Randall

Thanks for posting. I have been enjoying the stories and pics.

Here's a few more pics. Notice the guy with two fingers held up. I kept telling them that we weren't woried about catching the small fish as long as we got a couple of big ones. He said he just wanted to hold up two fingers to remind his son and I that he only caught two fish but they were both larger than any we caught even though we caught more than he did. ;D

The fishing at Varner has been great the past couple of weeks for big bass. Most days for best five fish has been over twenty pounds and three of the last four trips to Varner have had a best five over twenty five pounds. In the past three weeks there have been several fish in the eight pound range caught from my boat and a ton of fish in the three to five pound range. The numbers of fish caught isn't close to what it was a few weeks ago (we had caught over 100 in a day) and on some days it's tough to get ten bites in a day with a couple of people fishing but when the big ones are biting they are biting. ;D Last week I went out with Randy S and his son Justin. I showed them around the lake and took them to some spots I fish this time of year and caught a fish here and there as we moved from spot to spot. We fished soft plastics on some deeper spots and used some small swimbaits up shallow. Justin and I fished the whole day and Randy alternated resting with a little fishing since he had been working the night before. Randy also handled the chore of weighing our fish and keeping us honest about the weight of our fish. ;D From what I remember Justin's best five fish alone weighed a little over seventeen pounds and if you added one or two fish I caught while fishing with him we would have had been just over twenty pounds for the best five. After dropping them off at the ramp I decided to go back out and see what I could do working a couple more spots with more of a trophy fishing approach. We had moved on throughout the day after catching one or two fish on most spots so I thought I might hit a spot or two and work it over better with some different big fish tactics for any bigger fish that might be there. I started toward one spot and something told me to hit another spot that I had been thinking about trying for the last week. I caught three fish over 11 lbs in one week on the spot three years ago during October so it had been in the back of my mind for the last couple of weeks to check it out when I got a chance with the cooler October weather approaching. So I turned the boat around and went to that spot. When I got there I moved the boat to just the right position and made a cast with a worm. A big fish hit on the first cast as the worm was sinking and caught me off guard and broke me off. > I could tell it was a good fish though so I picked up a Mattlures Hard Bass and made a cast to see if one would come up after the swimbait. First cast with the swimbait and it gets hit by a big one and I get it in. I am guessing it weighes eight or maybe nine pounds so I snap a quick photo with the camera and put it back and get another cast out ASAP. For about the next hour I alternate between a worm and several swimbaits and catch fish after fish with maybe one or two fish under three pounds. Most of the fish were in the three to five pound range with a few larger ones mixed in. I lost one other big fish on a worm that I never saw and had one break a swimbait and take the rear half of the bait with it that looked to be nine to ten pounds. But for the most part it was a bunch of fun catching a bunch of good fish. We took some photos of some of the better fish we caught and I put some in the livewell as I was catching them good for a photo or two. I will also post a couple more photos of fish a guy caught with me on another day where he caught two good ones.

Try it all. Experiment with different retrieves to see what makes the bait look like a real crappie. Sometimes a crappie just swims along and sometimes it acts nervous and darts around more when being chased. The more realistic it looks the better for me. You can do a ton of different things with that bait to get strikes. Experiment.

They will. Tennessee has had some fish challenge for the state record that were ruled a hybrid and disqualified. I have caught a couple large fish that appeared to be huge spots but on closer inspection they looked like a hybrid. That one looks like a LM though. Also a precentage of LM have a tounge patch. So the tounge patch is not a good way to identify a spot.

Its a Gambler bait that I cut the tail on. I was throwing it over grass mats a day or two earlier and left it there incase I needed it.

Here is part of a little lesson I gave a guy two days ago on suspended fish in the channel. I just moved down the channel until I found bait in the middle of the channel. (See the Video) The fish weren't feeding on the bait but they were nearby so I knew these were more neutral than inactive. Then I told him to wait while I got my camera ready because he was going to catch a fish on his first cast on a buzzbait in the middle of the day and I wanted to get it on video. His first cast was too slow to trigger the suspended fish. His second cast was faster and got two strikes. It ended up being a hybrid but we did the same thing with both buzzbaits and swimbaits for the next hour and had over forty strikes and a best five of largemouth over twenty pounds. The best five largemouth all hit a 6 inch or 7 inch Bull Shad swimbait burned as fast as you could reel it on the surface to trigger strikes. It was all about the reaction strike. If you slowed it down any you didn't get bit. If I wouldn't have been able to get the topwater strikes I would have used a senko or light splitshot rig and pulled it off the edge of the ledge and let it fall into the channel to get the fish suspended near the edge of the channel since they are usually easier to get to bite than ones out in the center of the channel. If that doesn't work throwing into the channel and bringing baits back uphill out of the channel will get the same fish suspended near the edges.

