Loved fishing Lake Lanier

Fishing is a pretty humbling sport. One day you can do no wrong, catching fish is easy. But the next day, everything can change, leaving you wondering if there are any fish in the lake.
This challenge is part of the appeal to fishing, I think. If it always was easy, it probably would not be as much fun.
After a great 2016 season fishing the FLW Tour bass tournament circuit, last year was a real grind. I piled up the mediocre finishes and did not accumulate very much in the winnings department, which is my main source of income through the winter and spring months.
I was really glad when the season was over because it just felt like I could not catch a break.
After starting this season with a tough finish at the first event in Florida, I now have racked up a couple of top 10 finishes, taking seventh this past weekend at Lake Lanier in Georgia.
It was a great week of fishing through the three days of practice, then the four days of the actual tournament.
Lake Lanier is known as one of the finest spotted bass lakes in the U.S. and after my visit there, I would rank it as my favourite lake that I have visited over the past seven years of fishing these tournaments in the U.S.
It is a deep, clear reservoir, making it sort of unique in the southeast U.S.
Spotted bass are not found in Canada and while they are not exactly a cross between a smallmouth and a largemouth, they do have some similarities to both.
Spotted bass have the colouring more similar to a largemouth but a mouth that is comparable to that of a smallmouth. They also tend to like deeper, clear water, much like a smallmouth.
Having never been to Lake Lanier prior to this past week, I did not know a whole lot about the lake. When I launched my boat there on the first day of practice, I drove over the first point out in front of the boat ramp, marked several fish in about 30 feet of water, and I decided to try and catch one.
I got on top of them like we fish for walleye at home in Northwestern Ontario and dropped a jig down to them. I immediately hooked up with a spotted bass and decided I would look for as many “spots” as I could in deep water over the three practice days.
The appeal of fishing deep water for me was it was something that I’m comfortable doing because we do it so much at home for both smallmouths and walleye. Not as many of my competition would be looking for these fish in deep water as they would in shallower water, as well.
Over the course of the three practice days, I think I had more than 150 places marked on my GPS where I caught spotted bass, so I was excited for the tournament to get underway.
Then over the course of the four-day event, I had two great days where I brought in limits weighing more than 17 pounds and two mediocre days when my catches came in at 13 pounds.
On the days when it was bright and sunny, I caught more fish and bigger fish, then had a tougher time on the cloudy days. There was something to that but I did not figure it out completely on the cloudy days, obviously.
Overall, it was a great event and a fun week. Now, after being on the road for nearly a month, it’s very nice to be home for a few weeks before we resume the season in mid-April at Lake Cumberland in Kentucky.
I’m going to be doing a bunch of ice-fishing over the next couple of weeks and am looking forward to catching some lake trout, walleye, crappie, and pike.
I have several friends from Canada and the U.S. coming to visit us in Sunset Country through the end of March to experience our great fishing, so look for those reports in the coming weeks.