Oconee River Fishing Report

Wednesday - December 31st, 2008

Posted By: Ron Mancil

Clear Skies. Temp at launch around 38 degrees. Mid afternoon around 70 degrees.

As the end of 2008 approached and the prospect of an even better 2009 was near... I just had to go fishing one more time before the cold weather set in. I got "The Call" from PawPaw on Sunday night. A quick phone confirmation on Monday night lead to the discussion of a river on the rise. "Should we, or shouldn't we"... to me it didn't matter if we caught fish or not. Being off until Jan. 5th... it was either Oprah or Fishing... Like I said... No Brainer. I was going.
Got up early on Dec. 30th and loaded up the gear. It was a very chilly 38 degrees. We met at the usual spot and soon were off to our regular breakfast stop. That's right... Cracker Barrel. We both ordered "The Old Timers" plate. Kinda fitting... for me anyway. Afterall, we were ushering out the "old year" right? After downing our last sip of coffee it was off to the ramp. The river was high, fast and heavily stained. And, there was so much fog that we could barely tell where we were going. Thank goodness Tom installed those fog lamps last week. To say the fishing was slow would be an understatement. I got my first one around mid morning on a chartreuse and white spinnerbait... and that was it... or so it seemed. Time for a new gameplan. A quick lunch and we were back at it, looking for anything that would bite. About 2:00 o'clock we saw a creek with a very fishy appearance. Tom quickly snagged his first fish of the day on a June Bug worm. Things looked promising... we decided to go up the creek. We went quite a ways up, but we didn't find any fish. On our way out we fished the creek mouth. BAM! Tom found another one. Over the next hour or so we proceeded to pull 10 more Bass from that one spot. All were caught on either a June Bug or Green Pumpkin worm... None of the fish were very big, but the action was welcomed. We ended up with 12 on the day. Not too bad considering the conditions. Plus, we had a blast. Can't think of a better way to close out 2008. Hope everyone has a happy 2009!

Attached Fishing Pictures