What a difference a week can make. This warmup has gotten the fish fired up all over the place. The smaller ponds and shallow systems have really fired off and saltwater is a little behind.
River gauges Thursday, February 6 were:
• Clyo on the Savannah River – 7.4 feet and falling
• Abbeville on the Ocmulgee – 5.9 feet and rising
• Doctortown on the Altamaha – 8.6 feet and rising
• Waycross on the Satilla – 11.1 feet and falling
• Atkinson on the Satilla – 9.6 feet and rising
• Statenville on the Alapaha – 6.4 feet and falling
• Macclenny on the St Marys – 5.5 feet and falling Fargo on the Suwannee – 5.7 feet and falling
Satilla River – Bill Stewart and I fished the lower river and had a great day. We started by putting 1/16-oz. Mirage Jigs tipped with minnows down deep.
We caught a few nice warmouth and a big bluegill, but it was slow. As we worked along the bank, I switched to a chartreuse back pearl 2-inch Keitech rigged on a chartreuse 1/16-oz. Flashy Jighead (#1 Gamakatsu hook) and started casting.
It wasn’t long before I knew that’s what we should be doing. We started picking up quite a few crappie up to 14 inches with that rig, and Bill switched over shortly after I had a few specks in the boat.
We had one giant warmouth on a Tennessee shad Specktacular Jig, but everything else came on the Keitech/Flashy Jighead setup. We ended up catching 33 fish total (mostly crappie) and released all but a handful.
A couple friends fished the middle river and couldn’t find the specks, but they caught several bowfin, a pickerel, and a bass.
Okefenokee Swamp – Rob, Chelsey, Owen, and Evan came down from Canada to see the Okefenokee Swamp and fished with me two afternoons on the west side.
The boys had a blast seeing all the wildlife. They all enjoyed pulling on lots of bowfin. Trolling Dura-Spins was the ticket to trigger bites, and we caught 26 fish the first afternoon and 19 fish the second afternoon.
The best colors were white-white blade and crawfish-brass blade. Owen had the biggest bowfin at 6-lb., 3-oz. (his biggest fish ever), and the boys caught fish that earned them youth angler awards for bowfin, flier, and yellow bullhead.
Brentz McGhin trolled minnow plugs on the east side and caught a handful of bowfin and a couple jackfish.
Rusty Foshee fished with me for two hours on the east side of the swamp. We pitched sallies for fliers and caught 76. The two best colors were pink and chartreuse. Our biggest flier was 8 1/2 inches, and we had a dozen fish over seven inches.
This warm-up should have the fish chewing right up until the next cold front. The most recent water level (Folkston side) was 120.98 feet.
Local Ponds – Jimmy Zinker has been catching some solid bass in Worth County farm ponds, but the topwater bite has been dead for him.
Bigger Shad Raps have produced the best. He had an 8-lb., 4-oz. behemoth inhale it. That was the biggest bass I heard about.
Joshua Barber fished a pond and had four bass eat stick worms.
An angler fishing the Brunswick area caught 15 bass up to just over five pounds. He returned a couple of days later and had almost 20 bass with one weighing 7lb., 11-oz.
Saltwater (Ga. Coast) – Capt. Duane Harris fished with a friend in the Brunswick area and they caught three redfish, two black drum, and a 17-inch trout in a few hours.
Plastic curly-tails and Keitech swimbaits worked best for them. They had a 26 1/4-inch redfish on the smallest rig in the boat (crappie tackle). It ate a chartreuse back pearl 3-inch Keitech rigged on a 1/16-oz. Flashy Jighead.
That redfish was tagged, and they reported the tag number and released the fish.
Capt. Tim Cutting had some great trips. He had Jim and Lloyd on the boat and got a limit of trout and limits of redfish on Fourseven lures and live shrimp under Harper Super Striker Floats. Jim is 80, but Capt. Tim said that he fishes like he was 20.
Bob and Bobby got on a good trout bite the next day. They caught a limit of keepers and about the same number of shorts using Fourseven grubs. They caught three redfish and a nice sheepshead during their trip.
