Capt Judy Helmey, Savannah, Fishing report 10-29
Kicking Fish Tail Since 1956
POB 30771
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA 31410
912 897 4921 912 897 3460 FAX
Captain Judys email fishjudy2@aol.com
October 31, 2011
Saltwater Inshore, Offshore, Blue Water fishing reports, Freshies Suggestions, and Little Miss Judys Believe It or Not story! Thanks for Reading!
Table of Contents
Inshore Bites Spotted sea trout, red fish, and flounder continue to put the old feed bag on.
Inshore red fish bite
Spotted sea trout invasion!
Artificial Reef fishing can be interesting! Edwin Aviles is holding up his nice 37 inch red fish
Savannah Snapper Banks fishing is very good for big fish only!
North Savannah snapper banks and beyond A fall fishing day in the Low Countrys favorite fishing team Captain Frank Gibson, Sam Chestnutt, and Captain Ralph Worrell
Blue Water fishing suggestions
Before dropping that baited hook its suggested to do your regulation homework first!!
Freshies report Spoon season is here! By Bill Vanderford
Little Miss Judys Believe It or not Story! Birds Beware!
Inshore Bites
Spotted sea trout, red fish, and flounder continue to put the old feed bag on.
David Reader has his hands full of fish! This is a good thing!
Inshore red fish bite
The red fish bite has been pretty darn good even when windy conditions prevail. If the wind is blowing on your fish day I still suggest making way to your favorite drops. If your spot happens to be to rough due to wind directions, just take a stroll around the area looking for the red fish swirls. Best baits are going to be live or fresh dead shrimp and being quite is the word!
Spotted sea trout invasion!
This is nice spotted sea trout that found my Strike King soft bait something that it couldnt pass up. The color that I am using is Baby bass. There is a secret to working a lure like this since it doesnt offer any sort of smell. Its more about the moves it makes while on the retrieve. Once its cast into to place I suggest letting it fall to the bottom. If a trout sees it on the fall bites will happen! Once it hits bottom I suggest raising the rod, dropping the rod, and reeling 4 to 6 time all while twitching it. If you dont get a hit when you have reeled in ¼ precent of line out in I suggest reeling in and starting over. Spotted sea trout are known for killing first what they are going to eat next. In this case its all artificial and the moves made makes it believeable or not to the trout. This is called triggering the bite! In my book this is real time fishing, because you are with the fish from the intial hit, the turn back pick up, and also when it goes into the mouth full trying to swim away mode.
Strike King soft bait ZTOO baby bass rigged on a ¼ ounce white jig head. This is a real good spotted sea trout artificial bait. If a trout can see it they will most likley bite it.
Black sea bass being hauled aboard. All black sea bass must be released as soon as possible. The black fish season reopens in June 2012. So therefore until this date you can practice catching and release all that you would like!
Artificial Reef fishing can be interesting!
Edwin Aviles is holding up his nice 37 inch red fish
Edwin Aviles is holding up his nice 37 inch red fish, which he caught while plain old bottom fishing on the Miss Judy Too. The fish was tagged and released healthy back to the wild!!
During this time with the black sea bass season closed until June 2011 the best thing to do is to pracitice catch and release! While bottom fishing last week on my morning trip my customers caught and realeased 160 black sea bass in two hours. While bottom fishing one fishermen also caught and released a 37 inch trophy red fish. We tagged this fish and sent it on its way. On my second trip we caught and released 133 black sea bass of assorted sizes. It was plenty of fun especially for those that had never been in the ocean much less caught a fish! Not all the fish caught at the arificial reefs have to be released. We are still catching sheepshead, black drum, flounder, cobia, spade fish, sand perch, triggerfish, summer trout, and spotted sea trout. Heres List of fish that we catch, but never keep..toad fish also known a Hawaiian perch, reef runners, also known as cigar fish or lizard fish, tomate also known as ruby red lips, rock bass, sea robbin, puffer, burrfish, and lady fish.
This gag was so big it wouldnt fit into the picture! Just kidding! However, we have been catching some nice ones for sure!
