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Lake Greenwood water levels are at 439.1 and water temperatures are in the mid-70s.  The water is muddy up the lake but clarity is good from the middle to lower end.

Sometimes the winner of a recent tournament reports a pretty good bite, even while everyone else struggled to catch fish.  That was not the case Saturday, however, and even though veteran tournament angler Stan Gunter and his partner won a 40-boat benefit tournament on Lake Greenwood he says that the bite was really tough out there.  13-4 was enough to best all the other teams, but Stan said they had to work really hard to catch those fish.  A lot of strong fishermen struggled to put much of anything in the live well.

Overall fish are in a transition period, and Stan says that a tough bite is not unusual at this time of year.  He calls it a post-spawn funk and says that fish are frequently hard to catch in the period between spring and summer.

Early in the morning fish will feed around seawalls, and while there are not a lot of fish up there there are some good ones.  Not every seawall has bass, and on Saturday Stan said they picked the wrong ones and didn’t get a bite – while other anglers got some good fish off seawalls.  These fish will take Pop-Rs as well as floating worms and buzzbaits.

While the bass are headed to deeper stuff including brush piles in the 20 plus foot range, they don’t seem to be there yet.  The water hasn’t gotten super warm, and so while fish are leaving the shallows they are sticking to an in-between depth range.  The fish that Stan and his partner won the tournament on were caught off points in the 12-15 foot range, both main lake and main creek points.  They were around brush and ate worms and crankbaits.

Striper: Good. Captain Chris Simpson (864-992-2352) reports that there is a pretty strong striper bite on Lake Greenwood right now, even though males seem to be doing a “false spawn” right now which has slowed things down slightly.  Once that is over Chris expects the fish to resume the heaviest feeding, but right now good numbers of fish are still being caught on down-lines.  The key is to use your electronics to mark the fish, and then drop baits down to the depth where fish are holding.  The schools are generally around structure such as ledges, humps and points.  Fish are also being caught on free-lines both with and without planer boards, particularly early in the morning, and there is also some sporadic schooling.  White perch and white bass are both schooling pretty well in the mornings, and Chris expects that in the next week or two the striper will join them.  These fish can be caught throwing bucktails, ice flies and flukes.

Catfish: Fair to good.  Captain Chris Simpson reports that the channel catfish pattern is similar to that on Lake Murray, and catches have been pretty good.  Fish are scattered all over the lake and anchoring in 5-25 feet of water around humps and points and fan-casting baits to various depths will catch fish.  Anglers should stay about 30-45 minutes in a spot to see if fish are around and expect to catch 1-3 fish – although some hot spots will produce 7 or 8 fish.  Dip baits are working but cut herring are also doing well and maybe even better.