To all my readers: Wintertime fishing has a bad rap because of the cold weather and fronts but honestly, the biggest fish you might catch all year can be had right now. Get the right gear and get out there!

Lake Oconee 

The temperature is 53-56 degrees and the main lake is stained from I20 to Lick Creek, Richland creek is clear to the dam.

Bass Fishing: Guide Chad Smith reports bass fishing is fair at the moment; the fish are moving out to deeper water. They are no longer in the back of the coves. Look from the mouth of the coves to the river ledges. The mouth of sugar creek and lick creek are good areas to target. Try white spinnerbait or natural Shad color Shad rap fished around baitfish. These schools of bait are coming up in the morning and later when the water warms. Pick up some bass with a No. 7 Shad Rap fished around the same bait. An old standby this time of year is a chrome and blue or chrome and black rattletrap. Also, fish an all-white Capt. Mack spoon in the balls of bait — there are times when it will out fish all other baits. Be ready to move deeper as the water cools with the coming cold fronts, which will change fast.

 

Striper Fishing: Guide Mark Smith with Reeltime Guides reports striper fishing is fair to good-great. Live bait, spoons and trolling mini-Macks, live shad, bass minnows all will produce. You can look for birds or use your Lowrance to locate the schools and then go fishing. I would say the spoon bite has been the best bet over the past week. Start looking from river bend south. It looks like they are leaving the stained water.

 

Lake Sinclair

Lake Country Fishing pro staffer Danny White gave me this report: The water temp is fluctuating between the high 40s and the low 50s and that’s dependent upon the time of day, and course, whether you’re going upriver or down the lake. Also, the water is still very stained up the creeks and rivers and it’s normal from about Nancy Branch to the dam and it’s clear in Island Creek and Rocky Creek. 

Bass: There are some fish that have started moving out into deeper water. You can catch them down the lake on spoons, Carolina rig, and Alabama rigs. Those fish are following the bait and they are from around 20 to 30 feet of water. Some quality fish are still being caught on points, seawalls and docks in 6 to 10 feet of water.

 

Lake Lanier from Capt. Mack Farr

 

Striper Fishing

The Stripers are still in the creeks, drains, and pockets around the bait, so the basic premise is unchanged. Find the bait where it is layered up on the bottom and then drop the down lines. Stagger your baits based on what you see on the Sonar, but often the fish that are on or near the bottom will be quickest to bite, even if you are seeing greater numbers of fish suspended throughout the water column. Try dropping at least a couple of the baits the bait to the bottom and reeling up a couple of cranks, just enough to get the sinker off of the bottom. You can always adjust the depths once you figure out where the sweet spot is on a given day. Dedicate a couple of lines to smaller baits, and a shorter leader may be a plus.

Trolling the rigs is also very strong, the big rigs and the Mini Macks are both effective. Using the big rigs to search for fish, then switching to stealth trolling the Minis once you locate fish is a good combo. If you have the boat moving at 1 mph or less, you can effectively fish the Minis with the live baits. Watch the birds, there are a few fish pushing bait to the surface, and the birds (Gulls, Loons, or both), with tell on them quickly. Swimbaits, buck tails, and Mini Macks are good choices to cast at the surfacing fish.

 

Bass Fishing

The bass are still all over the place, and perhaps a little more inconsistent than in past weeks. Bait concentrations will still be a key for many patterns, and fishing bait groups holding over channels and ditches will still be a good producer. Weedless wonders paired with Senkos and Roboworm continue to produce, along with Damiki’s and the drop shots. Swimbaits on lead heads and Fish Head Spins are effective as are spoons. One footnote on the spoons: Many of the Bass are becoming more oriented to structure, as opposed to randomly roaming around the bait schools. So first find the bait, and then look for structures that the bait may be over. That could be channel ledges (even very low relief areas) stumps or rocks on the side of a channel, or timber lines. Slowing the spoons down and using smaller spoons may also be productive. 

Docks continue to produce well, lots of singles, but fish enough docks and you’ll likely catch good numbers of fish. This pattern looks to be very random with fish on a variety of docks in a big depth range. Docks with secondary structures are also a big plus. I think the Senkos and Robos are hard to beat here, but jigs will also be a great choice. If I had to define this pattern, docks in 25 to 35 feet, in the middle parts of the creeks seem to be a good place to start.  

Channel Swings continue to be likely areas to fish, and probably will be throughout the winter. Plastics and jigs are staples on this pattern and remember that some of these areas have very steep contours. You’ll probably find that fishing slowly makes an effective presentation. Otherwise, the bait is too far from the bluff/bank and if the fish are sluggish, they just watch the bait sink right past them. Keeping the boat tight to the bluff and making a parallel cast will make maintaining contact with the bluff easier. 

 

Lake Hartwell report from tournament angler Tracy Davis

Crappie are in a feeding frenzy right now. This past week I found good numbers of big white and black crappie roaming around in 4 to 12 feet of water. This time of year, typically when you find big numbers of shad, you can find big crappie. Right now, they can be caught anywhere from 4ft deep on stumps to 20 feet of water on docks and everywhere in between. Right now the water temp is around 48 to 49 but it hasn’t slowed down the feeding patterns. This past week I set up on a shallow stump field on the Tugaloo River arm. I used the Garmin livescope and Slab Reaper jigs put some very big fish in the boat. Since I only targeted big fish I caught 29 with the smallest being 1.2 pounds and the largest being 2.42 pounds. Longline trolling and spider rigging will also be effective if you don’t own a livescope. This pattern should hold strong all the way up to the spawn barring any drastic changes in water level. 

Good luck you guys and tight lines.

James Pressley can be reached at pressleyoutdoors@gmail.com