About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 24, 2020)
SPORTS Bill Murphy Sports Editor | 770-718-3415 | sports@gainesvilletimes.com Unties gainesvilletimes.com Friday, January 24, 2020 LAKE LANIER FISHING REPORT HIGH SCHOOL BASKCTBALL Expect bite for crappie to improve BY ERIC ALDRICH For The Times Lake Lanier’s water level is just barely under full pool at 1,070.83 feet, which is .17 feet below the full pool of 1,071. Water tem peratures have fallen from last week into the upper 40s. The main lake and creek mouths are clear to slightly stained, and the creeks and rivers are slightly to very stained from recent rains. The Chattahoochee River below Buford Dam is mostly clear. Check generation sched ules before heading out to the river by calling 770-945-1466. Bass fishing has been a little tougher with the colder weather that blew in last week. The water temperatures fell into the upper 40s after the cold fronts blew in. The shallow water fishing really slowed down a lot but the deeper bite should really turn on. Since the water temperatures fell into the 40s, most of the fish we have boated have come from water in 25 to 55 feet deep. We have been concentrating on the bluff walls and deep ditches where rock and wood are present. Bottom bumping lures like jigs, drop shots or just a plain crawdad imitator on a heavy stand up jig head have all been scoring a few fish. My go to lure this past week has been a Big Bites Yo Momma or Fighting Frog on a l/4th-ounce Big Bites Fintwist stand up jig head. Cast these bottom bumping lures out and stair step them down the drops. Keep a drop shot ready to pick off any fish that appear on your electronics. Target steep transition areas where clay meets rock or where small rocks and pebbles meet larger bedrock. Pay close attention to the depth and loca tion where you catch your fish. In the winter, bass tend to congregate in schools around deep drops. Make repeated casts to produc tive areas. To be successful at fishing deep, it is imper ative to employ the tools that we modern anglers are fortunate enough to have at our disposal. The large 12 and 16-inch screens on my Lowrance Electronics allow me to see both bass and bait fish. I can concentrate on high percentage areas and ignore the other 90% of locations that seem to be devoid of fish in winter. Once you locate the bass, it pays to use the most sensitive rod and line available. I fish a Shimano or Abu Garcia Baitcast reel spooled with Sunline Fluorocarbon line along with a super sensitive Kissel Krafts Custom Rod. I can slow down and almost count the rocks as my lure descends down the drops. Most of the bites in winter will be very soft and all you will feel is pressure. An old fishing adage says hook sets are free, so when in doubt, set the hook! In winter, the moving fronts and air tem peratures will be up and down, so keep an open mind. On sunny days, the rocks and dock floats will warm the water around them and bass may gravitate to these areas on warm afternoons. Keep an assortment of crank baits, jerk baits, spoons or small swimbaits or even a spy bait on deck. Testing different techniques will often allow you to catch bass on something the fish are not “supposed to be doing” in cold water. Stripers fishing has been a little sketchy this past week, with the cold fronts we have encountered. Winter fishing can be feast or famine. When the wind blows, it can affect your fish ing or just make it tough on anglers because it’s so darn cold! Add to that the rain inflow on the north end and in the backs of some main lake creeks have the water pretty stained from recent rain inflow. The good news is that these conditions often concentrate stripers and the bait they are feeding upon. Set up your Structure Scan and idle produc tive areas. Check areas where shallow ditches meet deeper creek or river channels. Check in the mouths of the pockets and mid way back into the creeks. Visually scan the water and look for areas where stained inflow water meets the clearer lake water. The photo qualities I see on my Lowrance Units can often key me the type of fish that are down there. Don’t stop until you locate the bait and stripers! With lake temperatures falling quickly as they have this past week, the shad and herring will slow down and some will even die off. These conditions allow stripers prime oppor tunities for an easy meal. Determine the depth where you are marking fish and use down lines or flat lines depending on where the fish are positioned in the water column. Live herring and small trout have been the best baits to use, but don’t be afraid to search for a big bite with a large trout or gizzard shad set under a balloon. Don’t give up the trolling bite. Stripers will strike umbrella rigs any time of the year, and winter can be the most productive time to pull them. With the moving fronts, stripers often move around from shallow to deep water and migrate from one area to another. Trolling ■ Please see FISHING, 2B