8-17-2025 Fishing Report

I’m picking up most of my Hartwell and Clarks Hill trips in the full dark right now. Hybrids love to feed before daylight. With Murray being all stripers they behave differently so we are starting trips there right at first light. Just about all the fishing is down lining herring right now. Plan to take a lot of bait and change them often. A bait has to be lively and panicky to draw a fish’s interest right now. If a bait has been down more than 5 minutes it’s probably close to dead right now. I find it’s way more effective to fish less rods with really fresh baits than a lot of rods with poor baits. I rarely fish more than one down rod per customer this time of year. If you see a quick hit on a bait, bring it up and change it. There are a lot of bait killing hits right now. If you don’t change it out you are wasting precious time in a short bite window.

In August and early September we can also do afternoon trips on Hartwell and Clarks Hill. Especially Clarks Hill.

Crappie are extremely tough until it starts to cool down in late September. I typically put the crappie gear up at some point in July and don’t get it back out until the end of September once the water gets back into the 70’s.