LAKE LANIER

Forecast By: Captain Josh Thornton 770-530-6493 www.crappieonlanier.com | www.fishingwitheverydayheroes.org

Crappie Fishing

Fishing on Lake Lanier for Crappie has been great lately! The water temperature is a comfortable 75 degrees, providing perfect conditions for catching these fish. The best gear to use for optimal success use an ACC Crappie Stix 1 piece rod and reel with a 6-pound test k9 line, a black and chartreuse ATX Lure Company jig or a small minnow. With the current conditions, you should have no problem landing some decent sized Crappie! I also use Garmin Live Scope and power pole. For more information and tips, check out my websites at www.crappieonlanier.com and www.fishingwitheverydayheroes. org and like my pages!

If you haven’t yet check out https://4heroutdoor.com/ Find me on the web or Facebook and like my pages.

Forecast By: Ken Sturdivant Southern Fishing kensturdivant@att.net

Bass fishing is fair. Look for the shallow bite to get better over the next month. Top water, jigs and square bill crank baits are the baits of choice on mid lake docks. Early and late each day, throw a popper or a prop bait around sea walls, lay down trees, and overhangs that have flies present. Bream imitating colors will get the most bites. When the top water bite slows, try a Spro Fat John square bill crank bait around these same areas. Fishing the crank bait parallel to the sea wall will produce more bites and the bait will stay in the strike

Lake Sinclair

zone the entire way back. Also, follow up with a jig in a brown and orange color. Fish these jigs slowly underneath dock walkways, at the base of sea walls and in any wood cover. Bass are warm shallow feeders. This is a great way to catch a big fish. Concentrate your efforts on the main river stretches for best results. Deep diving crank baits, Carolina rigged soft plastics, and drop shot rigs have all been productive on these deep-water offshore structures. Deep humps, long points, and river ledges will all hold fish this time of year. The deep bite is better when Georgia Power is moving water.!

Lake Sinclair is down 1.4 feet, temperature 80s.

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FISHING LAKE HAVASU FOR A WORLD RECORD- THE REST OF THE STORY

By Gary Turner https://youtube.com/@FishingWithGary “Tight Lines and Squeal every time.”

So, if you read the main story, you know how I got there and how hot it was. What I didn’t have room to talk about was how incredibly beautiful that area is. Lake Havasu itself is nothing short of amazing! You really will think you are in the Keys or the Bahamas because of the waters color and clarity are just unbelievable! The landscape is incredible, the mountains are so inspiring, and the desert is so hot during the day then dropping 30 or 40 degrees at night. All the wildlife will come out into the open. They have wild burros and big horn sheep and even a few bears in the area, desert cottontails and rattlesnakes too. I drove up part of Historic Route 66 to a town called Oatman, which is a very cool little mountain town. It’s in a caldera, the bowl structure that’s left when a volcano blows out all its magma and the earth collapses back. The wild burros come out of the desert into the town and people in town buy food and feed them. The shops there are so neat. They had everything, some cool antiques and old tools, old books, souvenirs, leather goods and tons more. The town has a main dirt street and boardwalks just like all old west towns had. There was even a gunfight show twice a day in the street and a jail escape room. I had a great time and met some really nice people.

Let’s talk about the food and then I’ll get to the reason the fish are so GIGANTIC! Ron, his wife, and I dined at ChaBones, and it was Amazing! For kicks, just check out their menu online. The appetizer (tapas) list was crazy. My favorite appetizers were the chile relleno and the creole shrimp, both delicious! I had the blackened halibut for my meal, but you could just live off appetizers for sure. If you want to go there, please make a reservation. My other find was Sam’s Place, for breakfast and lunch. The homemade chili omelet was scrumptious! Even though it was over 100 degrees, I really was planning on going back for lunch to get a bowl of that chili. Unfortunately, I just never was back in town in time, they close at 2 p.m., but I’ll get there next trip for sure. Zac, his girlfriend, and I went to the Pirates Den aka the Black Pearl. The tacos and twisted shrimp were delicious. Zac had the Poseidon’s Western Burger that had all kinds of stuff on it including 1/3 pound of beef and pulled pork. He said it was delicious. So, to say the least, we ate well at dinner since we snacked through lunch every day because we were hard core fishing!

So, why are the World Record Redear coming from Lake Havasu? Well, there are several factors. The lake really isn’t a lake but a reservoir on the Colorado River and Parker Dam backs up the river there. It is about 45 miles of lake area. In the 90’s they added thousands of pieces of structure to the lake for fish habitat. In 2007 quagga mussels were found in the lake, and soon after their invasion, the Redear started feeding on them. From 2009 to 2014 the average size of the Redear increased. In 2014 a World Record 17-inch, 5.78 pound Redear was caught. Fast forward to today - there was a 6.3 pounder caught recently and is possibly the next world record. These fish are still growing so big, and that is awesome for those of us that love to fish! These mussels are high in protein and Redear, also known as Shellcrackers, are perfectly suited to eat them. The Bluegills can only eat small ones, but they are growing too. Then there is the cross, the Redear Bluegill cross. They are also getting big. These fish, like the Redear, possess extra crunching plates in their mouth to eat the mussels. The record on these is over three pounds. How are they catching these beasts? Well, you could use jigs or worms or both. I had several other ideas for bait, but those are the easiest choices. Some people are using double hook rigs, others use a plain weight on bottom and a single line hook, but I’m sure you can make several rigs work. The key is finding the depth these fish are at and dropping the bait to them. For Ron and me, we sight fished in up to 18 feet of water, and then we went deeper and just cast, let it sit on the bottom, and reeled it in. We caught several fish this way, including the two biggest ones. Zac and I worked in the area much like bass fishing. We cast, hit bottom, reel, hit bottom, reel and trolled our way as we did this. We covered miles of shoreline and coves this way. Unfortunately, while I was there the fishing was a little SLOW. Both Ron and Zac agreed two weeks before it was a lot better. They both caught fish over four pounds in the weeks before I arrived. This is the thing, trying to time the trip to match the bite is tough. That’s true with fishing everywhere, but when planning a trip this far from home, you just gotta go with the best plan you have and book it. I am going out five or six weeks earlier next year and hope the water has warmed enough and the fish are on fire. Lastly, if you do go Lake Havasu on a fishing trip, PLEASE throw these fish back. Even the little ones could be a world record soon. So, if you are looking for gigantic Redears, you need to go check out Lake Havasu, Arizona. It is a beautiful lake in the Desert!