Randall

Here are a few more pics from the last week of April. All of these were caught on Mattlures swimbaits except the two smaller fish on the left of the first photo. They were caught on a jig and a worm.

Water Clarity: 4 feet or greater Fishing at Varner is really picking up now over the past few days. The fish are still scattered from the spawn but feeding pretty well. The big fish are starting to show back up after the spawn and feeding again Water temps are 75-76. The bass are mostly on structure from four to eight feet deep and there are a few staying very shallow and taking advantage of spawning bluegill. There are still some bass spawning deep and near deep water and I found a bunch of them Saturday afternoon between the boat ramp and the dam. I am seeing huge amounts of fry moving into deep open water on my depthfinder over the past couple of days and the water is clear so the open water schooling bite on fry will start any day now. There are some spawning shad in the am but the threadfin population is still pretty low so you have to look hard for the spawning shad. The hydrilla is about four to six inches tall where I have found it growing and there is still some pond weed that's looking good so it is looking great for summer fishing. The bite has been real simple for me over the past three days I have been on Varner. Straight tail worms like senkos, trickworms, and pork pins are getting both numbers and quality fish. Numbers on the worms are running between twenty and thirty fish on a good day with two or three people fishing. The Mattlures Hard Bluegill in both the floating and sinking models are producing some incredible topwater strikes from fish between three and eight pounds. We have also caught a few fish on lipless crankbaits. The photos are some of the fish caught Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Thursday I took a couple of ladies out so they could learn how to bass fish. Their goal was to catch some fish and be able to go home and teach the kids a thing or two about bass fishing. They caught more and bigger fish than they had ever caught before and had a thing or two to teach the kids when they went home. They have two bass caught at the same time in one photo and another nice fish in the other photo. The photo on the bottom right is one of my clients from Saturday. They just wanted to learn a little about the lake and how I fish it so we moved around and hit a lot of spots and caught fish on most. I lost count of how many we caught but the best five was around fourteen pounds just skipping around the lake after catching one or two in each spot. I went back out to a good spot where we had seen a lot of bass shallow after taking them back to the ramp in the afternoon. I caught the big bass in the middle left photo. I also had four more fish between four and seven pounds that I didn't photograph. The photo on the bottom left is our best fish from Friday's trip.

The biggest I have ever caught that I could comfirm was a male by it's spawning habits was six pounds. Four pounders are common on one lake that I fish but I see very very few over four pounds.

Inside Stone Mountain Park right at the bottom of the mountain in the larger lake.

Fish at Stone Mountain are in all three stages of the spawn. Best baits have been soft plastics, and swimbaits fished in spawning and prespawn areas. I am using the V&M baits Super Pork Pin, Mattlures Bluegill in both the hard and soft versions and a jig for bass on the beds. Best five fish each day have been going between twenty and twenty five pounds. Lots of four to five pounders are being caught with the occasional six to seven pounder. The fish in the photo was around six pounds and hit a Trition Mikes Bullshad prototype as I swam it over a deep bed.

Water Clarity: 4 feet or greater The bass fishing at Varner is looking better than it has in a while. Water temps in the morning are running from 63 to 73 depending where you are in the lake. The fish are fat and healthy there are big fish up in just a few feet of water crusing the banks looking for a bed to spawn on. I am guessing we saw over twenty fish over eight pounds on Saturday up in the shallows. We caught one that was just under the eight pound goal my client had before the trip. He had his shot with a fish that was over ten pounds but lost the fish on the way to the boat. We also caught one around five pounds and lost one more big one on the Mattlures hard bluegill on the way to the boat. Sunday I put Bass Resource member Chris at Tech on multiple fish over eight pounds but it just didn't happen since the fish wouldn't cooperate and we had to settle for catching one six pounder and a few smaller fish. With the warming temps I would say we have one more week of heavy spawning activity through most of the lake then probably one more week around the deep water which is where many of the big ones come up from. Lure choice is simple for me right now. All I need is a V&M Super Pork Pin in any green color, a Mattlures Hard Bluegill, a Mattlures soft Bluegill, and a jig. All of our fish are being caught on these baits and nothing else. It is time to add some topwaters in the mix though.

For those of you that shop at Natures Tackle Box in Hiram GA you have probably seen or met Cole who is Christie and David's son. For those of you have never been there or live nowhere near GA Christie and David are the owners and real nice people. I know there are a few of you on this site that have been there and know or have met Cole and his parents. Well today I took Cole out fishing at Varner. He said early in the morning that he had been fishing plenty but to his knowledge had never caught a largemouth. Well I wanted to make sure he got started catching bass right so after some pointers and getting used to the equipment he put a small bass in the boat. A little while later he caught his second bass which weighed around six pounds. Not bad for his second bass. Well, to make a long story short he got a pretty good lesson in how to catch big bass in the spring as he caught his first largemouth. At the end of the day we had a best five fish caught that would weigh between 28-30 pounds. We caught fish on trickworms, swimbaits, and by sightfishing both fish on beds and big crusing bass. He also got to see me break a reel completely off a rod as a big bass hit a Mattlures Floating Hard Bluegill swimbait and still almost catch the fish with just the reel and line in my hand. ;D Had we caught that bass we would have been well over thirty pounds for five fish. This is my third day in a row fishing at Varner where the best five was over 25lbs and we haven't even caught a real big one yet. Just lots of four to seven pound fish. We did see two or three today that were huge but couldn't catch them. The photo is Cole and two of our bass today. He is a good size young man so it's hard to judge the size from the photo but those are six and seven pounds. We had two more just a little smaller than these two and one in the four to five pound range. Now the bad thing is that on his first sucessful day of bass fishing we had some big fish come in the boat and we lost some big ones also. It's going to be hard to top a day like that later.

