Late Spring – Inshore Fishing on the Georgia Coast!
The bite this Spring has been pretty good! Most of the action has been sea trout. Atlantic sharp nose sharks have pushed in the sounds in large numbers to feed and reproduce. The sharp nose is a small shark. There are lots of sharp nose sharks in the 30 inch range. The whiting bite which was hot has slowed likely due to the abundance of sharks. There are top end black tip sharks in the sounds but getting through the small sharks to a large black tip is another story. Ladyfish have dominated the sea trout bite but as cold fronts push through the sea trout action tends to heat up. The bite has been mostly sea trout and top end sharks followed by ladyfish and strong numbers of sharp nose sharks.
Fishermen can catch sheepshead year but as bite for other fish (sea trout, red drum and flounder) heats up fishermen generally give less attention to sheepshead. Nonetheless there has been some sheepshead being caught. On the offshore scene cobia are drawing most of the attention. Strong winds have limited the opportunities to get offshore but when fishermen have found opportunities the bite has been good!
Don Adams, Adams Bait Shop is finding brown shrimp is the heads of creeks. This means in the backs of the creeks. Don said the number of brown shrimp looks good and these shrimp seem to have shown up a earlier this year. This is good news for the fish and fisherman. When fish have an ample food they grow faster and larger as well as reproduce more. For fishermen more bait simply means more fish. Any way you look at it more brown shrimp early in their season is good news. There’s some mullet in the rivers as well as plenty of river pogies. Pogies (menhaden, mullet and ladyfish) are a great shark bait!
The fishing forecast looks pretty good! Lots of bait will likely mean lots of fish -a good sign for the fall! There several reports of lots of small sea trout south of Savannah. In Savannah we seen small seatrout as well good numbers of larger sea trout!
I hope this report is of interest and help! Keep what you want to eat and release the rest!
Fish On!
Capt. Jack McGowan
Coastal River Charters