I was reading an article a few weeks ago where a biologist said that LOZ has over fifty percent of the population being spotted bass with that number growing every year. I think the study was from a few years back so it is posible that most everything he is catching now is a spot. Spots take over a lake quick after they are introduced.

To increase your chances or catching a LM fish farther back in the shallow creek arms and even up the creeks and rivers. Large shallow flats will also work at times. I have found this to work on most all mountain type lakes in GA and NC where spots and lm are present.

Here are a few pics of some good bass a guy named Brian Samples and I caught at Lake Varner in GA. I have been on one of the best numbers swimbait bites of my life catching over twenty swimbait fish on a lot of days. It's not really a trophy bass bite for me but when you are catching this many four to seven pound fish with lots of strikes on or near the surface it's hard not to fish for them. ;D All the fish except one was caught on either a Mattlures Hard Bass or Triton Mike's Bull Shad swimbaits. The other one was caught on a homemade buzzbait. Until a few weeks ago Brian had never even thrown a big swimbait. After a couple quick lessons and seeing what a swimbait could do with me a couple of times he has gone out and won a tournament/big fish and placed second in another throwing the Bull Shad. He is addicted now and don't want to throw anything else and has a collection of big baits started.

I can tell you the Hard Bass catches fish. I have been throwing it and Triton Mike's Bull Shad almost every day for the past couple of months. Most days I am catching five to twenty swimbait fish a day. Best five going twenty five to thirty pounds on many days. I don 't post too often about it and post as many photos as I could because I fish small lakes that fill up real quick with guys throwing the same baits when the bite is as good as it is.

Thanks. I can get whats left of them out of the freezer and take some if you would like. ;D

Took a some time off from fishing this month. Went on vacation to visit my family in NC, went to my 20 year HS class renunion, and spent some time at home letting a couple medical conditions heal up. I did fish a tournament at Varner earlier in the month on a 90+ degree day with no wind but after knowing what one other team had (around 25lbs)we just tossed our fish back with no real reason to weigh them or keep them in the live well any longer. So after nearly a month with almost no fishing I went out to Varner looking to put a hurting on some fish since the whole time I was not fishing someone would call me and tell me how the fish at Varner were just tearing it up better than they have in three years. Well we didn't get any monsters but between the largemouth and the hybrids we had around forty fish with probably ten fish of each species over four pounds. For everybody who is tired of hearing me complain about the shad population and all the hybrids you will not have to hear me complain for a while anyway since the shad are starting to make a comback and the fish are feeding again. Right now is a good time though to thin out the hybrids while they are feeding and easy to catch. I am doing my part on hybrid population reduction. The hybrids were mostly in the area around the big point past the island up the right arm all the way up to where the lakes get less then 10 feet deep. At times they pushed the shad shallow and were hitting them right on the bank. We got most of the fish on small topwaters but also got a few on four inch senkos, flukes, and small swimbaits. We talked to a few other guys who caught them up near the bridge (left arm) on rattletraps and we caught a few trolling rattle traps after they stopped hitting on top. There a bunch of big gizzards and small bass in the lake. As long as the wind blows a little they will hit the Bull Shad and Mattlures Hard Bass swimbaits. Most of our bigger fish including the three in the photo hit big swimbaits. We also caught some on a bunch of other baits fished over and in the grass. Frogs, toads, topwaters, buzzbaits, chatterbaits, tubes, senkos, worms, jigs, etc. will all work right now. It's just a matter of finding where and how the fish are holding and feeding from day to day in all that grass. And there is a lot of it there and the whole lake right now has both feeding fish and grass.

