Lake Athens Schooling?

Are the bass still schooling on Lake Athens? My son's home for the summer and planning to take him out this weekend.

Thanks for the help!

Nothing like they used to 5-6 years ago.

Been fishing there a couple of times per week for the last month and have not seen any schooling fish

Wacky rigged senko on the outside of the grass will get you bit

They have been schooling pretty aggressively on both sides of the bridge for well over a month now. It normally starts when the sun dips down pretty low, say 7 PM or even later. Bring something you can skim across the water, silver or white, works well if you throw just beyond them and drag it back fast.

I like to fish under them where there seems to always be the occasional bass looking for stunned shad to drop down. I have been using a 4" Grande Bass Rattlesnake or a Keitech Shad Impact a lot lately. I will be doing so in a few hours as I am heading over to fish the late afternoon again. Flukes work well, too, by the way. Black or white seem really good.

We had 5 kayaks and one boat in a large semi-circle fishing the north side of the bridge and everyone was catching plenty of fish. This was about a month ago.

I have not noticed the heavy schooling action out nearer the boat ramp this year, not yet. That's fun to see when they fire up. The only stronger action I have personally seen, larger pods of schoolers, was on Wheeler Branch.

You get a sense of how very fast bass can swim when you see them dashing through the water.

Brad

I can verify what Brad states above. I've been on Athens twice in the last two weeks and have observed schooling bass at the same time of day Brad states on both sides of the bridge. My wife and I caught a dozen LMB's last Friday evening plus 4 big sandbass. All of the LMB's were in the slot. The largest went 19 inches. We kept the sandies and released the LMB's. Here is the fishing report from the Athens Daily Review today [Thursday 6/27]...

ATHENS — Water level is five inches high and clear. Water temp in the 80s.

Fishing guide Jim Brack says schooling action is beginning to fire up on the main lake early and late with bass hitting small spinners, Flukes, cranks, ‘Traps and topwaters. Crappie are scattered on brush piles in 20-25 feet, hitting jigs and plastics.

Hope this helps...go get you some!!

Thanks guys. Looks like we'll be heading down that way this weekend.

I went out last late afternoon again, less schooling but still a tiny bit. It also rained just a bit on me. I ended up with only 4 fish, all caught off the bottom with a Grande Bass worm fishing very slow . . . from a kayak. I had two nice sized bass, two more like the typical schoolers in the 2 lbs. range. This one weighed 3.66 lbs. and was lots of fun to battle on finesse gear and tackle.

Brad

Was on the lake Monday and saw several areas of schooling fish down by the dam just before noon