06/16/2026
The Bite:
Lake Allatoona fishing report for June 16,2026
Happy summer, friends!
Our lovely little reservoir continues to shine into June. The good Lord filled the pool all the way up (and a little more) these past couple weeks, and with morning surface temperatures now in the low to mid '80s reservoir wide, it's starting to feel a lot like summer in North Georgia. Let's go fishing!
Bass- All I can say is "WOW!"
Both from an artificial and live bait standpoint, the spotted bass and even largemouth bass fishing has been absolutely phenomenal from the start of spawn all the way through today's date. Morning, afternoon and evening have all provided us some of the greatest black bass fishing we have known in our short 15 years on Allatoona.
There's a lot of great bass reports out, and I recommend reading them all. There are both broad strokes and a lot of little gems posted by several anglers that can be found helpful.
As for us, and on a day like today, we were able to pick quite a few up off the ledges. And yes - sometimes we use sweetgum balls with a hook in them. Noting that some of my home stash of crawfish have begun molting again, we have been tinkering a little bit with the creature bite, and with fairly good success. The fish are still chasing bait fish for sure, but we are finding days, particularly late morning, when they will just absolutely eat a creature bait on the ledges.
Even just today after pulling some nice spotted and largemouth bass off of a couple of points pitching live herring, when that bite slowed, we went to creature baits and caught at least one on a jig, urchin, hellgrammites and even slow rolling 4" spoon.
A day like today when there was a little chop on the water with six to eight mile per hour northwest winds, we are often able to find a decent subsurface bite with a spoon and smaller wake baits from 4 to 6 in. You may not always see them breaking the surface, but that doesn't keep them from chasing threadfin, in particular, to the top.
Again, there are a lot of great anglers that are taking the time to post a little bit on the spotted bass that they almost exclusively concentrate on. We always dig seeing what the legend Bill Payne Guide Service is posting and catching them on.
Jason with The Fish School is always open to helping with great content and tips.
Crappie - Deep. At least the ones we are catching and I have the opportunity to poke on oftentimes very early in the morning under lights. Deepwater structure for sure, but anywhere that there's a little light throughout the night that attracts a lot of the herring and threadfin fry tend to have crappie hunting underneath or nearby.
What to catch them on? Whatever you got from 2-4 inches and jiggled just right :-)
Hybrid and Striper bite - Absolute fire for those that are diligent and can keep up with them during their morning through afternoon through evening patterns. At all points of the day, we are still finding that long points where the channel swings has been pretty clutch. Whether it's a smaller Creek channel or main River channel, or even better yet - a combination of both, this is where the bait tends to be right now and especially where the bigger fish are hunting the edges.
While we have not been catching a lot of striped bass, we've still been poking some 6 to 10 lb. fish that are hanging out in the reservoir through this past week. However, there is a great and healthy population of 4 to 6 lb. hybrids running amok from Little River to the dam and again south.
It's simply that time when likely a good majority of the striped bass are starting to look for better oxygen and cooler water and headed toward Amicalola Falls.
Down-lines have been the cat's meow, and we like to go light.
A great natural presentation even when fishing a 5 to 6-in herring can be the difference of triggering a bite at first look or having fishes come up and look at your bait and swim away. Frisky bait is key, and dragging a half dead herring or threadfin is likely to catch you a suspended catfish before a whitefish. We are keeping the leaders long, particularly when slow trolling at 0.3 to 0.5 mph. Typically as far as my arms will stretch is the length of leader - 5-6 ft. give or take. This can get a little trickier when anchored up as your bait can be swimming right at the sinker and you might need 5 to 6 ft. of movement before your rod bends, but if you're paying close attention to your line movement and rod tip which may pull down or may jump up, it shouldn't be much of a problem. It's the little things, and one of those little things that's a really big thing is keeping a fresh and frisky bait. As an example, even when we are fishing with maybe two to four other guests on the boat, we will easily go through 150 to 200 baits in just 4 to 5 hours.
Don't overload your own bait tank. An oxygen diffuser is very helpful this time of year. Chilling your water down five to eight degrees cooler than reservoir temperature sure doesn't hurt when starting out in the morning. You don't want to get too extreme on the temperature swing, particularly as reservoir temperatures begin to rise.
Soon enough your bait won't last much more than 5 minutes on the line and you probably won't be able to keep it under 20 ft. for even that long. But as for now, we are still catching some decent fish suspended 30 over 50 to 60 ft. and even caught fish last week at 50 over 80-100 ft.
The bite has really been strong anywhere from Little River to the spillway. They still seem to be a little bit of everywhere.
Kitty cats - Me loves the kitty cats. It seems that the channel cats may be finishing up their spawn, but they are still aggressive and maybe it's just more in the post spawn for a majority of the channels that we are catching a lot of females while the males guard the nests.
Most catching of these recently has not been the traditional way of getting on the bottom with a cut bait but having them come to suspended lines and even that back free line when the bait is barely still swimming, if at all. Biggest channel cat we've had so far this early summer was just under 10 lb., and there are a lot of four to seven pound fish to be caught. These may be considered the d***s for some, but they provide plenty of entertainment and I've always said if it's got Fins and Tails and a little bit of tug, I'll gladly accept the fun.
Then there's shell crackers and gar and the like. A few other species such as carp that we just haven't been targeting at all this year but guess what - they are still swimming around and they are still hungry and they will still eat. Carp report is a work in progress.
That's all for now. Hope this helps on your own fishing trip. We are always happy to provide a hands-on learning session and full-service fishing adventure aboard our boats. Please never hesitate to reach out. There's still some dates in July and August to jump on the boat with us. We will always catch. We are family friendly, will keep the kids and adults alike engaged and enthralled and full of smiles.
God bless you all and tight lines!
Joseph
P.S. Please forgive any spelling and grammatical errors in all of our non-AI assisted reports.
