About Dawson County news. (Dawsonville, Georgia) 2015-current | View Entire Issue (March 11, 2020)
2B I DAWSON COUNTY NEWS I dawsonnews.com Wednesday, March 11,2020 LAKE LANIER FISHING REPORT: Start around rocky points to catch bass ERIC ALDRICH Columnist Lake Lanier’s water level is at 1075.57 or 4.57 over the full pool level of 1,071 and it is rising again. Water tempera tures remain in the low 50’s. Note that many of the CORPS boat ramps still remain closed due to high water conditions. The main lake and creeks mouths below Browns Bridge are clear on the main lake and slightly stained in the coves and finger pockets. The backs of the creeks and the inflow from the rivers remain very stained to muddy in some places. The Chattahoochee River below Buford Dam is clear. Check generation schedules before heading out to the river at (770) 945-1466. Bass fishing has been hit and miss. Some anglers are scoring some big limits, while others are struggling. With all the water above the normal banks, the fish have been scattered in the shallows but a little more grouped up out deep. Many patterns are working. Keep an open mind and get out and go fishing. Early in the day, there have been some good fish up shallow on the points and humps. Most of the reef pole markers are in about 12-foot of water and they can clue you in to the key locations where bass will be feeding early in the day. Cast moving lures like a SPRO RkCrawler, Little John MD, Strike King Series 4 or even a McStick 110. Work your crank baits slow and steady. Try to get them to dig at or close to the bottom. If you are casting a Jerk Bait, use a jerk and long-pause retrieve as this seems to be working best. Most of your strikes on the jerk bait will occur on the pause. In the stained or muddy water up lake and in the back of the creeks, a spinner bait or even a Blue Heron Lures Chatterbait worked around docks, laydowns or brush has been working well for trigger ing reaction bites. Bass often feel a lure before they actually see it, especially in off-colored water. Try casting lures that put out a lot of vibration, if you’re fish ing up lake where its stained or muddy. Usually the bass will be stag ing in 15-20 feet of water right now, but 25-feet seems to be a good place to target with the high water. Rocky drop-offs, leading into the spawning coves and brush piles located on main lake points and humps, are all good places to probe with shaky heads, Ned Rigs, jigs, smaller swim baits or even an under spin like a Fish Head Spin rigged with a 3 1/2-inch Big Bites Suicide Shad. Remember that ditches and small channels that feed into large flats in the pockets are bass highways. Spotted and Largemouth bass use these concave bottom con tours to move from shallow to deep. Spring is approaching soon. These fish want to move shallow, but colder water tem peratures are keeping them deeper. You can bet they are lining up somewhere along these channels getting ready to migrate. Striper fishing has been decent, but the fish are staying a good bit deeper than is usual for this time of year. Main lake ditches, midway back in the lower lake creeks and even in the upper lake creeks and rivers are all holding fish right now. I prefer to fish the main lake where the water is clearer, but anglers should still keep an eye out for the mudlines that appear as the stained or muddy rain inflows enter the lake. The downline bite remains strong, but you need to find the large baitfish schools before stopping and dropping bait down to these deeper fish. Explore the ditch channels and pay attention to where they lead out into deeper water closer to the timberlines. Quality elec tronics, like my Lowrance 12 and 16-inch Carbon graphs, are a must for locating the large schools of bait and the stripers that are feasting upon them. Start out with your Lowrance Electronics set on a split screen showing Structure Scan (side imaging) and traditional 2/D, so you can see bait and fish both out to the sides and directly below the boat. With a huge 16-inch screen, I can also set up my map and Down Scan and basically have the equivalent of four 7-inch screens all in one. Run your boat around 5 mph so you can cover water and find fish quick ly. Pay attention to feeding gulls and loons to key you in on the most productive areas. Once you locate a large school of bait with stripers feeding on them, deploy your down lines at the same level where you mark fish. A good down line set up is a 1-2-ounce oval lead weight on your main line with a plastic bead and swivel. Tie a long 4-6-foot leader with a No. 1 or No. 2 Octopus hook with a nose-hooked live bait so that is swims naturally. I use 14-pound Sunline Natural Monofilament for my main line with a 12-pound Sunline Sniper Fluorocarbon Leader. Herring have worked best this week, followed by medi- um-to-large shiners as a close second. The night bite with Bomber Long A’s and SPRO McSticks has been a little slow to get going because water tempera tures haven’t really warmed up all winter. Look for this to improve as soon as we get some warmer weather and as the water warms up into the mid 50’s. I stay booked on the week ends several weeks out, but booking a night trip for catch ing stripers is a great way to spend a weeknight evening. We usually fish from 6-11 p.m. On a good night, we will catch enough to tire before then. My night trips cost $200. Email me if you want to be added to my list. I can email you once the bite gets hot. Crappie fishing, like bass fishing has been hit and miss. Different patterns are working, depending on where you fish. The deep-dock bite still seems to your best bet. Shoot very bright or very dark colored 1/16 to 1/32- ounce jigs under docks. Allow them to fall or pendulum deep down around brush in 15 to 25-feet. Using a bright colored line like Sunline Siglon Florescent Orange line will allow you to see the subtle tics when a bite occurs. There have also been some anglers who are catching crap pie under floats around the bridges both up lake and down lake. Use a slip bob ber set to 3-8 feet deep, rigged with a live shad or