My magazine articles took me to two lakes as different as two can be in Georgia and Alabama. Both are about two hours from Griffin but that is just about all they have in common, other than both being great places to catch bass in December.

Lake Blackshear is south of us between Americus and Cordele on the Flint River. Most of it is shallow, with miles of cypress trees growing in the water. There are grassbeds and old docks with wooden post and brush piles. Up the river hundreds of acres of cypress swamp have four or five feet of water around them where it would be easy to get lost.

When fishing your boat will seldom be in more than five feet of water. Largemouth abound in the lake and the water is often murky to muddy. Even when clear it has a brownish tannic tint.

I fished with Stephen Birchfield, a basketball and fishing team coach at nearby Bruton Parker College. His family has a house in Swift Creek on the lake and he fishes it a lot. We had a good day, hooking several largemouth in the two-pound range.

Bruton Parker is a small Baptist College. With only about 350 students, everyone knows everyone there and there is a good sense of community among the students. Stephen told me they are planning on giving some fishing scholarships next year and hope to have 20 fishermen on the bass team.

If you are a high school senior and love to fish, and a small college appeals to you, check out their web site at http://www.bpc.edu/. And you will get to fish Lake Blackshear a lot!

Getting to Blackshear is easy on I-75 or
Highway 19. Veterans State Park is about half way up the river from the dam and has great facilities. There are several smaller ramps scattered around the lake, too.

Lake Wedowee is west of us past Lagrange on the Tallapoosa and Little Tallapoosa Rivers. Highway 431 crosses the upper end of the Little Tallapoosa north of Wedowee, Alabama. Filled in 1983, it is one of Alabama Power Company’s newest lake. Several people from Griffin built houses on the lake when it first filled.
Prices of lots and houses there have dramatically increased over the past 20 years, with many huge mansions on the water now.

The rivers and some of the lower lake, as well as the creeks, have bluff rock banks that drop into 30 plus feet of water. There is standing timber along many of them. Your boat will usually be sitting over water more than 30 feet deep when you are casting to the bank. The docks there may have a few posts but in the winter they are out of the water due to the drawdown. All have a floating platform in front that goes up and down with the water.

Although the lower lake remains very clear most of the year, the rivers do get muddy after heavy rains. Spotted bass abound but average about a pound each. There are big ones there, tournament stringers often have several over three pounds each. And there are some big largemouth, Tom Tanner landed one over eight pounds in a Potato Creek Bassmasters tournament there last March.

Last Wednesday morning I got up at 2:15 AM and drove to Iuka, Mississippi to meet Shane Cox, owner of Hammer Rods, to “do research” for a June Map of the Month Alabama Outdoor News article on Pickwick Lake. Pickwick is a big Tennessee River lake mostly in Alabama but its dam is in Mississippi and the north shore there is in Tennessee in that area.

It is as far north and west as you can go in Alabama. The six-hour drive is the longest one I do for any articles. I have driven it both ways and fished during the day in the past but I think those days are over! On my longest trip ever, a few years ago I met Karen Elkins at Neely Henry at 6:00 AM after driving for four hours. We fished until 9:00 that night – I was in the boat 15 hours – then had another four-hour drive home. That was my longest day, 23 hours!

Shane lives near Pickwick and is very good there. Week before last he had a five-bass limit weighing 30 pounds to win a local tournament. Pickwick produces a lot of big bass if you know how to catch them.

We ran to a river ledge where the bottom quickly dropped from 13 feet down to 30 feet deep. Shane kept the boat out over the deep water and we cast big crankbaits to the shallow water, cranking them down to bump the bottom. As they came off the bottom on the edge of the ledge, fish would hit it.

I was sitting in the bottom of the boat taking notes when he made his first cast. He said “look at that” and I looked as two three pound largemouth wallowed on top, both hook on his plug. Then he got excited and said there was a four pound smallmouth following the two hooked ones! Since I was sitting down I could not see it. One of the three pounders came off but he landed the other one.

