It seems that football and bow season are taking a lot of folks’ attention, as the number of reports was low this week.
Reports I received, though, were very good. Fresh and saltwater are great right now, so take your pick this weekend.
River gauges Thursday, September 25 were:
• Clyo on the Savannah River – 5.7 feet and rising
• Abbeville on the Ocmulgee – 1.3 feet and falling
• Doctortown on the Altamaha – 4.0 feet and steady
• Waycross on the Satilla – 4.9 feet and falling
• Atkinson on the Satilla – 4.4 feet and falling
• Statenville on the Alapaha – 2.4 feet and falling
• Macclenny on the St Marys – 2.4 feet and falling
• Fargo on the Suwannee – 2.8 feet and falling
Altamaha/Ocmulgee Rivers – I fished for bass in the lower Altamaha and had a blast for three hours before the rains moved in. The river is perfect for getting around and catching fish for a change.
I caught a couple first thing on a copperfield Wobble Blade (a spinnerbait body with a vibrating jig blade). After that early bite, Texas-rigged plastics fooled the other eight fish. The biggest couple fish ate a 6-inch black Assassin curly-tail worm.
I ended up catching nine bass (biggest was 15 1/2 inches) and a channel catfish. I kept a few smaller keepers for a meal and released the rest.
Shane and Joshua Barber caught 23 bass up to 3lb., 5-oz. on the lower Altamaha. They fooled them with River Rat Spinnerbaits (shad color) and Texas-rigged plastics.
Okefenokee Swamp – I fished on the east side for a couple of hours with a fly rod and caught and released 11 fish (10 bowfin and a pickerel) on my bladed flies. Bowfin are suckers for a blade.
I was scouting for guide trips (fly fishing), so I made a few casts and moved on – just checking to see what was happening. I caught fish everywhere I stopped and on all three bladed flies I tried (electric chicken, jackfish, and fire tiger).
The fire tiger fly is still in a fishable state, but the bowfin mangled the other two. Man, they are tough on lures!
A couple of other anglers fishing said they caught a few warmouth by pitching worms on bream-buster poles. I saw another angler catch a small bowfin on a spinner as I idled past them.
Overall, the effort has been very low the last couple of weeks. Those two boats were the only other folks fishing during the last several trips.
The most recent water level on the Folkston side was 120.78 feet.
Local Ponds – Chad Lee caught 20 bass during short trips to Alma-area ponds near his house. He fooled them with Rat-Ltraps and stick worms.
Cathy Tatum fished an Alma-area pond and caught a bass and some bluegills while casting a beetlespin.
Saltwater (Ga. Coast) – Blake Yarbrough and I fished Brunswick area. We caught a total of 47 fish (all species), including redfish, trout, flounder, black drum, sheepshead, and some bait-stealers.
The two best baits for big redfish were copperfield Wobble Blades and live shrimp on 3/16-oz. (3/0 hook) Redfish Wrecker Jigheads. That vibrating jig style blade fooled about five of our 10 redfish over 25 inches. Our biggest was 29 1/2 inches (we had another 29-incher, as well).
Blake kept three founder and a redfish. We tagged and released26 redfish. The biggest trout (19-inches) surprised us by taking a live shrimp on a Redfish Wrecker Jighead in a redfish/black drum hole.
Scott Smith had a great trip catching a few trout, about 30 under-slot redfish and a few black drum in the Jekyll area.
Amazon River - Jeff Rawlins and some buddies had the trip of the lifetime in the Amazon catching peacock bass.
The water was high, so it was tougher than it should have been, but they still caught 310 peacock bass during the week. They caught them on bucktail jigs, subsurface plugs, and topwaters.
All of the half-dozen colors of bucktail jigs produced fish, but they seemed to prefer the halloween, red/yellow, and electric chicken versions.
