There were some great reports last week, but now the off and on rains have set in for several days.
The different sections of rivers will rise and fall differently and some will muddy up. Guess right and it will be a lot of fun, as the temperatures are in the peak feeding zone for most species.
Watch the thunderstorms – they’re nothing to mess with.
River gauges Thursday, May 8 were:
• Clyo on the Savannah River – 6.0 feet and falling
• Abbeville on the Ocmulgee – 4.8 feet and rising
• Doctortown on the Altamaha
– 7.5 feet and
falling
• Waycross on the Satilla – 8.6 feet and falling
• Atkinson on the Satilla – 5.3 feet and rising
• Statenville on the Alapaha – 4.5 feet and falling
• Macclenny on the St Marys – 2.6 feet and rising
• Fargo on the Suwannee – 2.6 feet and falling
Satilla River – The annual Satilla Riverkeeper Fishing Tournament is in the books and was a big success.
Seth Carter fished the tournament hard and ended up catching over 1,000 fish. Most of them were on Satilla Spins from his kayak. He even had 2 stripers.
He won the 3-redbreast aggregate category with fish that measured 10.50, 10.25, and 10.25 inches.
I had Scott and Tracy Anderson from Utah in the boat with me trying to add a couple of species to his lifetime catch list — and he was successful. We fished the upper river for a few hours and caught seven fish.
Scott added stumpknocker to his list with a 7-incher. He also added redbreast right at the last minute. Most of his fish were bluegills with one over 10 inches.
The river was still a little stained. The water in the upper river is tough for motorboats, but perfect for floating. The middle and lower river sections are still fishable in motorboats, but expect to drag.
Okefenokee Swamp – The Andersons fished with me a half-day on the west side until we got run off by a thunderstorm.
We had a great trip trying to add to Scott’s fish species list. We tried for about an hour to get a warmouth or flier to bite, but they didn’t cooperate. It took about 15 seconds of trolling a crawfishbrass blade Dura-Spin to add a four-pound bowfin to his list.
We switched to casting for pickerel. He hooked and lost three of them never adding them to his list, but he did manage a Florida gar. Scott caught a total of 21 fish during the trip – most were bowfin.
After adding four species from his 2-day fishing exploits, he ended up with a total of 96 fish on his lifetime species list.
Tommy Tapley fished the east side and did well on warmouth and catfish. He tried crickets, but didn’t catch them. He caught several dozen hand-sized warmouth (kept about 30) when he switched to jigs.
A couple of folks from south Florida fished the east side and caught some nice bowfin and pickerel on streamers and fly rods, and warmouth and fliers on baby blue topwater flies.
I fished the east side and pitched around a bunch of places for warmouth. They were biting, and I caught and released a total of 26 fish (two pickerel, a bowfin, a flier and the rest warmouth).
Other anglers fishing said that they caught warmouth, as well. All of them I talked with were pitching jigs for their fish.
The water level on the west side was 4.26 feet at the park boat basin gauge. The most recent water level on the Folkston side was 120.56 feet.
Local Ponds – The biggest bass I heard of being caught was an 8pounder from a Waycross area pond.
Joshua Barber fished a Waycross area and caught five bass up to 3 1/2 pounds with a topwater frog. He also fooled a half-dozen bluegills with Satilla Spins.
Chuck Dean fished a Brunswick area pond with his wife and caught a dozen channel catfish with shrimp fished on the bottom.
The bass are postspawn right now and are feeding up hard until the summer heat sets in. Most of the bass reports I received were caught by topwaters, wacky worms, and swimbaits in area ponds.
Expect the bluegills to start bedding hard this month.
Saltwater (Ga. Coast) – Whiting reports were the most consistent I heard. Trout and reds were hit and miss.
One good trout report was from Scott Smith who fished the Jekyll area. They had 11 keepers up to 18 1/2 inches, and all of them ate live shrimp under floats.
Seth Carter and friends fished the Brunswick area and caught them on artificials. One evening he fooled some big ones with Gulp shrimp rigged on Zombie Eye Jigheads. The next morning they caught five keeper reds then got run off by a bad thunderstorm.
Capt. Tim Cutting reported lots of mixed bags. The pattern for his trips was about the same each day.
Redfishing (a high percentage of oversized fish) was consistent on the mud flats in the main Intracoastal Waterway. Floating shrimp under Harper Super Striker Floats for trout around high water and reds at low water produced the majority of their fish.
Several places they caught reds and flounder on Gulp and Fourseven plastics rigged on Zombie Eye Jigheads. Matthew Hendley had several oversized reds, including two tagged redfish.
