The most recent data released by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources shows that the optimal water depth for levels of saturated oxygen and water temperature on Lake Lanier is between 29 and 32 feet.
That is the comfort zone for the most fragile of Lanier’s aquatic community, the baitfish.
If you idle around the lake watching your electronics closely you will soon see that giant schools of bait fish appear at those depths. The threadfin shad and herring like comfortable temperatures and high levels of oxygen and will stay at 29-32 all day.
All day, that is, until a marauding school of stripers or spotted bass make life miserable.
Survival instinct causes the schools of baitfish to flee in a panic, changing location and depth in a frantic search for safety.
That is why I like seeing on my sonar an occasional school of bait that is at an unexpected depth. That is my signal that there are feeding fish in the vicinity.
Observing nicely symmetrical schools of bait, swimming slowly in their comfort zone (29-32 feet), tells me to look elsewhere. Either there are no feeding game fish nearby or the predators are experiencing lockjaw.
Have you ever been to the Bass Pro Shop in Duluth and watched the fish behavior in the giant aquarium?
Sometimes you will see a few of the minnows that store caretakers release into the giant tank during feeding time. These are the survivors: the few, the proud, the lucky.
They will be swimming around like they haven’t a care in the world; you’ll wonder why the 10-pound bass just a foot away doesn’t suck them down. The timing, my friend, isn’t right.
But then, without any discernable reason, the bass will decide to eat and those melancholic minnows will become Type-A. They will cluster together and dart about like they just chugged a large Red Bull.
That is what I’m looking for on my fish finder - bait that is paranoid schizophrenic. Find them and you can be sure feeding fish are close at hand.
One final tip: every summer, when the lake hits peak temperature (90-degrees found in a couple of pockets), the spotted bass prefer a worm or jig that has some “red” in it.
Old timers say to use red-skirted spinnerbaits at night. I’m way too young (LOL) to be an old timer and don't fish much at night, but I know Morning Dawn and Red Shad are two drop shot colors that get bit even under the slowest daytime conditions.
Wednesday it was the only color that put fish in our livewell.