Savannah Snapper Banks fishing is very good for big fish only!
The bottom fishing in this area is good and its a good time to target grouper and amberjack!
Vermilion Snapper season is closed as of October 31, 2011 until March 31, 2012
From the artificial reefs to the Savannah snapper banks
Its that time of year when some grouper move closer to shore. Areas such as artificial reefs, wreck, and the Savannah snapper banks are great places for these fish to hold up and feed at will. Best baits are those that dont want to go into the structure/ledges/holes/ditches such as sand perch, tomtates, blue fish, and blue runners. Put these baits on the bottom near the structure. Once hooked up reel fast while slowly moving the rod side to side so as to disorient the fish. This should detour the fish away from the structure offering you a better chance at landing your fish.
North Savannah snapper banks and beyond
A fall fishing day in the Low Country
From left to right: top row: Captain Frank Gibson holding a nice 4 pound trigger fish and football size vermillion, Sam Chestnutt holding a nice Cabera snapper. Kneeling in front is Captain Ralph Worrell, which is really down with some nice fish. He is holding a cobia and a 25 pound plus gag grouper.
Captain Frank Gibson called and gave me the particulars of this trip, which were definitely interesting to say the least. They started at a so called secret fishing hole and after about 1 hour four other boats showed up. Then it was decided move offshore and to the northeast a bit. Once finding a live piece of bottom in about 140 feet of water all kinds of bites happened! While using small pieces of cut squid they caught football size vermilion and 4 pound plus trigger fish. Along with these bottom feeders that caught some really nice black sea bass, which was quickly vented and released. A couple of cobia hit one of their double bottom rigs and both were landed. However, they decided to keep the larger one and release the smaller cobia. They caught a few pin fish, which were used a live bait. These baits were hooked up on circle hooks and send to the bottom. While using these baits they found a gag and Cabera snapper bite.
Sounds like this fishing team started off good and ended up great! Thanks Captain Frank Gibson for such a fine fish catch report!!
Blue water fishing suggetions
The fall run for the blue water fish has taken place. It can be as good as it was in the spring and summer. The bottom line is you have to go to know!
Before dropping that baited hook its suggested to do your regulation homework first!!
For details on current regulations give these sites a try. Believe me things are changing daily in the fish keeping department
State Regulations
http://www.eregulations.com/georgia/fishing/
Federal regulations
South Atlantic Fishery Management Council
Sword fish and other blue water fish
https://hmspermits.noaa.gov/News.asp#news236
NMFS Permit Shop
Atlantic tunas permits
Photo by EX TRA SEA Sword Fishing Team
Please meet the inside of the sword fish. As you can see the sword fish has no teeth. So therefore before the sword fish can eat it has to be chopped up or cut up with its sword. Most sword fish that are landed in some case come completely wrapped up in the leader. This is due to the fact when a sword sees something it wants to eat it goes into the killing mode, which means whacking at its meal with its sword. The problem comes in when the meal, in this case your bait, is rigged up with a long leader. As the fish tries to go in for the kill it gets tangled in the leader making the fish go somewhat crazy. While all these fish moves are being made the wrapping up of the fish is bound to be taking place.
During this time blue water catching can certainly be interesting. The reason being is that fish are on the move and when this takes place serious feeding can occur. If you were to ask me where to go and how to fish heres what I would say
Where to go..
I call this time of the year Fishing the opposite! My meaning of this is when the waters west of the stream are cooling instead of warming. When this starts to happen all kinds of different feeding opportunities, can be had. All top water fish are in the migration mode and when this happens they know where to stop off to feed. In other words, not by chance they feed; its the path that they take to the feeding zone. As I said, All fish, which means bait too. So therefore fish are going straight to where the fish are going to be holding such as ledges, wrecks, rips, debris, and up wellings. Fish areas like this to get you best chances for lots of action!
How to fish..