Coming down to the wire Photos by BILL MURPHY I The Times Gainesville’s Robert Reisman dribbles to the basket against East Hall on Monday in Gainesville. Gainesville’s Donsha Gaither goes up for a shot defended by two East Hall players Monday. Final regular season games will settle region standings BY NATHAN BERG nberg@gainesvilletimes.com It all comes down to this. After more than two months span ning both sides of winter break, the high school basketball regular season is com ing to a close. And while region and state tournaments are still a couple weeks away, Gainesville coach Chuck Gra ham said his team has already started approaching every game as if it’s win or go home. “We’re already in playoff mode,” he said. “The second stretch of our region, we try to treat that as being in the play offs. You want to just be 1-0 at the end of every game. So when the region tour nament gets here, we’re already in that same mindset.” For the Red Elephants — and pro grams throughout Hall County and the state of Georgia — this next week of bas ketball is all about building momentum and jockeying for region seeding. The final games of the regular season don’t technically have any added significance in the big picture, but finishing the year on a high note is invaluable to teams hop ing to make deep playoff runs. February’s region tournaments will decide qualification for the state playoffs, but games in late January are crucial to setting team’s up to win their region. “I don’t think you can wait and turn the light switch on in the region tourna ment,” West Hall coach Bobby Pless said. “Kids have to do that now.” It’s a process that every high school coach around the country is currently going through — boys and girls. North Hall girls coach Kristi House said she’s been trying to get her team to build up in confidence gradually from the very beginning of the year. The Lady Trojans’ relatively young roster has had to do quite a bit of growing over the course of the season to get to its current position of second place in Region 7-3A heading into the final week of the regular season, and all that growth is coming to a head now. “We’ve prepared all year,” House said. “We have the season before the region. Then we have region. Then we ■ Please see HOOPS, 2B GOLF Woods opens with 69 at Farmers Insurance Open DENNIS POROYI The Associated Press Tiger Woods hits his tee shot on the fifth hole during the pro-am round of the Farmer’s Insurance golf tournament on Thursday in San Diego. Associated Press Tiger Woods had his lowest opening round of the year since 2011. It wasn’t enough to be among the leaders Thursday at the Farmers Insurance Open, but it was fine with him. Coming off his record- tying 82nd victory in his last PGA Tour start three months ago in Japan, Woods handled the par 5s on the easier North Course at Torrey Pines and lim ited mistakes for a 3-under 69. Sebastian Cappelen and Keegan Bradley had the low scores of the opening round, which was not the same as sharing the lead. Cappelen had eight bird ies for a 66 on the South Course, which played about three shots tougher than the North, where Bradley shot his 66. Rory Mcllroy, who played in the group in front of Woods, was among those at 67. Jon Rahm, playing alongside Woods, was in the large group at 68. Woods hasn’t broken 70 in his first round of the year since a 69 on the North at Torrey in 2011. His health, his game and even his momentum are in much better shape now. His game wasn’t all that far off. “It was nice to kind of keep the round going a little bit,” Woods said. “Overall, pleased to shoot ■ Please see TIGER, 2B NBA Young named an All-Star It’s always been a goal of Trae Young’s to play in the All-Star game. It didn’t take him too long to achieve just that, with an added bonus. At age 21, in his second season in the NBA, Young isn’t just participating in the All-Star game -- he’ll be a starter. Young was named one of five starters from the Eastern Conference pool, joining Boston’s Kemba Walker, Toron to’s Pascal Siakam, Phil adelphia’s Joel Embiid and Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo. Antetokounmpo received the most fan votes of any Eastern Conference player, (5,902,286), so he was named a team captain. “This has been a dream of mine since I was a kid, since my grandpa was alive, watching the All-Star game with him,” Young said after practice Thursday, before starters had been announced. “Every year, watching Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, just chilling, making sure I got all my homework done so I could go home and watch the game.” Young is the first Hawks player to be voted an All-Star starter since Dikembe Mutombo in 1998. He finished first in fan voting (2,829,969) among Eastern Confer ence guards, which accounted for 50% of the total vote determining starters, sec ond in media voting and third in voting by other current players, both of which accounted for 25% each of the vote. Atlanta Journal Constitution Young