Varner is still a great lake at the right times of year. It just don't produce all year anymore. June-early July is now the worst time to fish the lake. It might only take 8-12 lbs to win a tournament in June at Varner. During June I guide on Horton and don't even fish Varner at all. Too many hybrids in the deep water on Varner and that's when the deep fish used to bite best. Last week it took around 25lbs to win on Varner in 90+ degree water and tough conditions. I have been getting 30lbs for five fish on some good days over the past couple months. The best time to fish Varner now is late summer , early fall. Right now through Early October Varner can hang with any lake in the Southeast since the hydrilla has given the bass a new place to live and eat that it didn't have before.

That's a good bass lake you are fishing. It's where I learned to bass fish years ago growing up in Waynesville. It was much better before a fish kill killed most of the fish in the lake years ago and it had to be restocked but still isn't bad and has some big bass in it.

;D I know exactly what you are saying since I rig some craws that way. Everybody think of just a weight attached to the tail with no line or hook. Just the weight with nothing else attached. Got to think outside the box. Then you hook the bait with the line and hook (no weight) attached to the head. The craw moves forward instead of backward and drags the tail as it moves with the head and claws being lifted up by the line and hook. A Florida rig weight would work OK with a craw worm or you could flatten out a larger weight or splitshot and glue it to the bait. I have a few methods I use to get the same type result. I wouldn't spend $6 for a weight.

Owners! It's not even close for me. I have bent and straighted more Gammies on big bass than I can count before using Owners. I have only bent two Owners. One was a hookset in mid air on what looked like a nine or ten pounder and the other was a big fish stuck in heavy grass that I had already broke the rod on trying to pull it out. This is true of trebles and worm type hooks. The Gammies will also flex on the hookset which changes the direction of force applied to the tip. I stayed away from Owners for years because of the cutting point being said to cut a large hole but when I tried them myself and compared I found I hooked more fish in the hard part of the mouth instead of on the outer skin parts of the mouth. That told me the Gammies weren't sticking in the harder parts of the mouth and were not taking hold until they hit the softer tissues. Owners take less force to set the hook and are stronger.

Straight shank hook is what you need. I can't remember who it was but I remember an article in a magazine a few years back and they asked the top pros what one thing they had learned from another pro that had helped them the most in their career. Larry Nixon had told a pro that he was missing fish because he was using a Carolina rig hook (offset or wide gap) instead of a Texas rig hook (straight shank). The guy said that one tip had helped him more to stay a pro and be able to make a living than any other thing. From that one point on I started paying attention to my missed hooksets and changed my hooks on many baits to straight shank hooks. It's made a huge difference in missed strikes when the pull on the hookset is more vertical than horizonal. Also, there are some straight shank hooks now made with wide gaps so amost bulky bait can be rigged with a straight shank hook now.

Tussahaw is the Henry County lake that is open now that is the best. They just closed one this year that was a killer lake this time of year last year. :'( I think the Henry County Water Authority has a website with the lakes listed and when they are open.

Between the two boat ramps there is a huge rock area on the bank where the bank is rock going into the water. There is deep water just off the bank here and I can usually catch fish here from a boat. That bridge may be off limits from the bank since there is a water intake there and in all the years I have fished the lake I have never seen anyone under it except in a boat. Right off the point at the second boat ramp near the bridge wouldn't be bad either.

If it can't get the whole bait in it's mouth it's not worth catching.

I have done it before out of the same boat with electric motors but watched the wind forecast. I didn't have any trouble catching fish near the ramp but don't know the lake at all. Fishing may be tougher at other times of the year and you need more range. PM George Welcome and ask what he thinks.

JW Smith in Clayton County has good bank access and cost five dollars a day to fish. I don't know where or even if they allow bank fishing in the Henry County Lakes and you would have to have somone with you that lives there while you fish since they check your drivers license. Lake Kedron has some bank access at the park at the boat ramp. It wouldn't be bad in summer since the grass there will hold more fish close to the bank. Horton is $10 to park and they love to write parking tickets and nay other tickets they can find to write. I have one now I have to go to court for where I paid to park, put the parking pass on my dash, and still somehow got a ticket left on my window. They have a reputation for this kind of thing there so it may not be the best place for a broke college student but there is a good stretch of bank there to fish.

Man that one looks every bit of ten pounds. What did it weigh? ;D

That didn't take long. ;D