Apr 25, 2008

By | April 25, 2008

One recent comment from a fisherman was this is typical Spring weather, eighty degrees one day, chilly and rainy the next, followed by fog Fishing despite changeable weather fishing has been pretty good. Nice sea trout in sounds, in the rivers and up river as well. Those finding fish have gone through lots of shrimp. Catches of ten or twelve fish have been typical. As tides began to Spring the bite has fallen off. Larry from Larry’s Bait Shop in Port Wentworth has said there’s plenty of bait up river. What this means is that local shrimp survived the winter. An abundance of bait means of course means bait for the fishermen and more importantly it’s likely these fish will reproduce. All good things for a fisherman. Redfish action is primarily in the sounds. While shrimp is available not all creeks are holding bait. Areas with little bait mean few fish. Nature will fill in. In the mean time anticipate the fish to be where the bait is. Finger mullet being knocked out of water is a great sign of predator fish. Even if an area looks void of bait you might be surprised what’s there. Once you in an area even the conditions look less great and there are no visible signs of bait. Slowing down and fishing the area could produce some nice fish. The key is just keep your bait or plastic in the water. If you get one good bite there’s likely more.

The guys catching large numbers of fish are fishing shrimp. Those catching larger trout are often using bait fish or plastics that mimics a bait fish. This isn’t to say a large trout wont readily take a shrimp, they will.

Whiting are coming in. In some places whiting have been large over twelve inches and thick. Recently Capt. Roger Straight had a bag full of whiting. We caught a nice bunch as well fishing close to beach on an incoming tide. We were anchored on the front side fishing a wind driven slick. When the slick would move and we were out of the slick the bite would slow down or stop. Letting more anchor rope enabled us to stay in the slick. Thank goodness for a heavy anchor a long anchor line. The whiting bite has been good. Small croaker can be a nuisance. If all you’re catching are small croakers you better move. Shark action is heating up. Bonnet head and sharp nose sharks are moving into local waters. So far most of the sharpnose sharks have been males. Anticipate shark action to heat as water temperature raise. A few days we saw large bull sharks coming all the way out of water. It’s not unusual to see a large ray or dolphin going airborne but seeing what look like bull sharks going airborne is pretty wild!

Another sign of Spring is look for birds feeding on bait fish. This can be an indicator for a good seatrout or redfish bite. The birds are likely feeding on glass minnows. We found seatrout in close and other toothy fish further out. This bite did not last long. As quick as we on it the dolphin found it as well. We did get several hook up and got only one trout to the boat before we were busted. Big tides, spring tides can literally pull bait and fish into the sounds when this happens dolphin can become much more aggressive in their search for food.

As tides and abate anticipate the bite to pick back up. In the mean time fish lee shores when the wind is up and look for drift (current) that isnt’ too fast (about a walking pace).

Hope this of help. Good Fishing! Capt. Jack McGowan