Outdoors Blog from Atlanta, Georgia, and beyond
Oct 10th 2007adminConservation & Fishing & N. Georgia
It seems like every organization wants a specialty license plate these days, and I just got back from the tag office with my new Trout Unlimited license plate.
It’s an additional $25 a year, but $24 of it goes toward Georgia DNR efforts to stock and support trout in Georgia. Additionally, you can get TU license plates in Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Montana.
Oct 9th 2007adminFishing & N. Georgia
A couple months ago GA DNR closed the Smithgall Woods Conservation Center trout fishing program due to extremely high water temp. and has now announced it has been reopened. If you’re thinking of heading up there, remember call to set a time & bring only barbless hooks.
Oct 5th 2007adminConservation & Fishing
Finally some good news. I devour smoked salmon in the late summer & early fall when they are on there runs in the West, in fact we were firing up the smoker twice a week or more this season. I do however worry about mercury levels in the fish, and steer clear of farmed salmon for this reason.
Now the good news: A team of researchers in Western Ontario have found that mercury levels in fish can drop off dramatically once mercury emissions from power plants and other sources are eliminated from the air above the lake surface. It appears that fish gain most of their mercury toxicity from airborne mercury that settles on the lake surface. This means that curbs on mercury output, once in place could have a great effect on mercury levels in fish in just a few years!
Last Thursday, before leaving for a wedding in Ocean Isle Beach, NC, I got an email from my buddy Edward showing off the 9 pound largemouth he had caught the day before. Said he got it on a top water near his Columbus, GA. Not bad…
Now, I’m normally happy for somebody who lands a monster, but upon checking my email when I returned I got another such email. Second 9+ lb. bass in two days. The smile on your face says it all you lucky (insert word of choice here).
We’ll look for you on the BASS Master tour next week, Edward.
Sep 19th 2007adminFishing & Lake Burton & Photography
The pups woke me early, just before sunrise, on Saturday morning. This time I couldn’t be any happier. The predawn glow outside the cabin was amplified by a blanket of fog over the water. Within minutes I had the boat down off the lift, and Aspen, Layla, and myself were headed for dam to do a little trout fishing.
Visibility was about thirty yards or so on the main body of the lake, and when I got down to dam, there were actually four more boats that would drift in and out of sight in the dense fog. I dropped four lines, one at each corner, with live worms and a peice of corn for color to varying depths of 20 to 40 feet in hopes of finding a big brown cruising the thermocline. I’ve done this a dozen times or so, and its usually hit (in a big way) or miss. An hour and a half went by, and nobody else on the neighboring boats was connecting either. Then the dreaded cell phone, the family was up, and breakfast was needing my attention. Mental note: blogging about fishing beforehand may be the ultimate jinx.
So with the fog burnig off, I cruised back zeroed so far on the day.
I’m not going to lie, I was bummed, so when I got back I tried throwing 3/8 oz. spoon off the swim dock and did a little better. A pretty good sized yellow perch, kept me from being zeroed on the day:
Over the weekend, we did see one school of yellow herring a hundred yards off stern. They were jumping and flipping, indicating that some bass had them schooled and were feeding. With a pretied blue & white rapala, and a matching soft bait, Jenn & I tossed into the school to no avail. And then it was gone, was it too early in the fall, or was it just not my day?
I’ve been sitting on a few posts regarding the weekend, updating some new features for OutdoorsBlogger in the mean time.
Last Friday, before we headed up to Lake Burton, I stopped off at a neighborhood pond I used to fish when I was a kid. No, I’m telling you which one, and here’s why:
I thought I was getting skunked, as I hadn’t gotten a bite in over an hour. Then I hooked up with this guy, I’m guessing he’s in the 6 to 7 pound range (I didn’t have a scale in the box). He did however measure at 19″, and put up a respectable fight even for his size. I got him on a black and red Zoom worm rigged Carolina style with a 3/8 oz. bullet on the front end, running 8 lb. low-vis green spider wire mono.
Well, now that the water temp. has fallen somewhere below the boiling point, I have big plans for fishing a few bodies of water near my home and in Rabun County, GA. I’m going to hit a small (5-6 acre) bass hot spot near my home in suburban Atlanta, while our infamous traffic situation sorts itself out. Tonight I’m heading up the Lake Burton, in Rabun County near the North & South Carolina borders. There I’m hoping that oxygen levels have raised enough from summer to get the huge lake trout hungry, and that the blue back herring are schooling so I might have a chance to hook up with some good spotted bass in the open water. I’ll let y’all know how it goes when I get back…
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