North Georgia Panfishing

Bluegill fight surprisingly hard

Friday, November 5, was to be my last day in Georgia and our last opportunity to fish on this trip. We decided after the prior three days which had all been  planned, to just go to breakfast and from there see how the spirit moved us and to where to see if we could catch some fish without having a strategy in place.

We had a great breakfast at Cracker Barrel and on our way out saw a sign for one of the many public parks surrounding Lake Lanier.

We pulled into the park with the intention of getting some more pictures of the lake and surrounding area. While taking the pictures, we inevitably looked down into the water and to my surprise saw some panfish close to shore. Seeing that, my son and I decided to go back to the car and get one of his fly rods out to see if these sunfish would bite on a fly.

This to me is one of greatest attributes of fishing. I firmly believe that any fish you catch is a good fish. It doesn’t have to be a 10 pound largemouth or a 6 pound smallmouth or a record of any kind to be a blast.

Just being on or next to the water and taking advantage of whatever species presents itself as a potential catch is the ultimate goal, the reward is when you set the hook. We caught a couple of fish at that first park and decided for the rest of the day to just drive around the lake and pull into every park we could find to see how many bluegill, red-ear sunfish, green sunfish or any other fish, we could catch.

As it turned out, every one of these parks was a little bit different in terms of the available cover within the cove, the length and depth of the cove and of course water depth and clarity. We had a ball driving around the lake, talking about the previous days fishing trips, the sights along the way, the different techniques and lures that we used and of course, the end result of what we did. We also did a little reminiscing about how this addiction to and love for fishing began.

We thought about some of those early trips where by accident, we discovered something that we hadn’t known about a particular species and that had made enough of an impact to continue to this day to be a tool in our arsenal for catching fish.

We talked about the lures that we had acquired in those days that turned out to be complete gimmicks that were designed more to catch fisherman than fish and how we had tried so many of them before finding those that really did work. And we talked about the gear that we had when we first started fishing, again laughing about it as we looked at what we now use. We talked about all the changes that we have seen over the years in everything related to fishing and those things that haven’t changed at all.

In the end, we were able to hit only six of the parks around the lake but we managed to pull fish from every one of them. We also knick-named this little practice “park hopping”. We have already committed to doing it again the next time I go to Georgia, except the next time, we are going to get started much earlier than we did on this trip just too see how many of these parks we can hit and how many fish we can catch in a day by doing this.

Unfortunately time ran out and I had to get to the airport to catch my flight and get home. It was five days of nothing butfishing with a little bit of driving, sleeping and eating thrown in for good measure. Yes, it ended too soon for my liking but all that does is make me that much more eager for the next time and the fact of the matter is, when you can spend even just a few days like this, it sure makes all those other days seem a whole lot better.