About Dawson County news. (Dawsonville, Georgia) 2015-current | View Entire Issue (July 31, 2019)
2B I DAWSON COUNTY NEWS I dawsonnews.com Wednesday, July 31,2019 LAKE LANIER FISHING REPORT Cooler air has made the bass bite better 'The bass after dark will actively feed when the sun goes down. Try casting a deep diving SPRO Little John DD 90 around brush on the points and humps. These crankbaits will run as deep as 25-feet deep. Other lures like a black spinner bait or a jig are also good choices to cast in these same areas.' Lake Lanier’s water level is just above full pool at 1,071.17 or .17 feet above the normal full pool of 1,071. Lake surface temper atures dropped slightly with the cooler air temperatures and are in the mid 80’s. Main lake is clear and the creeks are slightly stained. The water in the rivers is slightly stained. The Chattahoochee River below Buford Dam is clear, but it will muddy up quickly in the event of heavy thunderstorms. Check generation sched ules before heading out to the river at 770-945-1466. Bass fishing took a slight turn for the better with the cooler air temperatures fol lowing the tropical front that blew through earlier this week. That being said, you may still have to work to catch a limit of bass. The majority of Lake Lanier’s spotted bass population is relating to deeper water. The spotted bass are relating to the thermocline at 27-feet deep. Plan to uti lize your Lowrance Electronics and keep moving until you located active fish. These fish will appear as long, wavy lines when to boat is standing still. They can also appear as arcs when your boat is moving. Plan on cycling through your waypoints as you look for fish around brush, rocks and offshore timberlines. The bass will feed better during power generation down lake, while windy con ditions may be more important up the lake. Locate the offshore brush and tim ber from 20-40 feet deep. The topwater action has been a little slow but you should still plan on casting a Salt Water Chug Bug or Gunfish over the best tar gets before moving in to exploit it with a drop shot, Ned Rig and even a jig. We have also been fishing the shallow water in the backs of the creeks and in the rivers to catch largemouth bass. Start out casting a buzz bait or Whopper Plopper early in the day. As the sun rises, switch over to a Jig and target banks that have deep water or channels swings close to the bank. Largemouth bass feed on bream in the summer time and it may surprise you how well these fish will be biting. Try getting out after dark to enjoy some decent fishing for spotted bass. The bass after dark will actively feed when the sun goes down. Try casting a deep diving SPRO Little John DD 90 around brush on the points and humps. These crankbaits will run as deep as 25-feet deep. Other lures like a black spinner bait or a jig are also good choic es to cast in these same areas. Striper fishing remains very good and this is that time of year when the new reports start to sound the same as the pre vious week’s reports. The stripers are deeper than the thermocline, which is set up at 27-feet deep. You can actually see a definitive line on your Lowrance Fish Finders where water density changes, and also where the plankton and bait relate to this level where the hotter sur face layer meets the colder bottom layers. My Carbon 12 and 16-inch units make finding these deeper schools of stripers much easier. You may still have to search around to find stripers because these fish are always on the move as they chase the fast-moving blueback herring. Try troll ing a large SPRO Bucktail with a Big Bites Suicide Shad trailer as you search for the deeper schools. These stripers have set up from 35 to 40-feet on down the bottom. Follow the drains and smaller creek channels out into deeper water and you should locate the arcs and wavery lines that indicate stripers. Make sure you have plenty of herring and that your bait tanks are set up correctly to keep your baits live ly for a day of fishing. Your local tackle stores can help you to make sure you have the correct setup to keep your baits lively. Drop your herring with heavy two- ounce weights so as to get your baits down quickly through the hot upper layer of water into the cool lower layer where they will stay lively. Switch out your baits every 10 minutes. Before you retrieve your herring, make sure to drop them down to the bottom and then power reel them back to the surface to trigger reaction strikes. While fishing down lines, also try power reeling spoons or SPRO Buck Tails up through the schools for some arm breaking strikes. A Pen Parker or Fake Forks spoon mimics herring or giz zard shad and stripers can’t resist striking these lures as they speed past their heads. Crappie: Set out Hydro Glow Fights around the bridges after dark. Use store bought crappie minnows, medium shin ers or better yet, native spot tail min nows on down lines and place