Weekend Wrap-Up

Surf Heating Up
The surf fishing front has been improving day-by-day, with great catches of whiting, trout, and good keeper-sized bluefish. I visited the Tybee pier Friday and quickly filled up a cooler with 2 dozen good-sized whiting and a dozen blues well above the 12" size limit. Everyone at the pier was catching something, which is always a good sign.

Inshore
Reports of large trout catches were coming in heading into the weekend, but big spring tides have the fish turned off for the past few days. Redfish and sheepshead were also still biting fairly well.

Offshore Mixed Bag
A combination of strange water temperatures and cold fronts have made the fishing offshore up and down recently. A captain out of Hilton Head headed to the Gulf Stream last week to look for dolphin and perhaps some sails or wahoo and found a monster rip 80 miles off where the surface temperature jumped from 69 degrees to 76 degrees in less than 200 yards. Strangely enough, a large school of dolphin was on the cold side of the rip and they caught a limit quickly, with several over 10 pounds.
A Savannah bottom fishing captain reported that despite daytime highs on land in the 80s, the surface temperature at the Snapper Banks was still only in the low 60s, making a trip there quite cool. The average catch had been a lot of beeliners and seabass, with few, if any, keeper snapper or grouper. However, this Monday that same boat returned with a much more promising catch totalling nearly 500 pounds, with one 20-pound red snapper. Hopefully this means things are changing and the fish are beginning to stir.

Lake Mayer Woes
Some friends and I were involved in an unofficial bass tournament at Lake Mayer in Savannah on Sunday, and you couldn't buy a fish if you wanted to. A combination of perhaps the large Sunday crowd, a front that had just moved through, and bluebird skies gave the fish lockjaw. After 2 1/2 hours of fishing we were afraid we would be completely skunked when one guy finally caught the trophy 1-pounder right at sunset. Lake Mayer has always been a difficult lake to fish, but Sunday was the worst I've seen it.

Prerigged Shrimp Lure Comparison
(Click on image for link)

#4: Creme Jerk n'Shrimp- This shrimp lure is a bit different from the rest in that it is a hardbait, not soft. That fact actually gives it some appealing features, namely a loud, vibrating rattle that is much louder that any other shrimp imitation I'm aware of. It is rigged with long, realistic "feelers," and is weighted to fall horizontally instead of head-first. Under a popping cork or retrieved like a crankbait, it is a good bait for redfish in dingy water who can't see the bait, but hear it like a dinnerbell.