LittleDrummerBoy
Senior Member
With the warming water, my optimism about Flat Creek, Balus Creek, and Mud Creek was waning. I started to study the contour map and saw a lot of promising features in Two Mile Creek. But when I thought about the boat ride back close to noon on a Sunday, I lost interest. I wanted a creek on the SE side of Lanier with a rapid transition from 30 ft to 15 ft in the creek channel, then a long stretch from 15 ft to 10 ft. I studied both the contour maps and the Google maps aerial view for a while yesterday and then asked my guest to meet me at the Burton Mill boat ramp at 6:30 AM.
Not having fished Big Creek before (at least in a long time), I took my time - we tooled up the creek at 4 MPH out to a channel depth of 30 feet and then back up the creek until the channel depth was about 6 ft deep. With a water temp of 76 deg F, I wasn't optimistic about the shallower water. Tooling back down the creek toward the ramp, I began marking lots of bait near where the channel was 13 feet deep. Saw a deer swimming across too. This was our spot. Put out a dozen jugs of the flat side of the creek and set up with poles on the channel side. Most of the fish were caught on the channel side - bluebacks on the bottom in 10-13 feet of water.
Beautiful quiet morning - boat traffic picked up through the morning, and the ramp was downright busy when we pulled the boat out at noon. I think the thermocline is about 10 feet deep, since once the sun was up, all the bait was between 10-13 feet deep. As the thermocline moves deeper, so will the bait, and the catfish should follow the bait. But with care, the creeks might still produce catfish for another week or so.
Not having fished Big Creek before (at least in a long time), I took my time - we tooled up the creek at 4 MPH out to a channel depth of 30 feet and then back up the creek until the channel depth was about 6 ft deep. With a water temp of 76 deg F, I wasn't optimistic about the shallower water. Tooling back down the creek toward the ramp, I began marking lots of bait near where the channel was 13 feet deep. Saw a deer swimming across too. This was our spot. Put out a dozen jugs of the flat side of the creek and set up with poles on the channel side. Most of the fish were caught on the channel side - bluebacks on the bottom in 10-13 feet of water.
Beautiful quiet morning - boat traffic picked up through the morning, and the ramp was downright busy when we pulled the boat out at noon. I think the thermocline is about 10 feet deep, since once the sun was up, all the bait was between 10-13 feet deep. As the thermocline moves deeper, so will the bait, and the catfish should follow the bait. But with care, the creeks might still produce catfish for another week or so.
