Posts by Brad Bailey
3-D Archery Blast At Lake Oconee Shooting Club
Shooting 3-D archery tournaments is reportedly one of the fastest-growing sports around. At GON, however, no one had ever shot one of the tournaments. We thought we would go pay our fee and try one out to see what the buzz was about. The Lake Oconee Shooting Club near Eatonton had a tournament scheduled for…
Read MoreBig Suspended Largemouth In The Lake Russell Trees
In tournament fishing, the name of the game is to come in with five bass that weigh more than the five bass anyone else on the lake has caught. When Trad Whaley fishes a tournament on Russell, he says he’s swinging for the fences — and he has often been successful bringing five, big, difficult-to-catch…
Read MoreLong-line Trolling For Weiss Slabs
Lake Weiss fishing guide Kelly Matthews fishes for crappie year round. During the summer, he catches crappie off more than 70 deep brushpiles he has put out. During the winter he uses a bottom-bumping minnow rig to pull slabs from the river-channel ledges. Spring, however, is the time of year he looks forward to, and…
Read MoreRip-Rap Rocks & Deep Cypress Trees For Blackshear’s March Bass
Scott side-armed his fishing rod, firing a shad-colored Fat Free Shad crankbait back under the low, concrete Gum Creek bridge on Lake Blackshear. His retrieve was slow, moving the bait only fast enough to feel the big lip on the crankbait ticking the rip-rap rocks in four or five feet of water. “There’s a…
Read MoreWest Point Crappie In Yellowjacket Creek
For catching plenty of crappie at Lake West Point, Yellowjacket Creek is all you need to know, says Jeff Key. Jeff, who travels regularly from his home in Milner to the lake, says he concentrates on one stretch of Yellowjacket no matter what the sea- son. The areas he fishes change little. From February through…
Read More1,100-lb. Feral Hog Shot
When a 9-foot-long, 1,100-lb. hog was killed in Fayette County it became a story that spread like wildfire — literally going around the world on the internet and in the media. CNN, Fox-5 News, the local papers, radio stations from Seattle and Los Angeles to Jacksonville, and the Discovery Channel contacted Bill, and even the…
Read MoreHigh Falls Lake In February: Jig ’n Pig For A Few Good Bass
On High Falls Lake — and just about everywhere else — a jig ’n pig is considered a big-bass bait. “Seems like every time you catch a bass on a jig ’n pig on this lake, it’s a good one,” said my fishing partner on the lake last month. On Jan. 16, I spent an afternoon…
Read MoreFlip Docks Or Spoon For December Bass At Lake Oconee
Before you go bass fishing at Lake Oconee in December, you have a shallow-water, deep-water decision to make. For wintertime bass, Oconee angler Kenny Holloway depends on two different lures in two completely different areas of the lake: either a jig ’n pig in super-shallow structure or a jigging spoon on deep drops. Both baits,…
Read MoreSpoon Up Spots (Carefully) Out Of Lake Russell Timber
I gave my line slack, and somewhere down in the tangle of tree trunks and branches 40 feet below the boat, my jigging spoon fluttered down like a dying shad sinking toward the bottom. When I pulled upward the jig felt like it bumped something. I pulled up gently, maintaining pressure, watching the rod tip.…
Read MoreDo-It-Yourself Duck Ponds
Georgia isn’t known for its red-hot duck hunting. We are a long way from the rice fields of Arkansas and clouds of mallards. For most Georgia duck hunters a good morning hunting means you were able to slog into a beaver-pond swamp and scratch down your pair of woodies. There are some exceptions. Some private…
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