3-30-2025 Fishing Report

With Spring kicking into full gear I’m starting to get a lot busier and fishing has been great. The stripers and hybrids are full on in the rivers on their attempted spawning runs. The stage they are in is dependent on water temp in the river system you are in. I fished one river that was full of white bass (caught 92 white bass and perch) and had a great trip but the stripers hadn’t shown up yet. That river was 58 degrees. Another river was 61 degrees and the nice stripers were just starting to show up good. Yet another river was slam full of hybrids and they were actively trying to spawn. Every larger female we caught would have multiple males swarming it as we were fighting it. We got our limit of 40 hybrids for my group before 9:30 in that river this weekend. That river was 65 degrees. And with these temps, I’m talking about the water temps at daylight before the sun warms the surface layer.

I’ve been so busy with striper/hybrid and white bass trips, I’ve been neglecting the crappie. But I’m seeing temps at 62 to 63 degrees at daylight in the lakes and that is a prime temp zone for the crappie to be on the banks and very shallow structure spawning. Had some buddies with 50 plus fish mornings using a jig and cork.

Looking ahead, there are still going to be fish in the spwaning rivers throught April but it will depend on water temp what stages they are in. Later in the month of you can find rivers that typically have colder water they will have more fish than the ones that were really good in late March. Around the middle of the month the herring spawn should also be going strong down lake on clay and rocky points. Many times on Hartwell the bite is red hot at daylight but ends very quickly after. Those fish will often pull out a little deeper and can still be targeted with down lines later in the morning. Always keep a fluke or swimbait ready in case you see fish blowing up schools of bait around these points. On Murray, it seems like the free line and planer board bite lasts much later in the day than Hartwell.

Also by late April the crappie will be done with their spawn and starting to move to deeper brush. From late April to early July the crappie fishing is fantastic on these deeper piles. Sunny days are best because it makes the crappie hold tighter to the structure.