That made me quickly grab my rod and start casting. Shane was using one of his rods made for throwing big crankbaits, a 7 foot, 11 inch model. He could throw a crankbait about half again as far as I could on my 6.5 foot rod. That helped him get his crankbait down deeper than I could get mine to go.

I did catch a three-pound largemouth and a two pound largemouth, but he landed seven or eight, including two close to six pounds each and several more in the four pound range. His best five would have weighed about 25 pounds, one of the best limits I have ever seen caught in person.

The original plan was to run to his tournament hole and catch a couple of bass for pictures then go look at ten similar spots to put on the map. We stayed longer because Shane wanted to catch that smallmouth!

After a few hours of looking at the spots and me taking notes while he fished and caught several more three-pound bass, we finished up on hole ten. As I completed my notes on it Shane caught a hybrid. I got up and started casting but this ledge was deeper and I could not get my crankbait to run deep enough, so Shane let me use his rod. I had thought maybe it was his skill that allowed him to make longer casts, but I found with his rod I could cast just as far.

Shane caught another hybrid and a two-pound largemouth on a swimbait and I did not get a bite. I quickly get worn out cranking a big plug and Shane felt sorry for me and swapped rods. A swimbait is easy to fish, you cast it out and reel it in with little resistance. This pattern was let it hit bottom then start reeling and I managed to hang his bait and lose it.

Rather than lose any more of his baits I dug around in my tackle box and found a three-quarters ounce football head jig. I carry a small box with some tackle in it, mostly stuff I usually don’t use, on these trips. That jig has been in there for years and I have never caught a bass on a football head jig,

The first cast I made I let the jig hit bottom in 18 feet of water and drug it to the drop. As it started falling I felt a thump and set the hook and landed a three-pound largemouth. I did that on the next three cast in a row, then went three cast without a bite but caught my fifth fish in eight cast on the next one. All were three-pound fish so I had a five-fish limit weighing 15 pounds in less than 15 minutes.

I would love to do that in a club tournament!

I left Pickwick at 3:30 PM and headed home, thinking I might be able to drive all the way. But after turning west rather than east onto I-20 in Birmingham, a turn I have made dozens of times coming home, I stopped just east of Birmingham and got a motel room for the night. I knew I was too tired to think straight.

Pickwick is a long way away but the fishing can be incredible!

Thursday I met Jason Mitja at Po Boys Landing on Bartletts Ferry Lake to get information for a January Georgia and Alabama Outdoor Magazine article. It will run in both states since Bartletts Ferry, called Lake Harding in Alabama, is a border lake.

Jason is a young fisherman from Phonix City and went to Auburn and was on the fishing team there with the Lee brothers. Matt and Jordan Lee have become well known professional fishermen in the past few years and Jason hopes to follow them to the Elite trail.

When my clubs fish Bartletts Ferry I usually hope to catch a limit of spots weighing eight or nine pounds. That is usually a good catch. Back in the 1970s and 80s we caught a lot of four to seven pound largemouth there but since spots have gotten so plentiful the quality largemouth have been hard to find. I did win a tournament there in March with five weighing 13 pounds and had a five-pound largemouth but that has not been the norm.

Jason showed me some good fish are still there. Thursday was the first day of a strong cold front, usually the worst possible condition for catching largemouth. So I expected to catch some spots for pictures.

Jason picked me up and we idled to a rocky point about 200 yards away. I was dressed in my warmest clothes, the sun was bright, the wind was blowing and I just knew fishing would be bad. While telling me how to fish the point Jason pitched a jig and pig to a brushpile sticking out of the water.

He turned to say something else to me then quickly turned back and set the hook. After he landed the 3.5 pound largemouth he said as he turned to me he realized his line was moving out from the tree. That was a good start.

We fished a few more of the spots then, back in a creek, Jason threw topwater plug to the bank. He said he saw some minnows jump there. After twitching it twice a fish hit at it and missed, then came back and got hooked after Jason twitched it again. It was another three-pound largemouth.

