About Dawson County news. (Dawsonville, Georgia) 2015-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 2020)
2B I DAWSON COUNTY NEWS I dawsonnews.com Wednesday, January 1,2020 LAKE LANIER FISHING REPORT: Start your day early for best chance at catching bass Lake Lanier’s water level is up from last week at 1,068.51 or 2.49 feet below the normal full pool of 1,071. Water temperatures remain in the lower 50’s. The main lake and creeks mouths are clear to slightly stained. The creeks and riv ers are clear to stained in some areas. The Chattahoochee River below Buford Dam is starting to clear, signaling the end of lake turnover. Check gener ation schedules before heading out to the river at 770-945-1466. Bass fishing remains productive and the fish are biting all day. The shallow and deep-ditch bite has been productive, as well as targeting rocky banks. Lake Lanier’s spotted bass popu lation is feasting on craw fish, shad and herring. Start you days in the shallow part of the ditches. The bass will be up close to the shore early in the day. You can get busy in a hurry, if you are fishing the right locations. Crawfish-colored crank baits worked around rocky banks is an awesome technique for catching bass. Cast a SPRO RkCrawler to the shore and allow this lure to bounce of the rocks as you retrieve it slow and steady. Try alternating a Fish Head Spin rigged with a Big Bites Suicide Shad or a SPRO McStick 110 around the shallow mouths of sub merged ditches. As the sun rises, the bass will tend to move out a little deeper around steep, rocky banks. You can stick with a crawfish colored crank bait or try dragging a «-ounce Strike King Prop Model jig with a Big Bites Fighting Craw trailer. I have been dipping the claws on my jigs in orange colored JJ’s Magic. ERIC ALDRICH Columnist JJ’s will add some scent to your lures plus it also mimics the orange colored appendages that Lake Lanier’s crawfish have in late fall and early winter. While a lot of bass are shallow targeting crawfish, many more can be found out deeper eating shad and herring. My Lowrance Carbon units are up to the task of finding fish in 25-55-feet deep. Make sure to keep an eye out for the tell-tale clouds of shad and herring. Many of the bass will be right on the bottom. You will usually see bait before you actually graph bass. Even if you only see bait, try dropping a Flex-It Spoon, a Ned Rigged TRD or a drop shot with a Lanier Baits Fruity Worm in Blue Lilly or Prizm colors. The whole graph may light up once you hook a fish and the rest of the school rises to chase the bass you have hooked. This fishing can be fast and furious. Make sure to unhook the fish and drop another lure down quickly. Other techniques will also produce bass in the winter. Texas Rigged Craws, rib bon tail worms or even a Senko will produce bites when you are around the fish. We have caught sever al bass off of docks by cast ing an Alabama Rig or Jerk Shad (fluke) style bait along the sides of the floats. The dark-colored floats will warm the docks on sunny afternoons. The fish can be surprising active around sunny docks. After dark, you can have the whole lake to yourself. The bass have been biting deep-diving crank baits around rocky banks after dark. Try the RkCrawler or Little John DD. Allow the lures to remain in contact with the bottom all the way back to the boat. Even though these lures are tech nically deep divers, they can be worked along the bottom from 2-20 feet deep. Striper fishing is good. These fish are biting a vari ety of baits and lures in a variety of depths and loca tions. Pick your favorite bait and locations and go catching. There has been a strong early-morning bite, so get out and be in your best locations by sunrise. Use your electronics to confirm that the fish are present. Gulls and loons are also a great indicator that the fish are active in an area, so keep an eye out for the birds. Whether you troll or pull live bait, it is better to fish your offerings slightly above where you mark fish. Stripers often move up but the seldom move down to attack their quarry. Trolling while watching your graph and looking for birds is a great way to cover water and to find and catch fish. Stripers can travel miles each day. When the stripers are targeting blue- back herring, they will often travel longer distances because herring move about quickly. When stripers are active ly feeding on smaller threadfin shad, they tend to stay put longer. You can set tle down and deploy your live bait lines in these areas. When threadfins are pres ent, you may be able to return to the same locations for days and catch fish. Get out your Captain Mack’s standard-sized umbrella rigs or get out your mini rigs and take them for a ride. Your Lowrance Electronics are extremely important tools for not only finding stripers, but also in determining what depth to fish you rigs. A lot of strip ers will be shallow early in the day, so under 20-feet is a good place to start. Deploy a full-sized umbrel la rig directly behind the boat and run your big motor at around 2 mph. If you are trolling the mini rigs, you can either pull them directly behind the boat or cover a wider path by adding a cou ple of planner boards. To control your speed and drift, troll with your electric trolling motor running from around 1 mph. Medium shiners seem to be the most productive live bait this week. Stock up on several dozen before head ing out to the lake. You can also throw a cast net to catch smaller threadfin shad, larger gizzard shad or blueback herring. Using the natural forage that the strip ers are already feeding on can often make a huge dif ference in your catch rates. Unless you are positive that you can net your own bait, it is a great insurance policy to purchase a couple of dozen medium shiners, her ring or trout just in case. There are a couple of ways to hook your live baits. If your boat is moving and you are fishing flat lines (just a hook with no weight), then hook your minnows through the lips so that they swim naturally. If your