Lanier Stripers 
by Capt Clay Cunningham
Fall is showing up here on Lanier. The gulls are starting to show up and the loons will be here soon as well. We need one cold front and we will see more and more surface action.  Herring will continue to be the primary bait in October. Rig the herring on a freeline which is basically  a 1/0 Gamakatsu Octopus hook, a section of 10-pound Trilene Big Game 100% Flourocarbon and a Spro 120-pound Power Swivel. A quality swivel is important. Use this setup on the same Shakespeare Striper Rod you use for downlining spooled with Trilene Big Game.
Be prepared for the surface action. Spool up a Fenwick medium action rod with 10-pound Trilene Big Game and a Sebile Magic Swimmer as the lure. The Magic Swimmer has caught tons of stripers over the past decade. The Magic Swimmer comes in several sizes, and they all work, but the 125 is most popular. Be prepared with several colors like the Halo Greenie and White Liner. As mentioned last month, another topwater bait to try is the Berkley J-Walker 120 and the Berkley Driftwalker. These two baits are new and just hitting the market. Pick a shad based color or a bone color and you are good to go. Look for schooling fish and cast right in the middle of them. This is usually the most exciting month of the year on Lanier. Do not miss it. Iâm so glad the summer heat is gone.
Lanier Stripers
by Steve Scott
Fishing on the south end of Lanier in September was the usual mid-eighties water temperature in the creeks as well as in the main lake. Stripers were caught shallow and deep. The DNR put out its usual dissolved oxygen reports telling us the best depth to find the stripers was around 40 feet deep. Umbrella rigs and lead core trolling seem to be the consistent technique to land a schoolie basically in the 20â to 28â range. Bigger stripers were caught, but you had to get your bai
ts down to the 40â mark or deeper. I had switched to what I call a deep-water umbrella rig which consisted of adding 9 two-ounce bucktail jigs to my 4 arm u-rig. I let it out 100â behind the boat at 2.5 mph and had the most success with this method. Lead core was also used with a 4-ounce bucktail jig and a 6â paddle tail bait in lime ice out 7 colors at 3 mph.
October is called turnover month. It marks the beginning of the water at the bottom of the lake moving upward and the water at the top of the lake moving downward combining the water temperatures into a constant temperature. This process would complete usually around Christmas time. Finding the stripers during this time will be a challenge as the stripers can now move up and down the water column. That being said, the bite could be topwater plugs and Red Fins to downlining herring 80 feet deep. Other techniques to try would be planer boards and freelines using either blueback herring or small gizzard shad.
Up north in the rivers where the depths are shallower, larger baits on planer boards could be the ticket. Go big or go home. Using a gizzard shad from 10 inches to 15 inches should bring you a larger striper.
TIP OF THE MONTH: With the size of stripers not being what we have seen in the past, you should go to a smaller leader like 8 to 10 pound fluorocarbon. Youâll catch more fish without the worry of breaking off even with a slightly heavier striper. Find more details  on my website. TeamLanier.com Steve Scott 404-273-3481.