crappie minnow hooked through the back with a Gamakatsu No. 3 Aberdeen style hook. Bank Fishing: Striper fish ing from the banks can be very productive in the winter. That is why they get mentioned so often in these reports. Anglers can set up multiple rods to increase their odds. You can make inexpensive and effective rod holders out of PVC pipe by cutting them with one end cut at a 45-degree angle and the other cut straight. Make sure you use a PVC pipe that is large enough to hold your rod handle. You can fish live or cut bait on the bottom with a Carolina Rig (down line) or a live giz zard shad or large shiner under a slip bobber. The slip bobbers are a great choice when the wind is blowing at your back, out into the lake whereas the Carolina Rig bottom style set up works well. Set up as many rods as you can manage. You can put bells or elec tronic line alarms so that you get an audible alert. Not only will you catch stripers with these set ups, but you may also catch bass, catfish, crappie and even white bass, too. You don’t have to own a boat to have fun catching fish on Lake Lanier. Eric Aldrich is an outdoor writer, marketing specialist, guide and bass angler. He is currently book ing teaching trips for Lake Lanier's spotted and largemouth bass. Reports are based on personal experience and permission from a close network of friends. He would love to hear from readers, so please email him at esaldrich@ yahoo.com. Rememberto take a kid fishing. FROM 1B Soccer Photos by Jacob Smith Dawson County News Freshman Elijah Smith dribbles down the field against Chestatee High School on Friday night. girl’s prior successes were due to the team’s health, and their ability to rotate players in and keep fresh legs on the field. The loss on Friday moves the Lady Tigers to a 3-5-1 season. Hamby said the team will look to put this loss behind them and focus on their next match. “We just got off to a slow start and couldn’t recover,” Hamby said. “Things just kind of snowballed after that. It wasn’t what we were looking for but looking to get some more girls healthy next week.” Tigers The Tigers lost both games this week. On Tuesday, Mar. 3, they fell shorts against Cherokee Bluff 7-1. The match on Friday, Mar. 6 against the Chestatee High School War Eagles ended in a mercy rule, with a final score of 10-0. Dawson County senior and team co-captain Pablo Hernandez scored the Tiger’s lone goal of the week. The Tigers had two starters out sick on Tuesday’s match and two other start ers out of town. Before the game junior Rylan Steffens said that his team is starting to figure out what strategy is needed to come out of a game successful. Senior Maggie Wright strikes a free kick attempt on Friday night against Chestatee High School. BASEBALL FROM 1B Esports at the High School. Along with trying to attract local sponsors for the team, they want to provide the team with headsets to communicate with each other while playing, add computer keyboard cleaners, and even purchase jerseys for the team to wear while they are playing. However, the team agreed that the most impor tant purchase the school could make is actual gam ing PC’s for the team to use. Mac is currently in the process of dropping soft ware support for Rocket League, and Hyder said he thinks League of Legends will be the next game that Mac drops. “More of my friends would play if the comput ers were better,” Hyder said. “They don’t want to waste their time on slower gameplay and I don’t blame them.” More than 30 students filled out the official interest letter to join the eSports team, Tinsley said, but only eight showed up to the first meeting and joined the team. With the season beginning with four wins in a row, coach Tinsley said he thinks that as long as the success continues and the team gets all new gear, the eSports team will continue to grow at the high school. But according to the players, the team environ ment makes everything worth it. “I think what a lot of people get wrong is ‘Oh, it’s just a video game, why show up to practice?”’ Hyder said. “But coming together and getting to practice make us all better as a team, just like any other sport at the school.” Jacob Smith Dawson County News Dawson County High School students on the Tigers Esports Team focus on a League of Legends match on Tuesday, March 3. Tigers lose first games of season By Jacob Smith jsmith@dawsonnews.com The Dawson County Tigers base ball team lost their first two games of the season during Saturday’s double- header against the North Hall Trojans. The Tigers lost 12-0 in the first game on Saturday afternoon and then lost the second game 16-2, allowing ten runs in the final inning of that game. These losses come after the Tigers played at North Hall High School on Tuesday, Mar. 3 and won 2-0. During that game, Bo Lewis went 3-3 and scored both runs for the Tigers. Luke Mulberry had the only run batted in (RBI) for the Tigers. Ole Miss Commit Hudson Sapp pitched and only allowed one hit while striking out seven. In an interview previewing the series, Head Coach Dwayne Sapp said that they knew the Trojans would be one of the best teams that the Tigers would face all season. “We didn’t get any sort of momen tum so it was just a long day,” Sapp later said. The 9-2 Tigers will look to contin ue their overall success this season against the 7-4 Cherokee Bluff Bears. “Hopefully we respond well,” Sapp said. “I’m not sure. We’ll just have to see.” The series against the Bears began Monday, Mar. 9 at Dawson County High School. The Tigers lost that game 14-2, but the series will contin ue on Wednesday night. FROM 1B Smith Vanguard, where he covered sports and news from the North Georgia area. Smith, a native of Suwanee, said that he has always been interested in baseball and basket ball, and with his new position he’s able to share that interest with the world. “I couldn’t be more excited about my new position,” Smith said. I’ve known my entire life that I wanted my career to be centered around sports.” Contact Smith with story ideas and news tips at jsmith@dawsonnews.com or by call ing (706) 265 3384.