I was surprised that the fish hit topwater but should not have been. The water temperature was 60 degrees, plenty warm enough for topwater. I just usually don’t think of fishing topwater this time of year.

By the time we had looked at all ten spots and Jason took me to the ramp he had landed another three pound largemouth on the jig and pig from a dock and we both caught some smaller keeper fish. And we had been on the water only five hours! Jason could have weighed in five bass weighing about 14 pounds, a very good catch to me, but all day he was showing me places where he had won tournaments with five weighing over 20 pounds!

Jason is fishing a two-day tournament at Bartletts this weekend and I will be interested in seeing how he does. I am on Jackson today for the last Sportsman Club and Flint River tournament of the year. I guess I better have a jig and pig and a topwater bait tied on!

Last Monday I met Tyler Schmidt at Lake Lanier just before sunrise to get information for a November Georgia Outdoor News article. He showed me ten good places to catch big spotted bass on the lake during November, which baits to use and how to fish them.

We ran to a rocky point and, on my very first cast with a topwater plug, a fish sucked it under. The fish fought hard and I said it might be a striper or hybrid, but it was fighting more like a spotted bass. It was big and I let it fight against the rod and the 12 pound line I was using.

When it got almost to the boat, just before we could see it in the clear water, it made a couple of strong runs, stripping drag. Then my line went slack. I said I could not think of anything I did wrong, I guessed it was one of those fish that was just meant to get away.

When I reeled in my Whopper Plopper plug the front treble hooks were gone. The fish had straightened out the split ring holding them to the plug, something I have never had happen to me. I was disgusted.

When I got home I posted a picture of the plug on Facebook and told the story of what happened. Several fishermen, a couple of them pros, said the hooks and split rings on that plug were sorry and you should immediately change them to stronger hardware before fishing the plug.

Those plugs cost between $15 and $20 and it is ridiculous they don’t put good hardware on them. At Martin I landed about 15 bass on that plug and never had a problem, but all those fish weighed less than two pounds. I was impressed how sharp the hooks were. Usually when I hooked a fish it would have one set of trebles in its mouth and the other set would have stuck into is further back, a sign of very sharp hooks.

But is does not matter how sharp the hooks are if the split ring holding them to the plug opens up!

Another plug, the Rat-l-Trap, are notorious for having bad hooks. They don’t straighten out, they just are not very sharp and are hard to sharpen. For years I have replace those hooks, but the plug costs $6.95 at Berry’s Sporting Goods!

The rest of the day We fished the places he put on the map and saw a lot of schooling fish, and caught some weighing about two pounds each, but nothing big. My biggest spot is a 4.4 pounder I caught in a tournament at Lanier last fall about this time. The fish I lost fought harder so if it was a spot it was a big one! But I almost hope it was a striper.

The guides at Lanier are posting pictures on Facebook of big spots they are catching right now, many on topwater plugs. They are also catching a lot of stripers. If you can stand the traffic a trip to Lanier would be great right now.

On Monday I left home at 5:40 and was a little surprised how much traffic was headed north that time of night. Georgia 20 was not bad and I 75 and 675 were busy but not crazy. But when I got on I 285 headed north, it was ridiculous. It was bumper to bumper at speeds less than 30 MPH all the way to I-85. And I was not even puling a boat.

The traffic is why I don’t go to Lanier more often. Its no wonder that more folks that have to drive in that every day seem so on edge and nervous all the time! It would drive me crazy.

These Map of the Month articles have been put into eBook format – one article for each month of the year, giving you 120 spots to fish! A book for Lanier and one for Clarks Hill are available.
https://fishing-about.com/keys-to-catching-georgia-bass-ebook-series/

Last Thursday I drove to Lake Weiss near Rome, Georgia to get information for my July Georgia and Alabama Outdoor News magazine article. Since this is a border lake, with most of the lake in Alabama but some in Georgia, and many Georgia bass fishermen go there, it will be in both issues. You do have to have an Alabama fishing license to fish the lake.

