The Lake Oconee spring bite

Lake Oconee right now, despite the manic behavior of the weather, is entering the best fishing we experience every year regarding the striper bite. Quite frankly, anyone with a boat of any size and with basic electronics can find fish. With a few basic setups, you can catch fish! Let’s look at what’s needed and how to accomplish that.

You truly need only two things in a sonar unit: traditional sonar and good mapping software. Traditional sonar is a must for you to locate fish in an area. If they aren’t there, you can change locations. This is a visual game. If you are not looking at baitfish, marking bigger fish, or looking at numbers of fish relocate until you find them. You can tap on the boat and bring them up, sometimes from all over. Unless you understand what you are doing with this technique then just move until you mark fish on your sonar.

Mapping is important because this time of year you will start to find hybrids and white bass in particular pushing fish against the channel edges, flats along the river edge, or into deep coves where they can ambush them. Check out the contour lines on your GPS map and watch for those specific locations. It’ll work I promise. Not every one of them is going to hold fish and the type of structure they will relate to that day. Keep looking at your map and keep hitting spots. Never forget the Dam, East Bank, or Long Shoals this time of year either.

Equipment- Personally, I use 7’ and 7’6” Striper rods medium light from Ugly Stick. My reels are Okuma or ABU Garcia depth counter reels and I spool with 10-15 mono line and run a 10lb fluorocarbon leader. The length of the leader just depends on the fish that day. I never run shorter than 18” and by the summer I am sometimes running 6’ or more. I use 2oz trolling weights, but guide Kevin Harris likes to even get to 3oz when he can find them. Hooks for me are 1/0 circle hooks by Gamakatsu for big bait and then going down to 2 or 4 mosquito hooks by Gamakatsu.

Bait- Till the shad spawn hits, bass minnows are still very productive. After it hits you can take odds on them. I still catch fish on them, but I do know guides who won’t use them and catch their own shad. You can cast net shad around most of the bridge pilings in Lick Creek for instance. Look for clouds on your sonar or bait flipping around on top.

How to deploy the bait-Pay attention to your electronics here. Find the depth the fish are feeding at (meaning: look and if the fish are all showing up on the screen in the 15’-20’ range then that’s where they are feeding) and place your bait above them! Stripers feed up in the water column. It’s not that you can’t get hit below them. It’s that your chances are better above them. Drop the bait down to the desired depth and either slowly troll around with your trolling motor or sit and wait. Both will work and both will have their days in the spring.

If you want to go with someone on Lake Oconee and learn how to do this try a new guy out, Kevin Harris. Check out his website and youtube by searching GoFishLakeOconee.