Fishing Report

The southeast Georgia blackwater rivers are still blown out, but ponds, lakes, and saltwater produced some good reports last week.

River gages Thursday, August 15 were:

• Clyo on the Savannah River – 12.4 feet and falling

• Abbeville on the Ocmulgee – 1.7 feet and falling

• Doctortown on the Altamaha – 9.5 feet and falling

• Waycross on the Satilla – 14.6 feet and falling

• Atkinson on the Satilla – 16.6 feet and falling (record high for the date)

• Statenville on the Alapaha – 12.7 feet and falling

• Macclenny on the St Marys – 14.5 feet and falling

• Fargo on the Suwannee – 14.4 feet and steady

Okefenokee Swamp – The fish are still spread out into the prairies with the high water. You might luck out into a few fish, especially in the boat basins on either side, but I’m not fishing there this week.

The most recent water level (Folkston side) was 121.90 feet.

Local Ponds – Joshua Barber fished a local pond and caught seven bass. He fooled them with Senkos, speed worms, and buzztail shads.

Most were caught by slowly crawling a Senko. He tried a new pond one evening and set the hook on a big fish. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a bass, and the 6-pound bowfin took him for a ride before he finally landed it.

I fished a Brunswick area pond for a couple hours in the middle of the day. The bass bite was pretty good on offshore structure.

I banged a vibrating jig and shad-colored DT6 crankbait around brushpiles and got six bass to bite (my biggest were 5.13 pounds and 4.38 pounds). I also fooled five perfect sized channel catfish to be guests of honor at a fish fry the following night.

Chad Lee fished during his lunch break and caught a nice, fat 4pounder on a Whopper Plopper in the middle of the day.

Jimmy Zinker got back into his nighttime bass fishing and duped a 6-lb., 6-oz., bucketmouth with a black Jitterbug. He lost a monster that dove and got him down in the grass before pulling off.

Altamaha/Ocmulgee River – The Ocmulgee is fishable (even low in the upper, rocky reaches) for panfish and bass. The Altamaha is falling out within the banks and should be a good option later in the week.

For this week catfish would be your best option in the middle to lower Altamaha.

Dodge County Public Fishing Area (near Eastman) – The bass bite was good late last week at the area. Bryan Smith had the two biggest I heard of – a 7-lb., 6-oz. whopper and one just over five pounds.

Another angler caught four fish that same morning that totaled seven pounds (his biggest was 2.75 pounds).

This is the time of year to hit the offshore points, humps, and brushpiles. Shad-colored crankbaits around schools of shad work well first thing in the morning, then shaky head plastics are hard to beat once the sun gets up.

Saltwater (Ga./North Fla. Coast) – Pam Sweeney tried out her new Trout Tamer Rod from their Brunswick area dock and caught a fourspotted redfish with it.

Blake Edwards fished with me in the Jacksonville area backwaters. We caught some big trout.

Blake had a 21-inch gator (three pounds) that ate a pink Sea Shad under an Equalizer Float. I had a 23-incher (4.3 pounds) suck down an electric chicken 4-inch Keitech swimbait under an Equalizer Float.

The lure of the day was the electric chicken/Equalizer rig. We ended up catching exactly a dozen trout with it. About half of them were keepers, but we released them all. We had one keeper eat a fire tiger-colored twitch bait, but the topwater bite was totally dead.

Don Harrison and I fished the St. Marys Jetties. The water looked like we were miles up the St. Marys River (it was blackwater the whole time on the end of the rocks). The bite was really slow, but we managed about a halfdozen each bluefish, jack crevalle, and black sea bass while flinging bucktail jigs and plastics.

Keaton Beach, Fla. – Capt. Pat McGriff had some good summertime trips last week.

He put his folks on dozens of fish and ended up with nine nice keeper trout. Their biggest was 19 inches, and they had about four short fish for each keeper.

A couple of days later his crew brought in a limit of trout up to 18 1/2 inches. He has been fooling them primarily with live pinfish under Back Bay Thunder Floats.

The water north of Keaton has been dirty after Hurricane Debby, so he’s been having to look around a good bit for the best color water.

To monitor all the Georgia river levels, visit the USGS website (waterdata. usgs.gov/ga/nwis/rt) . For the latest marine forecast, check out www.weather.gov/jax/.

Capt. Bert Deener guides fishing trips in the Okefenokee Swamp and other southeast Georgia systems and makes a variety of both fresh and saltwater fishing lures. Check his lures out at Bert’s Jigs and Things on Facebook. For a copy of his latest catalog, you can download it from his website at bertsjigsandthings. com or e-mail him (bertdeener@ yahoo.com).