Water temp has been holding around 52 in the main lake but is warmer up the creeks and near shore.  A hard rain on Friday morning made a lot of creeks dirty over the weekend, but most places are already settled out back to normal water color. Striper and bass have been mix in together in areas both feeding on the week threadfin shad from the cold winter we have had.  Even with the water warming I am seeing shad dieing here and there.  That is a good thing.  There has been a lot of Shallow fish lately do to the warm spell we have had.  As for crappie.  I am still finding them over brush from 15-30 ft depending the day.  Med minnows and 1/16 oz jigs have been working well.

Well we got a hard warm rain last night.  Water temp in the main river channel was 52 which is great! on the other hand I saw some 57 degree water in the backs of some feeder creeks.  That will draw a lot of bait and fish very shallow. Striper and Bass where on fire this morning first thing. As the morning turned to afternoon the wind picked and the fishing slowed. I'd guess that with this warm surge of water in the lake things are going to start to get exciting for spring fishing. 

This is yet another brush pile loaded with crappie!  Water temp has been about 47 degrees but I saw 57.5 degrees up the Keowee river today and 53 degrees up 12 mile. Crappie are still bighting good, the other morning we started out a little slow but as the day warmed up the fishing did too.  Managed to also find some boat docks in deep water that are loaded with crappie.... easy picking if you can get a jig under too them.  This week has been warm and I expect to see the water warming with it.  The warmer we get the better the fishing will be.  I look for it to be a good week on the water.  The deeper brush 24-30 has been better this week.  Oh and I want to thank everyone for placing all these brush piles..  They have been great too me this year!

The Crappies are biting really good right now.  The picture is of a Brush pile, one of many that is loaded with Crappie.  Matter of fact quite large Crappie... I have been catching a lot of fish in the 12-14 inch range this year.  They have been Jumbos, or Slabs as a lot of people call them. I'm sticking to the basics for fishing for them.  Use a small minnow or jig and work in and around brush. 15-25 Foot brush seem to be most productive. 

We put the tape measure to these two Slabs.  One was 16 inches the other was right at 15 inches.  Both fish came on back to back casts!