Looks like great info so far.  They stocked 6 million fingerlings in '90, 3 million in '95, 2.8 million in 2000 and 25,000 last year.  The lake is 3220 acres.  Not sure how many of the older fish have survived.  Supposed to get up to 9 lbs.  I've done a little more research and at least 2 other lakes in North Ga are supposed to have walleye.

Good idea about the thermocline.  Also, as far as depth, they supposedly catch them in shallower water in the winter, when the bass are deeper.  The water is clear except near shore around areas of wave action.

By the way, did you know that Georgia has no natural lakes?  They are all manmade.

Thanks for the info!

Thanks Richfish.  The most prevalent fish is the spotted bass.  Lots of them in the plus or minus 1 lb range.  I caught one 3 lb. on Sat.  Supposed to be a good striper lake, but warm temps have apparently cut down on the number of biguns, recently.  They stocked some hybrids last year for the first time, which can stand the heat better.  Forage is threadfin shad, gizzard shad, and a pretty good supply of bluegills and other sunfish up to about 6".  Largemouth, Cannel cats, flathead cats, white and yellow bass, and crappie are also in the mix in smaller numbers.

Thanks for the tip on the teeth and fins.  Not usually much to worry about in the way of teeth down here in freshwater, although I have gotten striper thumb a few times in saltwater.  Plenty of teeth on the saltwater critters, king and spanish mackerel, bluefish, and sharks of course.  A favorite bait on both coasts of Florida is the pinfish.  I've been finned by them more times than I can count...ouch!

I appreciate all the help.  I'm trying to find a decent forum for landlocked stripers...no luck, so far.  I have caught them pretty consistently in saltwater, but can't seem to get their number in fresh.  Lake Lanier is an excellent fishery only 24 miles from my house.  I've figured out the spotted bass pretty good, but the stripers are frustrating...what I wouldn't give for a good Atlantic tide!

Richfish

Thanks for the encouragement.  I have fished with a guide on Lake Lanier a few times over the years.  The stripers stay pretty scattered and move a lot, and its a big lake.  I need to start doing some night fishing, so I can spend more time on the water.  That's the only way to track them down.  Most guys keep their mouths shut when they find them...

From another thread, do you really go through 50-100 jigs a day?  I fish Jacksonville, FL a lot and we fish for flounder and sheepshead.  Both are bottom feeders.  We use an unpainted jig head with a light wire hook tipped with mud minnows for flounder and fiddler crabs for the sheepies.  Lots of snags in fast moving tidal current.  The light wire will straighten out most of the time when you get snagged and can be bent back into shape.  As long as your drag is set right it won't straighten on a fish.  My brother lives in J'ville and has a ten lb flounder on this setup last year...his first doormat in almost 40 years of fishing for flounders.

Could light wire jigs work for you?

Also, are minnows illegal to use where you are?  We can use them for everything but freshwater trout in GA.  What size minnow would be good for Walleye?  Small, medium, large or jumbo?  Would a 6" gizzard shad, blue back herring or bluegill be too big?

Thanks Steve.  This walleye site is an awesome resource!  A couple of striper sites I have tried are fishin.com and stripers247.com.  Fishin.com has some decent fishing reports on it, but the forum can go days sometimes without a post.  Most of the striper sites I have found cater to the saltwater striper.  I have had a lot of success with saltwater stripers, but unfortunately I live in metro Atlanta.  The closest saltwater is 5 hours away.

Richfish, thanks again for your input.  Lake Sidney Lanier is the primary lake I fish.  The stripers have a false spawning run up into the rivers that feed the lake.  The lake is fed by 2 rivers, the Chattahoochee (a great trout stream/river) and the Chestatee, as well as numerous small creeks.  It is a 39000 acre impoundment with 690 miles of shoreline encompassing 39000 acres.  The lake was created in 1956 in an area of rolling foothills and small  bluffs.  There are lots of coves, points, secondary points, dropoffs, humps, cuts and about 50 islands.  The lake was built in an area of farmland and woodland.  Old dwellings, roadbeds, culverts, etc. were left in place.  All the timber was cut down to about the 30 foot level, so most of the cover in the shallows is manmade brushpiles and areas where the lake bottom is exposed during a drought and small bushes, etc grow up.  There is a lot of timber below the 30 foot level.  Unless we have a drought which we did for 3 years until 2003 the lake stays pretty level.  They generate power a few hours a day, so the dam does bring some water movement.  The lake is close to 200 feet deep at the dam.  The average depth is 60 feet.  I do have a topo map.  Sometime in June the thermocline will set up at around 35'.

As it turns out the Lanier does have some walleyes in it according to the Ga. DNR.  They apparently hang near the damn in the summertime.  The lake is a premier striper lake in the southeast.  They pull water from the bottom of the lake.  The temps in the tailrace are in the 50s, but the surface temp of the lake is in the 80s (85 right now).  The oxygen levels below the thermocline are very low, the stripers don't like it, not sure about walleyes.  Normally the summer pattern (July and August) is stripers in the 28 to 35' range.  Walleyes, too?  But last summer the fish were spread down to 45 - 60 feet for some reason.  I know how to find structure in 100' of water in the gulf and drop to the bottom, but I need to work on technique for these suspended fish.

As far as bait.  You can get Canadian nightcrawlers, never seen a leech this far south, crawfish in the creeks, but not commercially available.  Mostly available are minnows, shad, blueback herring and rainbow trout (so-called striper candy).  Buying baitfish is expensive.  I've tried netting them, but frequently it is hard to find them concentrated in shallow enough water to castnet.

Lake Lanier is 50 miles north of Atlanta, but withing 25 miles of many of Atlanta's nicer suburbs.  Probably half the lake has houses on it, lots of docks, the rest is wooded.  Not a ton of overhanging brush, but plenty of blowdowns.  It gets a lot of fishing pressure, but the vast majority of these folks are targeting spotted bass.  Also, it has tons of "worthless" boats, houseboats, big sailboats, boats suited more for the ocean.  The main lake is worse than the ocean on summer weekends.  It will be a zoo this weekend, except at night and early morning.  I was hoping to head to Tampa to fish the Skyway Bridge this weekend, but with gas prices what they are, and cash being tight, I guess I'll be at the zoo with the rest of them.