We had a great morning. For some catching 10 or so smaller stripes may not their idea of a great day but I took my good friends Ken and his son Levi and we had a ball. Finally had a weekend off and used my new Oxy tank from Oakwood B&T. It worked great.
Started at 6:30, water temp aroung 81.3 about 83 at noon. 1st stop next to channel 70-90' at Chestatee Bay, marked a few fish and caught our first, a big ol' pot-bellied cat. Bait was not lasting long at 30 to 40'.
Checked inside the no-wake bouys next to the sea wall at Lan Mar, marked a few no takers. Was not sure where ya'll were talking about the fish have been in there. Did not find them on the other side of the channel either.
Found the schoolies at mouth of two mile in 80-90' they were hungry going in and out of bait pods and we were more than glad to feed em a box lunch of BB's and 1-0 Owner hooks. Only took 3 dozen which worked perfect, had to be back by noon, caught our last one and the biggest about 5 lbs on the next to last bait. The rain was just begining to fall.
Again fresh bait and getting them down quickly was key, fish were bitting from 25 to 40 a lot of times when moving. Also saw several busting the top.
Bait would not last much longer that 15 minutes or so.
Good luck.

I noticed that the water quality was poor any further North of Flowery Branch today......the choices are narrowing down.

Good job guys!!! Big daddy glad you and your friends caught some fins today. Corey, glad you had a good bite on the leadcore.

I went out today and gave it a whirl, we started in FB and worked our way south running pockets and bays and then river channels. We saw one of the largest school's I have seen all year, but the fish were not that hungry. managed to get 4 out of it, and lost 3 more, all fish ranged from 8 to 15# then the rain came. I saw alot of fish up in the water column today, and thought it was a perfect day to troll leadcore, but my other half does not like to troll, and by then it was raining, so had to call it a day.

Corey did you hit them good today trolling the shadalicious, and what was the size range?

I hear you Corey but like Dan said we were marking and catching fish in 90' deep from 25 down to 50. Even busting the top. This was not a bunch, just a few together at a time and you could see them going through the bait bait pods along with our bait. I wonder do you think the big balls of bait are shad or BB's? can you tell the difference? And the bait fish were up in the column from 30 up to 20'. Thanks Dan, Glad you and and Jan caught some good ones, I'm with Jan on the trolling, especially when it's nice and almost cool like this morning.

Thinking about it maybe the pods were more like 40 to 30' because most of the time our bait would go through the pods and we were from 30 to 40' down.

Biggie- Yes you can tell the difference between the shads and BB's on the fish finder, Shads are the balls of bait, BB's is the thick dark line that runs across your sonar screens hope this help. Correct me if Im wrong GUYS..

I thought the same. The big and small balls being the same we have seen since on our old X-70's and paper graff days before we had BB's in the lake. Thanks Simon.

Nothing big for us...8lbs was the big boy today, but my two sons did the reeling and I'm not sure they could've handled much more on the leadcore (just reeling the leadcore in is a chore for them). Numbers COULD have been big (with the LC), but I got hung up a couple of times right over the fish and had to break off, then the wall of rain came that drove us off the lake. I got a couple of good pictures of the kids that I'll try to put up tomorrow.

I was not pulling leadcore very far south (like I should have been), or it's possible the fish size may have been a little better.

Corey, look forward to seeing the pics of your son pulling in the fish!

This morning we found a school today like I mentioned earlier was the largest I have seen all year, and I am mad at myself for not getting a pic of the screen. The water depth was 90' and had fish from 35' to 80' suspended. The entire screen was lit up literally, and when we made the drop they had to be coaxed by power reeling.

At that time they began to turn on somewhat, and took 7 pull downs in a short order. I am including a pic of co-captain Jan of the first fish from the school, because after this one it got to be a fire drill, thus making me loose my focas and not get the screen picture which I believe was the finest screen I have ever seen. OH WELL!!!

Congratulations Stan. Sounds like you had to put a good search pattern into play to find them yesterday morning.

Dan, what's the story on the picture? I see a white deck in your picture, which I have not seen before?

tom