By Capt. Bert Deener
As I write the last fishing report of the year, I’m reflecting on my first year of building lures and guiding full-time.
It’s been a whirlwind full of awesome memories and lots of new friends. We’re leaving 2024 in the exact opposite water situation as we entered the year.
Super-high water in all of our systems here in southeast Georgia marked the beginning of the year, but almost everything in our area is fishable or even low currently.
We struggled to catch numbers of fish in the Okefenokee early in the year because of the high water, but we’re catching big numbers right now because of the lower water and lots of fish pulling off into the canals.
I look forward to 2025, and I hope you each have a wonderful New Year!
River gauges Thursday, December 26 were:
• Clyo on the Savannah River – 7.4 feet and rising
• Abbeville on the Ocmulgee – 4.0 feet and falling
• Doctortown on the Altamaha – 9.3 feet and rising
• Waycross on the Satilla – 8.9 feet and falling
• Atkinson on the Satilla – 6.5 feet and rising
• Statenville on the Alapaha – 4.2 feet and falling
• Macclenny on the St Marys – 2.7 feet and steady
• Fargo on the Suwannee – 3.2 feet and falling
Altamaha River – The Altamaha is right at the cusp of the floodplain again. If you can find some areas where it’s not running through the woods you should be able to catch some bass and crappie.
Satilla River – The river is fishable. I’d hit the mouths of cuts and oxbows for bass and crappie if I were fishing.
The best report I heard is that some anglers caught some slab crappie in the oxbow lakes in the middle river. That’s the only report I received.
Okefenokee Swamp – My daughter, Ellie, fished with me out of SC Foster State Park Christmas Eve. We had a blast catching a total of 23 fish in about three hours of fishing.
All but one of them ate 1/16-oz. Mirage Jigs tipped with dead minnows. The oddball bowfin ate a black-brass blade trolled Dura-Spin. Our biggest bowfin weighed 7lb., 14-oz. We had a halfdozen chain pickerel up to 20 inches.
Joshua Barber fished the west side that same day and had a few bowfin and pickerel on sexy shad Perch Hounder Spinnerbaits. His catch of the day, though, was a 3-lb., 13-oz. pickerel which inhaled a Rooster Tail spinner.
Cliff Bowen came down from Macon and fished with me the day after Christmas. We caught a total of 37 fish (36 bowfin and a 21 1/2-inch pickerel). The fish were chewing in the cold, cloudy, drizzly conditions.
It didn’t matter what we tipped the 1/16-oz. Mirage Jigs with, they bit it. We used dead minnows, worms, and cut baitfish on the back of the little tinsel jig for all but one of our fish. The biggest bowfin was 7-lb., 11-oz., and we had 4 of them over 5 pounds.
The most recent water level (Folkston side) was 120.76 feet.
Saltwater (Ga. Coast) – Tommy Sweeney and Scotty Steedley spanked the trout in the Brunswick area with Zombie Eye Jigheads and various plastics.
They caught a total of about 60 trout and kept a limit. A few ate live shrimp at slack tide, but plastics of many different colors and styles were the ticket that day.