I met Wayne Boyd, a tournament fisherman from Rome that knows the lake well, at the boat ramp at 9:00 AM. We fished grass beds for two hours and he caught two nice largemouth about five pounds each on a chatterbait. This pattern will not work well in July so we then spent two hours looking at spots that will be good in July, although bass have not really moved to them yet.

Weiss is a very pretty 30,200 acre lake on the Coosa, Chattooga and Little Rivers that has an average depth of only ten feet. That surprised me when I first went there years ago. The lake is surrounded by low mountains and I thought it would be deep and clear like most mountain lakes, but it is shallow, stained most of the year, and full of grass beds and wood cover to fish.

Since Weiss is on the Coosa River it has a good population of those hard fighting Alabama or Coosa spotted bass. It also has a good population of largemouth bass but the lake is known as “The Crappie Capital” of the world. There is a ten inch size limit on crappie there but fishermen still fill their limits, even with those nice fish.

If you want a good trip to catch bass or crappie, a trip to Weiss in June would be a good choice.

The thunderstorms week before last did more than bring back memories of past storms and delay my trip to the Alabama River. Some areas of central Alabama had over five inches of rain that night. I saw the results of all that rain when I got to the Alabama River this week for the article. It was four feet high, muddy and the current was ripping.

I went out with one of the best river fishermen in the area, Erick Sommers. Erick wins a lot of tournaments there and knows it well. He warned me that fishing would be terrible with the conditions but due to my deadline I had to get the information for the article.

He showed me ten places on the river where he and his partners catch big spotted and largemouth bass. We fished hard but it was just about impossible to even fish most of the places due to the current. Erick said some current makes the fish bite better. When two or three turbines are running at dams upstream it is just about right. Four makes it difficult. There were five running the day we went!

On one spot we marked for the article he showed me a picture of his son, Chase, holding up two of the three five-pound spots he had caught in a youth tournament. One of them came off the place we marked. Chase had three spots weighing over five pounds each that day and won his tournament with three fish weighing over 16 pounds.

Erick also showed me pictures of some of the five and six pound largemouth he had landed in tournaments there. The Alabama River produces a lot of big bass on normal days. Erick’s best catch of spots ever was five weighing 29.83 pounds, an incredible catch anywhere but even more amazing that it was all spots. He says it takes five bass weighing 25 pounds to win most tournaments there.

Locals just call it the river but the official name is either Jones Bluff or Woodruff reservoir, depending on what government agency you check. No matter what the name, it runs 80 miles from the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers in Wetumpka down to the dam southwest of Montgomery.

If you plan a trip it is close to three hours to get there from Griffin. There are a lot of ramps and campgrounds open to the public. Go over there and catch your best spot ever!

The weather this spring has been its usual normal unusual. I always get excited when it warms more than expected in early March, but as often happens it turns colder in April than expected. And the bass often respond by doing unusual things.

One week it seems all the bass in the lake are shallow and getting ready to bed. They are fairly easy to catch no matter what you do. Then a cold front comes through and it gets tough. All you can do is wonder where the bass went.

Fish do not like bright sun most of the time. Even the bream in my pond won’t feed much when it is bright and sunny. On a cloudy day I can throw out floating fish food and they churn the water like a school of piranha. On a bright sunny day very few will hit the food as it floats along.

The usual response when bass fishing is to go to smaller baits and fish places where there is less light. You can fish deeper water or try to get your bait way back under a dock where the sun doesn’t shine. Sometimes those tactics work, other times you just get in a lot of casting practice. At least that is the way it seems to work for me.

There is a big BASS Elite tournament this weekend on the coast of South Carolina. It will be interesting to see how the top pros adjust to the high pressure cold front. They are fishing one of the rivers and swamps on the coast with miles of shallow water and cypress trees. I suspect those trees will play a big part.

Another group of fishermen are at Hartwell for the Ray Scott Championship. It is a very different fishery from the coast. Jordan McDonald qualified to fish it and I hope he does well, adjusting to the conditions and catching fish.