boat will be station ary and you are fishing down lines (a leader, swivel and heavy sinker), then you can hook your minnows through the back directly below the dorsal fin so that they fish upright below your boat. Some people pull bait fast, but it is best to control your drift and keep your boat moving at less than 1 mph when fishing live baits. Crappie fishing has been hit and miss. The crappie on Lake Lanier can be either shal low or deep in winter, depending on locations. I spoke with an angler this week who is catching crap pie on live crappie minnows fished 3 feet deep under a float in the rivers. Down lake have found the fish to be out deeper below docks with brush from 15 to 25-feet deep. I have also caught a cou ple way out deep while tar geting bass with a jigging spoon. The good news is that innovations in modem elec tronics, like my Lowrance Structure Scan, makes the hunt a whole lot easier. Determine which side of the boat you want to scan and set your Structure Scan screen to show only that side. This allows you to see only the left or right side an allows you to dedicate your entire screen to that side. I like to scan to the right- hand side of my boat sim ply because I can line up on upcoming targets better from the helm. Docks, lay- downs or bridge pilings are all worth looking at. Once you locate the crap pie, the best baits have been either smaller crappie min nows or tiny crappie jigs like a l/16th to l/32nd ounce Hal Fly. You can fish the min nows below a float or on a down line with a l/16th ounce split shot about a foot or two above the hook Bank Fishing: After what seemed to be a long time, the Chattahoochee River is starting to clear from the fall lake turnover. Fall turnover occurs on lakes when the warmer sur face layer cools down to the same temperature as the colder bottom layers. Lake Turnover or stratifi cation occurs on Lake Lanier in the fall and early winter. When lake turnover is occurring the Chattahoochee, the river flows a brownish-green color and when it’s over the water clears again making conditions prime for trout fishing. There are several parks below the dam, including the Buford Dam Trout Hatchery that are great plac es to take the family for a day of fishing. Lor families, you can pack a picnic and drive directly below Buford Dam. If you prefer to get away from the crowds, you can hike below the Dam, around the hatchery or you can park at Highway 20 or Settles Bridge. Trout will bite a variety or lures and bait right now. Remember that it is ille gal to fish with live bait below the Highway 20 Bridge. Com or worms fished on a bottom rig will work extremely well where live bait is legal. You can fly fish or spin fish with a vari ety or flies or spinners. The catching should be decent. Eric Aldrich is an outdoor writer, marketing specialist, guide and bass angler. He is currently booking teaching trips for Lake Lanier's spot ted and largemouth bass. Reports are based on per sonal experience and per mission from a close net work of friends. He would love to hear from his read ers, so please email him at esaldrich@yahoo.com Rememberto take a kid fishing. Dawsonville’s dominant decade: A New Year’s top-10 By Bob Christian Bchristian@dawsonnews.com Here in Dawsonville, we have always known that our small town is special, but 2019 may very well go down as the year that our hidden cor ner of the world burst onto the larger stage and became known to every one. Lrom Chase Elliott put ting us back on the NASCAR radar, to host ing a world level champi onship event, down to an almost sublime level of dominance in the local region, Dawson County has established itself as the place to be when it comes to sports. As always at this time of year, it is a good time to take a look back at the highlights of ten years of Dawson County athletics with a top-ten of the decade: 10. Pickle Ball comes to Dawson One of the fastest growing sports in the country, pickleball is a mish-mash of ping-pong, tennis and badminton that swept the nation in 2019. Dawson County got in on the action In March when volunteer coach Celia Otwell founded the first pickleball team in con junction with the Parks and Recreation depart ment. Less than six months after the team’s founding, Dawson County sent 11 players to the District tournament with seven of those players qualifying to go onto the State tour nament in September. In the program’s first year, the team captured a total of 4 District Titles, 1 State Title and two State Runners-up. 9. Atlanta Motorsports Park Photos by Bob Christain Dawson County News Above: The 2019 Dawson County Pickle Ball team. Left top: 95 Drivers pose for a group pic ture at the INEX Legend Series World Championship on Nov. 3 at Atlanta Motorsports Park. Left bottom: Track and Field pole vaulter Bri Ray crosses the bar at the 7-AAA Regional Finals in 2018. host INEX World Road-Course Championship Leaturing a field of teams representing the United States, Linland, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Italy, Greece and Germany the Atlanta Motorsports Park hosted the INEX Legend Car Series World Championship over the weekend of Nov. 1-3. The three-day event started with an open prac tice session on Lriday, Nov. 1, giving the drivers the opportunity to learn the 16 turns of the 2-mile AMP course. Saturday featured qualifying runs in all four divisions fol lowed by heat races to determine the starting line-up for Sunday’s championship race. After the success of the first-time event, Atlanta Motorsports Park will become a part of the per manent rotation along with Sonoma, California and Las Vegas, Nevada as a hosting venue for the prestigious event. 8. Track and Field The Dawson County High School Track and Lield program, under head coach Aaron Haynes, put together one the most remarkable sea son in all of sports in 2019. Both the men’s and women’s varsity teams finished the regular sea son undefeated at 11-0. The men going on to cap ture the first regional championship in school history, while the women See Top 15B
