I was able to slip off friday afternoon with my wife to try and find a spot on lanier. we found fish all afternoon as they were very hard on the bed. first place i stopped i was just messing around trying to see how the spots bed (still learning techniques for spots) and if they are like largemouth. i found out that a spot will bed anywhere it can. we found them in rocks, in the back of cuts, on red clay banks, beside stumps and on sandy areas. i counted 25 fish and 10 beds on the first place i stopped. you could see the individual puffs of silt coming up from each of the beds. very cool. however, you could also tell they had been messed with a lot with the BFL event held today. they would swipe at the jerkbait with their tail and pick the worm up barely by the end of the tail. we ended up with 12 for the day and missed at least 15 if not more. caught all of them on spotstickers and worms, they just would not comit to a spinnerbait or jerkbait (just hit it, could not hook one). none worth pics, biggest was a 3.25 lbs., but a fun day with one of my favorite fishing buddies.
on to the big report and what a day it was. up on Hartwell at 7:30 this morning. by myself cause my dad backed out at 9:30 last night and i could not find anyone awake to get to go with me. thought i would get up there early and beat the storms (which never came). about 8 i had already been dragging blue backs for about 30 minutes and half asleep. all of a sudden my big pole goes screaming. i mean screaming and not stopping. i was on the end of a point with my planner in about 6 feet of water when it hit. i looked down at my spool when i first picked the rod up and half my 450 feet of 25 lb big game was gone. :hair: i am running around trying to pull up downlines with one hand and keep my fish on with the other. what a cluster. at last i am able to get the boat pointed toward it, look down at my line counter and 350 feet is gone. holy cow i am thinking. i finally play it out and get the fish to the boat. dip net too small, get half of the fish in it and bring it in. i am thinking 25 lbs at first cause my biggest til then was 18 (so little experience with big fish). get it in the boat, put it on the 15 lb digital and E (error) comes up right away, then to the 25 lb scale and it went straight to the end, so i am thinking 35 lbs. fish ended up weighing 28 lbs 10 oz. and 40.5 inches long. more about that later, on to the rest of the day.
next these pretty much back to back til 11 a.m. and then someone flipped the switch. caught several bass after this, but from 9-11 it was non stop. several times i had fish working in to the boat when another rod would go zinging and would end up losing that fish. i kept trying to just tighten down the drag on one rod while i played a fish on the other. it would last about 2-3 minutes each time before they would come off. oh well.
4lb 8 oz.
7lb 2 oz
the big boy
what a day. i released four other small stripers that were probably some of the fall release. i have waited 31 years for a day like this. i couldn't believe i was by myself, but that is how it goes. the rest of the story goes like this..... i called SCOUTNSTRIPERS (jim farmer), HUNTNNUT (milton) to find out if i could keep it and what to do with it (didn't know if it was big enough to mount). i knew you could only keep two, but i didn't know the exact lengths. woke up jim, so he is mad at me, milton didn't answer, took the fish over to MR ED's (eddie) to weigh it and he is mad cause i didn't invite him to go (didn't know he cared anything about stripers til he gave me that eat turds and die look when i went to his house hahahahah), so i am just on the outs with everyone. then there is my dad who is really mad he didn't go. i couldn't find a scale after going all over the lake to find one. finally found a very nice gentleman who i asked if he was fishing a tounrey and of course he was, but he let me borrow his scale anyway. his said 28 lbs and i didn't really want to believe it. called MR ED and luckily he had a digital scale. so that is how i got him weighed. can't wait to see it on the wall. i have heard from several that the fish probably lost a little since it was almost 12 hours from the time i caught it til i weighed. i don't care, it is still a big fish and i am very proud of it. :yeah:
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Volguy, mighty fine trip you guys had there - you just keep sending us those fine reports and pics. Kind of helps most of us wash off the salt with those freshies, eh! 
If you get up there around some of N. Georgia's trout streams, please send me a report & photos...I can't get up there this spring! 