Two trips to similar lakes in the past week produced different results. I fished Lake Lanier in Georgia and Smith Lake in Alabama doing “research” for my monthly Map of the Month articles.

    Both lakes are deep and clear, with a lot of underwater standing timber. Both are full of spotted bass and blueback herring baitfish.  But the herring at Lanier seem to be expanding and making the spots grow big and fast, while at Smith the herring have declined, and the spotted bass are mostly feeding on threadfin shad.

    The spots we caught at Lanier looked like footballs the were so fat. And many were over the 14-inch size limit.  At Smith, we caught more fish, but most were 12 to 14 inches long and not nearly as fat.

    Guide Brent Crow took me out on Smith. He has fished the lake for many years and said the spots were feeding on herring up to two years ago, following a predictable pattern just like Lanier. But now he is seeing few herring and the bass are acting different.

    We had to go to tiny baits to catch the fish. We saw several half-inch long shad the fish we hooked spit up. But at Lanier we used big herring size baits, swimbaits five or six inches long and big topwater baits.

    Lakes change with time. Brent had no idea what caused the change at Smith. Hopefully Lanier will continue to produce big, fat spots but herring are not native to either lake and any time non native species are introduced, the results are unpredictable.

    The trip to Smith will be a costly one for me.  I have a lot of electronics on my boat that were top of the line in 2016, but the technology is outdated now. I love my Humminbird 360 scan that shows a radar like picture of things under the water, but the new one coming out this month is far superior to mine, giving a clearer picture of brush, rocks and fish.

    I have been looking at the Garmin Panoptix unit. This unit, called “Live Scan,” shows a picture of what it is pointed at, much like looking under water with a spotlight.  And it shows fish as they move, the depth they are holding and exactly how far from the boat they are, and the direction from the boat.

    We caught about 25 bass at Smith and probably would not have caught them without the Garmin unit.  Brent would stop on a point and scan around it looking for suspended fish.  We would then cast directly to them rather than blindly fan casting a point. Brent said he never made a cast unless he saw the fish.

    It was amazing watching the bait moved through the water and the fish react to it. Many followed it but turned away, but we could see the ones that grabbed it and watch as they fought back to the boat.

    I learned more about bass behavior in a few hours than I have in many years. But it was frustrating, watching a bass follow the bait but not hit it.

    I seldom fish for suspended fish, usually working a jig or shaky head along the bottom on rocks and brush. And the Garmin showed brush and rocks, but the picture was very different than what I am used to seeing.  It would take a lot of study to learn exactly what I was looking at with the Garmin.

    The good thing was we could see the fish as they moved in the brush and around the rocks.  We never got any of them to hit on that kind of structure though. 

    I am almost convinced to replace my old 360 scan with the Garmin. Maybe I can figure out how to keep both!