Since I am from the old school and now might be considered from the oldest school ever heres what I would do. I would pull old school lures. I would always pull some sort of planers getting my rigged ballyhoo or 3 ½ Drone spoon deep. This is what I have always called the meat line, because it gets the most action and catches most of the fish. If you dont want to pull a planer, then you wont notice the difference. When it comes to going into the planer mode I like just pulling 31/2 inch Drone spoon or believe it or not black cedar plugs. As far as the main line on my planer rod I have used monofilament. However, I prefer wire line, because of the noise it makes when pulled through the water. Some like to pull braided line in the place of wire and I think this is also a good idea. However, if I had to choose my tools for deep water pulling it would be wire main line (50 to 60 pound test) #4 trolling planer with snap swivel, and 30 feet of 100 pound test monofilament leader line, (standard pink Ande monofilament line) and then attach your lure of choice. My lure of choice would be 31/2 inch silver drone spoon.
About the leader
When I am using a 30 foot leader I always like to tie a barrel swivel (100 to 200 pound test) at mid length. This helps to keep your leader straight keeping any twisting out of the factor that might occur. Also another thing that you might want to keep in mind is that the Drone spoon should have two welded split rings not one. Some spoons taken right out of the package have two rings, but I have seen some that did not. I always keep extra split rings in my tackle box. The two split rings allow the spoons to work properly. When pulling a Drone spoon if its not jumping a bit meaning the rod tip should be moving, it not working properly. This is also how you can tell if you have picked up some weed on your spoon. The spoon has to work so that you will get a real big jerk!!
Top Water Baits
My favorite and always will be is Ilander lures rigged with medium to large ballyhoo. Back in the old days black/burgundy with silver head worked the best, at least on my boat. Then there was purple/black hair rigged with ballyhoo. I pulled these lures way way way back! We sometimes called this bait pulled the trash line, which meant it picked up everything. However, when you do get a hit, its normally a real big fish and most likely a Yahoo Wahoo!!! I learned the hard way that once you get a hookup even when the line is screaming off the reel you dont take the boat out of gear keep it moving you can pull back on the throttles, just dont take it out gear.
Yahoo Wahoo
When a Wahoo gets hooked up the hook is normally just lying in the hole that it just made. This means if you give this fish any sort of slack it will swim right off the hook. Since the fish is known for swimming away from the pressure in all different directions leaving your boat in gear is going offer you a better chance at landing your fish.
Freshies Report
By Bill Vanderford
Spoon season is here!
Go here for the real details
http://fishinglanier.com/a_Spoon_Season_is_Here.html
Those fishermen that want to GO FISH LAKE LANIER
Bill Vanderford is Lake Laniers Legend!
For more about my long time friend Bill Vanderford as well as his accomplishments, his freshwater charter trips or wildlife tours, books written and his special line up of tackle offered, please visit his site http://www.fishinglanier.com/contact.html for all the details! For more details go http://stores.ebay.com/Fishy-Racer http://www.youtube.com/fishyracer www.cafepress.com/grapefruitshop
Little Miss Judys Believe It or not Story!
Birds Beware!
Photo by James T. Holmes
My long time friend of many years, Captain Mark Covington has shared some very interesting information with us. And this suggestion is definitely not for the birds, but about them. It is a known fact that our feathered friends sometimes drop massive amounts of bird poop on our boats. In some cases boats are targeted by the birds for one reason or another. Back in the old days by father used everything from rubber snakes to fake owls to pie pans. Some of these old time methods for getting the birds to please fly around and not over my boat did work.
Captain Mark had a friend whom told him about the wonders of electrical ties also known as cable ties. Take a look at the top of Captain Marks boat and you will see how he keeps the birds away. Its simple enough; all you have to do is attach the ties and let the ends that are pulled through just wave in the wind. Apparently this waving action causes birds to make immediate mid air direction change also known as IMADC!
PS: dont bother to look IMADC up, because I just made it up!!
Thanks for reading! Captain Judy
Captain Judy Helmey
missjudycharters.com
912 897 4921
Sport Fishing Forums – North Carolina, South Carolina & Georgia
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