accommo date the size of the league both days continued deep into the afternoon as a dozen teams descended on Ruby Fulbright Natatorium. “Some of these teams have over 150 kids on their rosters,” Head Coach Stephanie Morgan said. “It makes it impossible to do all in one day.” Morgan also talked about the effects of team size on the scoring system and the need to emphasize a different mindset as the leader of a smaller team. “With all the kids on their rosters, even if all of them fin ish last, those team will still have a scoring advantage,” Morgan said. “But an athlete is an athlete. Some of our kids play other sports like soccer, football, track and then sum mer swim league, but none swim year-round, and they still come here and compete at a high level.” The younger swimmers stood out in particular on Saturday morning as Liam Taylor captured a blue-rib bon with a first-place heat finish in the 8U 25-ft free style and Micah Jones wracked up the tournament’s second-highest individual point total from the 6U bracket. Kirby becomes the only Racer in action July 12 at the GRPA State Finals in Tifton. FROM 1B Dawson Dead Week must be observed, as fol lows: Schools are prohibited from par ticipating in voluntary workouts, camps and/or clinics, weight training or com petitions during the week (Sunday through Saturday) in which the Fourth of July falls each year.” This year “Dead Week” started June 30 and lasted through July 7, and the stadium, fields, weight rooms and gym nasiums of Dawson County High School echoed with silence as athletes and coaches enjoyed some well- deserved time off before the official start of the fall season. According to their website the GHSA traces its history back more than 100 years to 1904, when Dr. Joseph S. Stewart founded an athletic organization in Temple that, in 1908, became the GHSA, which has since grown to cover literary along with a wide-array of coed sports throughout Georgia in keeping with their mission statement: “The objective of the GHSA organiza tion shall be the promotion of education in Georgia from a mental, physical, and moral viewpoint, to standardize and encourage participation in athletics, and to promote sportsmanship and an appreciation for and study of music, speech, and other fine arts through Region and State competitions.” The Dawson County Tigers football team will be the first team back in action as they begin conditioning for the 2019 campaign on July 25. The fall sea son officially gets under way for foot ball, volleyball, softball, cross-country and cheerleading on July 30. The Lady Tigers softball team will open competition with the earliest com petition start date of Aug. 3, followed by the cheerleaders on Aug. 4, volley ball and cross-country on Aug. 6 and, finally, football opening their season Aug. 17. FROM 1B NASCAR the oncoming drivers and the result ing carnage ultimately tallied 18 cars. Six, including Chase Elliott whose No. 9 Napa Chevy had been running third, were unable to return. Kurt Busch emerged as the leader and with dark clouds moving over the speedway, he indicated that he was going to stay on the track for as long as possible under the yellow flag. As the skies continued to darken it looked as if the strategy was going to pay off until the one-lap to go signal was given on lap 127. Busch, followed by a small group of drivers, immediately headed into pit-row for fuel only to see the yellow flag come back out less than half-a- lap later as the cars entered the back- stretch. Despite cutting the pit-stop as short as possible, Busch re-entered the track in tenth place where he ulti mately finished as a moment later the red-flag flew, and the race effectively ended with Haley in the lead. The chaotic finish was a dramatic change from the beginning of the race as it was immediately apparent that the team tactics that proved so suc cessful for Chevrolet and Team Hendricks Motorsports at Talladega would be on full display. From the green flag, Logano held his inside lane as team Ford filled in behind him to push the Team Penske No. 22 to the front of the line. The strategy led to a Ford driver, primarily Fogano, leading all but one lap of the first stage of the race. The final lap featured an amazing battle between Team Penske and Roush Fenway Racing as Ricky Stenhouse Jr. broke formation to challenge for the stage win but ultimately pushed Fogano to the stage victory past Team Penske teammate Kevin Harvick. The concept of manufacturer coop eration was introduced to NASCAR by Toyota in 2016 to great effect as it effectively smashed Chevrolet’s stran glehold on the Manufacturer’s Cup. Toyota won the Manufacturer’s Cup again in 2017 before Ford beat them at their own game to win last year. Chevy used the tactic at this year’s running of Talladega when, led by Elliott the manufacturer swept the top-three spots, and it appeared they were in a good position to win with the strategy again as the second stage closed on a tightly disciplined column of Chevy’s pulling away from the pack to give Dillon the second stage and Chevy returned the favor with a 1-4 sweep of their own. Ultimately each driver is an indepen dent entity with their own group of peo ple that are counting on them to win, and as each stage comes to a close, driv ers will employ their own strategy if they truly believe they have a shot at the checkered flag, but the new tactics seem to give team drivers the best chance of having that shot as evidenced by Hendricks Motorsports grabbing sec ond and third place despite losing two drivers to the “Big One.” The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series brings all of its thunder and, hopefully, a lot less lightning to Kentucky Speedway on July 13 for the Quaker State 400 presented by Walmart.
