By James Pressley
A friend of mine, Capt. Mack Farr, likes to say we should blur the lines between salt and freshwater fishing, meaning both have lessons, techniques, and baits to offer the other. An example of this is the popularity of the spinnerbait in red fishing and chatterbaits, too. Both of those got their start in freshwater, for bass. The umbrella rig, for bass and stripers, is another example. No matter the size, no matter the hook counts, these rigs started in salt, and started for big game fish! Yet, we consistently use them and count on them to catch stripers and bass.
Recently, I was introduced to a guy named Ryan Hanks. Ryan is with Cast Fishing, which is, believe it or not, an Australia-based fishing equipment company. If you are on social media or keep up with what is happening on Lake Lanier, you have probably seen him or Cast Fishing. They make the O.G. topwater bait, which is probably the hottest thing on Lanier right now. But wait a minute. They are not just topwater.
Ryan is a nut for slow pitch jigging. I will forgive you if you’ve never heard of this technique. It’s very understandable. It’s a technique using very light rods, very tough and high-capacity reels, braid, and jigs (what we call spoons in the freshwater world). You drop down to the bottom, or the desired depth, and use the reel to impart action to the jig. It’s cool! And it really works on species such as grouper, snapper, tuna, etc.
Okay, you’ve got the back story. Now, for the point of the piece. Ryan and I were chatting back around Thanksgiving on a call one day and he asked how the spoon bite was on Oconee. Well, Bubba, you just walked into my wheelhouse! I told him how, when, and what we did here to catch them, and he asked if I would be willing to try the new small Cast SPJ in 20g. Well, I had to ask exactly how big a 20g jig was first. After I learned, I quickly signed on. In the mail that day Ryan dropped a few Cast jigs and their new jigging braid. I immediately called my good friend Jimmy Holmes (the spoon guru) and told him what we had going on. Jimmy was all in too, and he brought along our buddy Danny Lockhart.
Jimmy, Danny, and I met over at Sugar Creek in mid-December and put in at the GA Power ramp. I fish this end of the lake a LOT when it’s not muddy, and we headed to a few of my prime spots to try the SPJ, and of course, we also had several Capt. Mack’s super jigs tied on, too. The first spot out was one everyone knows, and the secret is being around often enough to be there when the fish hit it hard! That’s the mouth of Sugar Creek. This whole area holds fish at different times of the year and in different spots.
This time we fished along the upper end of the trees in the river channel. Man, they were thick! Birds were there, the bait was there, and the fish were there. We might have fished for 3-5 minutes before we started catching some. I caught the first fish on Lake Oconee, right then on a Cast slow pitch jig. It was a smaller white bass, but it was the first.
The next spot was a river channel spot I keep an eye on, up towards I-20. Here and there, it will produce a good fish for me. This time I handed the Cast Jig over to Danny and he started working it while I got ready to film. We had seen some good bait balls on the electronics with some feeding fish in them. Well, Danny didn’t take long and boated a nice 6-8 pound striper, which fortunately we got on video! Well, that was the only fish we could get to bite there, but like usual, that spot produces a good fish for me.
Not wanting to waste a lot of time, we headed back to the mouth of Sugar Creek and widened our search for fish. We found them again, and this time stayed on them for a couple of hours catching many doubles, triples, and fish of every size on all types of spoons. The Cast SPJ continued to produce for me, and once you get the feel for it, you will love it. All in all, we caught probably 100 fish that day in just a few hours. I caught stripers, whites, hybrids, and even a crappie on the Cast Jig. While I didn’t truly use the jig as was intended, I used it far more like we do spoons (drop it to the bottom or the depth and slowly pop it). The size, shape, and colors are something our fish haven’t seen, and they do seem to like it!
Check out Southern Born Gentleman on Facebook and Instagram for video and more pics of the day!