Moving north for next stop

After a great week in Florida, I made the trek to the Atlanta, Ga. area last week to get ready for FLW Tour stop #3 this week at Lake Lanier.
My tournament last week in Florida was special because it was my best finish in one of these pro events and it worked out really well that my girlfriend, Shelby, was there for that tournament.
We were able to enjoy the great Florida weather for a couple of days after the tournament before heading north. Shelby since has flown back home from Atlanta but it was really nice having some help for the drive!
The weather in north Georgia, while still nice, is quite different from what we experienced in Florida. Temperatures only are slightly above freezing at night and getting up to just 14-16 degrees C during the day.
On the water, this is cool so my wardrobe has changed from shorts and flip flops to include boots and long underwear.
After a couple of days of fun-fishing on a small lake near Lake Lanier, I can tell you the fishing is quite different, as well! In Florida, we were fishing shallow water with weeds everywhere while up here in north Georgia, the lakes are deep and clear without any weeds.
It actually looks as much like home in Sunset Country as anywhere I have fished in the U.S.
While things went really well for me in Florida, I am welcoming the change in conditions because they suit my fishing style in that it is more like fishing at home.
Lake Lanier, where our tournament is this week, is known as one of the best spotted bass lakes in the U.S. We don’t have any spotted bass in Canada but they have a lot of similarities to smallmouths in that they have an aggressive nature, they like deep, clear water, and can be caught with finesse techniques like we often use back home.
This is an event that I’ve been looking forward to since the schedule for the 2018 season was released. I had not fished Lake Lanier until this week, but it has been a lot of fun chasing these spotted bass around so far.
We did not start pre-fishing on Lake Lanier until Sunday so while I was fun-fishing on the nearby lake late last week, I managed to catch my biggest spotted bass, weighing just under six pounds.
On most waters, spotted bass do not get that big so this was a real trophy!
These “spots,” as we call them, are a lot of fun to catch and I am enjoying fishing for them at Lanier. They have an aggressive attitude–even in the cold weather here right now–so it should be a fun tournament with a lot of fish caught.
After the great tournament last week and getting out of the slump I had going, it feels great to be competing again this week. The pressure to do well is much less and I’m having a lot of fun out there, and I expect to have a pretty good event this week.
After the tournament, I get to come home for a few weeks, which I’m looking forward to. I have friends from all over the place coming to visit Northwestern Ontario to ice-fish over the last couple weeks of March.
I am excited to catch some big walleye, lake trout, pike, and crappie and, most of all, can’t wait to have a fresh walleye dinner!
You can follow the FLW Tour event at Lake Lanier this week at FLWFishing.com