Lanier water level is 1070.85 (.15 feet below full pool) and temperatures range from 56-61 degrees. The colder temps are on the main lake where the water is clear with the warmer temps in the backs of most creeks that have some stain to them. March fishing is all over the place. Literally, you will be able to catch stripers in the backs of all the major creeks from the dam all the way up both arms to Yellow on the Tee and Wahoo on the Hootch. Stripers will also begin working their way up into the river systems to begin their spawn with the high 50 degree water. In both of these areas your best bait choices will be bigger baits (8-12 inch gizzard shad or trout) pulled up in shallow water behind your Capt Mack’s Perfect Planer Boards. Run these baits right up on the bank in 5 feet of water towards the back of the creeks on clay banks. Up the river arms, pull a couple of bigger baits as well as a couple herring thru big bends in the river arms where there are deep holes on the outside of the corners. Take a look at last month’s report at GON.com to see how to rig your 3/0 Gamakatsu circle hook with a treble stinger for those bigger gizzards and how far back you need to pull those baits behind your Perfect Planer Board. The main lake open water bite has also begun to fire up if you want to get away from all the crowds. These fish are spread out from the River Forks area up to Laurel Park on the Hootch and War Hill on the Tee. This bite is one of my favorites throughout the year. It is relaxed fishing and can be done with any level of fisherman. The key to this bite is lots of rods in the water and covering a big swath of water. Two 7 inch Perfect Planers with small herring, trout, or shiners placed 30-70 feet behind the boards on each side of the boat and two flat lines behind the boat would be the minimum number of rods that we will put out for the next month. The outside set of boards will run without any weight on the main line. The inside boards will have 1/8-1/4 oz worm sinkers on the main line in front of the swivel where your 4 feet of Tatsu fluorocarbon leader is running down to a #2 or #4 Gamkatsu Circle hook. Lots of folks will run split shots on the weighted lines, but these will crimp your line making a weak spot on the line and inevitably will get knocked off when your planer board rides down to the swivel when you catch a fish and most times you will not notice and end up with another unweighted line and not be covering that little bit deeper water plane that the weighted line is covering. You will also be better off running downlines with herring or small trout off both sides of the boats front rod holders and a 10 inch Perfect Planer off each side of the boat with a Capt Mack’s Mini Mack below them. If you are looking for a little more flash on your Mini Mack, get yourself some Striper Tackle 3/8 oz Pro Spin heads. All four of these rods should be down 20-30 feet to pick up an extra bite or two from those fish that are hanging out a little deeper. That’s right….10 rods should be your standard set up this month. These fish are roaming around in 80-110 feet of open water on the river channels at the junctions of the major creek channels. They are spread out in the water column from 2-35 feet and this spread will give you the best opportunity to get a bait in front of these fish as they roam around looking to gorge themselves on small bait as they get ready to spawn.
Today’s world is hard to deal with all the evil that surrounds us. Paul told us, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:21. It’s hard to do the right thing and be good, but if when we do then we can overcome.
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