In a situation where the water has warmed from the forties to the upper fifties with very fast rising temps I have only one rule. FIND THE WARMEST WATER!!! Usually this is where most of the shallow water is on the lake away from any deep water. The fish there are almost always more active. Any deep water is still cold and hasn't had a chance to warm much to move fish shallow even though the surface temps are warm over the cold deep water so those fish are still stuck on winter. First thing I would try is to find the shallowest flatest part of the lake and keep going shallower as long as the temps keep going up. The very backs of shallow creeks with very little water flow coming in are my favorite.

Just some thoughts on Perry's fish from my point of view living in GA and fishing some of the best lakes GA has for big bass for the past 15 years. 1. There have been fish caught in GA over 30 inches long. WRB said very few fish have been verified over 30 inches. That's just what you see on the record books since most of those fish are from California. I catch 28-29 fish pretty often and have caught four over 30 inches in just the past few years. Cali fish may have the girth but Georgia fish have plenty of length so it makes a fish threre and here hard to compare in a photo. Add the girth to that length and you have the makings of a huge fish. Looking at the photo of someone holding what could be Perry's fish in front of the post office and comparing it to my 15lb 12oz bass in girth then I believe that fish could have weighed 22 lbs if it was 32 1/2. It looks that big to me comparing it to what a normal Georgia fish looks like in girth. 2. As to comparing what GA has as far as bass today and back then there is no comparison. Trophy bass fishing in GA has been ruined by anglers moving spotted bass from one lake to another and our DNR stocking hybrids and Stripers in almost every lake we have that has Trophy bass potential. So, I can't really judge Perry's fish on what GA produced since his fish. It's a whole different ballgame here now than it was then. 3. As far as the bass in that areas genetics I would guess it to be a FloridaxNorthern. That is pretty common in that area of South Georgia as well as Northern Florida. Some pure Florida strain bass have been brought from South Florida and stocked in ponds here in GA from way back. Many lakes were built over those ponds and now most of what I fish for around Atlanta which is North or Central GA have Florida genetics. There are lakes built way back in the fifties and sixties in extreme North GA that had and have bass with Florida genetics. I going out tomorrow with the hopes I might see a 16lb or 17lb bass on a bed. If I had lived in GA in Perry's time I believe I could have a a good shot at a much larger fish. But, I don't know if Perry's bass was 22lbs. I wasn't there so there is no way for me to know.

I like them all but I picked September since I fish a lot of hydrilla lakes and thats the peak time for the grass to be near the surface and the fish are still schooled up in big schools from summer. I can fish all day throwing nothing but swimbaits and topwater for big strikes on or near the surface. When you find them it's usually more then one fish in a small area. June and early July would be a close second for schools of big fish in the grass and thats when I catch some big five fish limits on the lakes that have lots of pond weed. August is the only month I don't like. It's way too hot here in Atlanta for the first part of the month and the numbers of big fish always fall off that time of year.

Thanks to everyone for the compliments.

I think Matt said to look for it around summer.

It's a pretty heavy bait but I am not sure of the exact weight and don't want to tell you wrong. It really needs a swimbait rod though. Much heavier than the bluegills. PM Mattlures and I am sure he knows the exact weight.

That's funny considering I sent Matt a PM earliier today telling him I felt strange casting the Hard Bass prototype he sent me to try. I feel kinda like it should be put in a display case on the wall or shelf as a collectors item. ;D It's a work of art. I caught a nine pounder and a six pounder on it last Wednesday so I guess I will keep fishing with it. I also caught another big one on his hard crappie the same day. Pics are in the My Fishing Trip Section under "How much can a nine pounder get in it's mouth?"

Here are the seven and eight. I was trying to hurry since my camera was getting wet and missed the shot.

Here is the six and the nine.

Here is the bait. Thanks to Matt Servant (aka Mattlures) who didn't have to make me one of these since they are not available yet. I also got the seven pounder on Matt's hard crappie.

Here is the gizzard!

Friday I went out to Varner throwing swimbaits most of the day. Did some sight fishing to when the rain let up. There are some big fish on beds but I couldn't see may of them well enough to catch them. Had a good afternoon going with some big fish weighing seven and eight pounds after getting only one bite for the couple hours of the morning I fished. Saw a swirl on the surface up shallow picked up my rod with a new toy on it that I haven't caught a fish on yet. Fish hits the bait as soon as I move it. I pull the fish up to the surface and see something in its mouth sticking out right beside my swimbait which only had the rear set of hooks in the mouth of the fish. Fish shakes it head one time and throws out a big gizzard shad. I net the fish put it in the live well and make another cast and hook another big bass. Get this one in and look and there is the gizzard shad trying to swim. Scoop it up and measure it. It's thirteen inches long! I still don't know how the bass got the swimbait and the gizzard in it's mouth at the same time. Here are photos of both bass I caught on the swimbait, the swimbait, and the gizzard. Another thing that was funny is the fact that one of the fish was nine pounds even and the other was just over six pounds but were almost the exact same length. Guess which one was the thick one? The one who was trying to fit over twenty inches of fish in it's mouth. ;D The pics of the seven and eight pounder didn't come out great since it was pouring rain, the camera was getting wet and I was trying to hurry and get the fish back in the water while taking photos by myself. It was pouring down rain when I caught them and didn't want to keep them in the livewell long since it hard to keep that many big fish in my livewell. But for the day I had a four, six, seven, eight, and nine pounder. The nine pounder would have probably weighed ten if it had a chance to swallow the gizzard.

Even though its not necessary to cast the bait, I still use a eight foot swimbait rod and heavy line. It helps to drive the hook through all that plastic when needed. I also use the largest hook possible with the longest shank that allows the bait to swim. The long shank puts the tip of the hook farther back in the bait where it has a higher hookup ratio. I make my own weighted hooks out of Owner oversize hooks since I don't like any of the swimbait hooks on the market. I set with a hard sweep to the side since it moves more line.

The company that owns them has filed for bankruptcy and Boater's World pulled some stuff last year that would lead me to think they were having major problems and didn't care much about their customers or companies they do business with. I bet it's all the stores. Edit: Just read it in a newspaper it is all the stores.

With the worst customer service on earth it's about time they were gone. Feel bad for those who lost jobs and tried to do a good job. But, after the way I was treated by the company I am glad to see them gone.

It's my experience that the fish in Tussahaw will eat anything right now when they are eating. All you have to do is get a bait in front of one. So, I guess you just got your cast in front of more fish.

Nice fish!!! Great pics! That fish inhaled it.

I fished both Horton and Varner last week. At Horton there are tons of fish staging to spawn. Horton has the best bite going right now of the two with lots of one to three pound fish being caught. The backs of the creeks at Horton are in the upper fifties with the water at the dam in the lower sixties. The fishing has slowed in the backs of the creeks but the more stable water from about half way out of the creeks to the dam is on fire for numbers of fish. Water is stained all over the lake with two to three feet of visibility. Friday I had a client out prefishing for a tournament and we hit a lot of spots all over the lake found a bunch of spots just loaded with fish. We would often catch one or two and then move on to find more fish on other spots. I am pretty sure if we would have just sat on a couple of those spots and just hammered them we would have had no problem getting thirty to fifty fish. He fished the tournament on Saturday and fished most of the day in one small area and caught around thirty fish with most of those around two pounds each. It was reported that it was a slow day for larger fish even though the numbers were good with just a little over 13 lbs winning the tournament. Best baits on Horton right now are rattle baits, crankbaits, jerkbaits, swimbaits, jigs and plastics. I am catching most of the fish on an eight inch V&M Super Pork Pin on a Spot Stalker jighead on eight pound Invisx line. The rest of the baits will cut down on the number of bites but put a little better fish in the boat. Most of the smaller fish are being caught shallow on points and ledges. Most of the big fish are still suspended in and over the timber in deep water. Most of the spawners from a week or two ago have backed off the beds for now but should be moving back up any day now. The swimbaits of choice right now in the stained water are a Storm Kickin' Minnow and a Triple Trout. Both of these move a lot of water and will get bit a little better in the stained water. Nature's Tackle Box in Hiram, GA just became one of the very few shops in the USA to carry the 22nd Century Triple Trout. So, if you need one they got them. Varner is at full pool the water has cleared up some since the last report and only has a light stain in the backs of creeks. There are still a few fish on beds and the temps are in the lower sixties. My trips at Varner last week were all trips geared toward getting a giant fish or learning to fish swimbaits. There are a ton of fish up in a couple feet of water right now so I am pretty sure the numbers are there if we would have fished for the smaller fish up shallow with plastics and small swimbaits . But, we were looking for the bigger fish which are still mostly suspended out in deeper water. The good news is the swimbait bite is there but it's still a tough bite. I am catching most of the swimbait fish by pulling them up out of deeper water. The baits of choice have been the Mattlures Hard Bluegill and Triton Mike's seven inch Bullshad swimbait. You can get both the Mattlures and the Bullshad at Nature's Tackle Box as well. There is a shallow bite on small swimbaits like the Sebile and the smaller shad swimbaits but it's for the most part only catching smaller fish. If I fish the big swimbaits all day I am getting just two or three bites a day. If it's tough you are taking a chance on getting nothing all day but the fish have all been good fish on the big baits.