them down 15-feet deep. Adjust the depths of your lines until you start getting bites. Bank fishing: The bream was many anglers first introduction to the sport of fishing. These smaller, hard-fighting pan fish are still a great way to get kids “hooked” into the sport. These fish are easy to target and a bunch of fun. All you need is a can full of worms, a hook and a bobber and you are ready to go catching. Bream inhabit shallow water close to the bank on Fake Fanier, farm and subdivision ponds and even in small creeks and rivers. Thread a worm onto a small Aberdeen Style hook with a bobber set a couple of feet above your bait and you are ready to go. Cast to objects like rocks, trees or docks in shallow water. If bream are present, it should not take long to catch one. 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 FROM 1B NASCAR cut into Joey Fogano’s points lead, and seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson grab bing a valuable stage two victo ry to pull within twelve points of the final playoff spot. Johnson, who finished fif teenth, remains just outside the playoff picture in 17th place and is still looking for his first win of the year, announced after the race that Cliff Daniels would be taking over as the crew chief for No. 48. Daniels was instrumental in Johnson’s 2016 Cup Series championship and the team hopes to recapture that spark before the end of the regular season. Hendricks Motorsport team mate Chase Elliott, who secured his spot in the postseason with a win at Talladega, continued his summer woes with a pair of acci dents over the weekend and a last place finish to continue a seven week stretch that can only be described as terrible as he has wracked up 3 DNFs and finished 20th or worse in five races. “It’s been a rough month, lit tle over a month now. It’s just an unfortunate rough patch,” Elliott said. “I think we were running in the top-10 there when we crashed. I feel like we were finally getting our car going. I thought we were doing a good job of it. I don’t really know what to do about that, but just move on.” Elliott will look to reset his season at the site of his first cup series victory when the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series goes Bowling at the Glen on Sunday, Aug. 4 at Watkins Glen International for the second road course race of the season. FROM 1B Band include some Imagine Dragons, since that was the theme, but it became too much.” Much like any sports team, the marching band has been challenged by attrition due to graduation and the lack of experi ence in this year’s version of the group is evident in the large contingent of eighth-grade musicians. “We graduated some really good kids last year,” Arnold said. “Over a third of the band is from the eighth grade. Which is good, but it slows the process.” For the 75 members of the band, the last two weeks has involved repeating the same series of steps over and over again as each section learned their place on the field and how to move from formation to forma tion in rhythm to the music. All while playing the music to which they marched. “It’s a challenge,” Arnold said. “After a cou ple of years, they know the system, and we really rely on them to teach the new people.” When football season comes to an end the band retires from the field but continues to perform in a series of winter and spring concerts. “It’s a year-long com mitment,” Arnold said. “Marching band leads to the concert program which allows us to pro duce better musicians, which leads to a better product on the field.” Fooking ahead to the 2019 season and beyond, Arnold expressed excite ment about the young nature of this year’s pro gram and the increase in participation he has seen over the last few seasons in Dawson County, and he was confident in his ability to expand the band to fill the confines of Tiger Stadium in the near future. “If you look at the size of our stage, 120-yards by 53-yards, we have a big stage to fill,” Arnold said. “With a few more classes like we had this year, 30 to 40 kids at a time, we can easily grow to 120 to 'If you look at the size of our stage, 120-yards by 53-yards, we have a big stage to fill. With a few more classes like we had this year, 30 to 40 kids at a time, we can easily grow to 120 to 125 in the next few years.' Chuck Arnold DCHS band directgor % A - 7% \ * &*■ jp ' <$*£§. '■ ,* * V ^ The flag line of the DCHS Marching Band lines up July 25 as they prepare to rehearse the upcoming fall show "Dragons and Legends." Photos by Bob Christian Dawson County News Trombones move and play in unison as the DCHS Marching Band rehearses July 25 at Tiger Stadium. 125 in the next few years.” for their first half-time Habersham Central in the The DCHS Marching performance on Aug. 23 opening game of the 2019 Band will take the field when the Tigers take on football season. SAVE THE DATE! 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