“Kicking Fish Tail Since 1956”

POB 30771

SAVANNAH, GEORGIA 31410

912 897 4921 912 897 3460 FAX

www.missjudycharters.com

Captain Judy’s email fishjudy2@aol.com

December 26, 2011

Happy New Year!

Saltwater Inshore, Offshore, Blue Water fishing reports, Freshies Suggestions, and “Little Miss Judy’s Believe It or Not story! Thanks for Reading!

Table of Contents

Call 888-JOIN-RFA or visit http://www.joinrfa.org/ “JUST DO IT!”

2012 INSHORE and OFFSHORE FISHING CLINICS Dates have been set

Inshore Fishing Shorts Surf Fishing Report

Red fish and their desires to feed safe in shallow water!

Captain Rick Reynolds

Artificial Reefs its Sheepshead time!

Savannah Snapper Banks Grouper season is closing

Gulf Stream Report Tuna permits or not!

NOFA Fishing team fishing report December 16, 2011

Freshies Report location, bait, fish…

Little Miss Judy’s Believe it Or Not” New Year’s Eve at the Grand Oglethorpe Hotel

“JUST DO IT!”

If you want to keep catching these ..join the Recreational Fishing Alliance NOW!!

Attachment 210264

Captain Kathy Brown of Miss Judy Charters is holding up a nice size amberjack, which was caught at the Savannah Snapper banks. The amberjack sometimes referred to as the “reef donkeys” are very strong fighters. The fight starts at the first run and it doesn’t stop until the fish is landed. The term “reef donkeys” came about when it was decided that if you found a ledge with amberjack schooling in the upper water column you chances for getting to bottom without hooking up is very slim. In most cases this is a very good thing!!

Recreational Fishing Alliance

POB 98263

Washington, DC 20077-7581

Call 888-JOIN-RFA or visit http://www.joinrfa.org/

I am willing to fight for my right to fish….Here’s what I like about this organization….their stated mission is “To safeguard the rights of Saltwater anglers, protect marine, boat, and tackle industry jobs, and ensure the long-term sustainability of our nation’s saltwater fisheries!”

Please join the RFA today! A one year membership is only $ 35.00!

http://www.joinrfa.org/About_Us.htm

2012 INSHORE and OFFSHORE FISHING CLINICS

Dates have been set

Our newly revised inshore handout material is going to be considered “priceless!” We are going to give you the best times to fish for what, when, and where for the entire year of 2012.

Any inshore fisherman that is considering going offshore they need to attend my offshore class. For more details scroll down …

One Inshore School
Saturday February 4, 2012

One Offshore School

Saturday February 11, 2012

Time: 8:00AM – 2:00 PM

Place: Tubby’s Tank House 2909 River Drive, Thunderbolt, Georgia 31404

Cost: $ 90.00 (included one day class, breakfast, and lunch)

Please call 912 897 4921 now for reservations

Please sign up as soon as possible! There is limited entry!

Capt Judy’s email fishjudy2@aol.com

Capt Judy’s Cell 912 429 7671

For more detailed information go to

www.missjudycharters.com OR GIVE US A CALL 912 897 4921

To sign up just give us a call or email fishjudy2@aol.com and we will put you on the list. After the first of the year we will contact to check the status! Thanks and hope to hear from you soon! Captain Judy

Inshore Fishing Shorts

Surf Report

Water temperatures are on the cool side and not much is going on in regards to fishing off the beaches!

Attachment 210265

Red fish and their desires to feed safe in shallow water!

The red fish are here and they are definitely in the stealth mode!

Red fish

It’s time to start targeting the old red fish on the mud flats and in the grass.
Attachment 210266

Captain Rick Reynolds does a little inshore scouting!

!

Captain Rick Reynolds of Miss Judy Charters is holding up a nice spotted sea trout.
Attachment 210267

While doing a little scouting this week Captain Rick caught a few trout between 17 and 19 inches. With water temperatures cooling down, it suggested that you give the fish a little more time to eat before the setting of the hook. When it’s warm a spotted sea trout attacks, kills, and eat its intended meal with one fell swoop. However, when the water temperatures gets to the mid to upper fifties things slow down in the biting and eating department. So when it cold do what Captain Rick does when it comes to catching trout “give them time to eat!”

This is a picture of a shrimp that a cold spotted sea trout killed by removing part of the shrimp’s head. When you get your bait back in this condition it seems that you might have not given the fish time to eat and you just might have set that hook too quickly.

Attachment 210268

Artificial Reefs

It’s Sheepshead time! Nice Sheepshead that couldn’t pass up that tasty fiddler on the hook!!

For those of you fishermen that want to take a short ride to the fish I suggest giving Sheepshead fishing a try, because now is the time.

For those that want to know where…I suggest getting up close with an artificial reefs such as the SAV, KC, CCA, L Buoy, CAT, DUA, and KTK. Best places to fish over are those that offer any sort of vertical feeding opportunities. The old Sheepshead really knows how to work these types of areas to their feeding advantage.

Best positioning is to fish right over the wreck. Then it suggested to fish straight off the sides, front, or stern of the wreck.

The bait baits are hands down the purple and black back fiddlers. On some occasions you might catch them on green mussels, oysters, barnacles, or crickets!! (“Yes, I said crickets!”)

Whatever you do don’t forget your dip net or your camera!!

Savannah Snapper Banks

Attachment 210269

Bottom fishing for grouper at the Savannah snapper banks

Grouper fishing or should I say grouper keeping season will closed on Saturday December 31, 2011. It will re-open May 1 2012. For those fishermen that want one last grouper catching bonanza I suggest making your plans now. At this time the L Buoy is holding lots of large Cigar minnows and Spanish sardines, which are best, caught with gold hook sabiki rigs. I suggest before heading out to the banks that you load up on these baits! And may the grouper that bites your hook be a big one!!

Gulf Stream report

Attachment 210270

Definitely an oldie, but a goody!!!

Tuna Permit or not!!

Please find listed below web sites where you can get information on whether or not you need to have an Atlantic tunas permit. