On Monday, 3/3, the lake level was 1071.68 (.68’ above full pool) and after a 2.5’ rise in a week it has stabilized. Water temps are from the high 40’s to low 50’s, with a mean temp of around 51 degrees. Water clarity, with all the rain, is all over the place. It is completely blown out in the river systems and backs of the major creeks to clear on the main lake. March will be a transitional month with deep fish on downlines early in the month and will change to shallow fish on flat lines and Capt Mack’s Perfect Planer boards and even top water artificial later in the month as water temps increase. The downline bite will be in 35-90’ of water from half way back in the creeks out towards the river channels. This will be the case in most of our northern creeks on the Chattahoochee arm as well as the creeks in the middle of the Chestatee arm of the lake. These fish will eat a variety of bait from herring, large shiners, small trout, and threadfin shad. Most of the fish up in the river systems have been pushed south with all the flooding and cold, muddy water. If the rain will stop, expect fish to move up into the river systems getting ready to spawn as the month progresses. These river fish will be caught on a variety of live bait as well, but mostly on larger gizzard shad or trout on flat lines and Perfect Planer boards. As the water clears from muddy to stained in the major creeks the shallow bite will get better throughout the month. Flat, Big, Shoal, and Baldridge on the south and Thompson, Taylor, Lathem, Gainesville, Wahoo, and Limestone on the north end of the lake will all hold fish later this month. Live baits pulled over points and humps in 15-30 feet of water at .8-1.1 mph with herring, threadfin shad, or small/med trout on flat lines or Perfect Planer boards will be the go to technique. Run your flat lines 25-75 feet behind the boat or boards with smaller baits and 15-30 feet with larger baits. The stealth trolling bite with Capt Mack’s Mini Macks will continue to be the artificial fishing way to go. Run your MM from 25-35 feet deep and run them from 25-35 feet away from the boat attached to your Perfect Planer boards. The Striper Experience team has been using the 3/8 and ½ ounce swim bait heads available from StriperTackle.com to add some weight to our rigs which gives us a better feel on how deep our rigs actually are at these speeds. Also keep a 1/4oz StriperTackle Pro Swimbait head with a small Keitech swim bait attached, a small Chug Bug, a Gunfish, or Top Dog walking plug tied on for surfacing schooling fish that will become more active thru out the month.
We all need to be good stewards of the money that is given to us from God. Jesus spoke more about money than Heaven and Hell combined. As you read through your Bible there are about 500 passages about prayer and 2000 about money. We all need to realize that what stuff we have is actually God’s. Matt 6:19-24 ends with “no one can serve two masters……You cannot serve both God and money.” We can do good with money when it is a servant to us, but it will destroy us if it is our master and not God.