Bream Fishing In Large Southern Impoundments

[Gill Fisher]

Hey Guys,

This is my first post here, but I hope to be a regular.

I grew up bream fishing on small farm ponds, but my number one place to fish now is going to be a cove off of Lake Hartwell in Northwestern SC. Lake Hartwell is a large hydroelectric lake and my wife and I have a small "get-away" cottage near this cove. I have just bought a one-man inflatable pontoon boat that I can use to fish in this cove.

I was able to fish some on Tuesday and had pretty good success with very small bream, about 2 or 3 inches long, but only caught a couple of fish that were good hand-sized bream. I was using a fly rod, and my best 2 patterns were a foam "Predator" and a red and white "Humbug." At times I was fishing these two patterns as a tandem rig and had pretty good action with smaller fish. But I'm wondering where the larger fish were.

There is no grass, lily pads, etc on Hartwell, probably because of the large water level fluctuations necessary for the generation of electricity. But there were some sticks in the water where I was fishing and that's where I was catching the smaller fish. The water was probably about 3 or 4 feet deep.

I'm hoping someone can give me some suggestions about bream fishing on such a large lake and how to go about trying to catch some larger fish. Remember that I don't have a bass boat, so my fishing is pretty much restricted to this one cove. I tried several areas in the cove, but didn't find any larger fish anywhere I tried.

Hope you guys can help. Thanks in advance.

Take care

GF

[huntinslabs]

If your catching the smaller ones try a little deeper, maybe even try a wet fly to get down to the big uns. Other than that just keep huntin em. And welcome from Florida.

[gabowman]

Welcome to the boards. You might also try conventional gear fishing a worm or cricket in a little deeper water fishing on the bottom.

[deathb4disco]

Not much to add to what has already been said: fish deeper and try spinning tackle in addition to the fly rod. It's much easier (for me, anyway) to cast farther and fish deeper with a spinning outfit.

You also might try chumming (if legal in SC.) You could draw the bigger fish in closer.

[Gill Fisher]

Thanks, Guys, for the replies. Let me ask a follow up question. The general consensus seems to be to fish deeper. Since I was catching the little fellows in 2 or 3 feet of water, how much deeper are we talking?

Thanks

GF

[deathb4disco]

how much deeper are we talking?

It depends. (You knew that was coming, didn't you? :D )

I've been catching a lot of gills recently in 10 FOW suspended 3-4' off the bottom. In other words, they're 6-7' deep.

If you're catching small ones in 2-3 FOW, try the 6-10' depths. If you have deeper water than that nearby, try that, too.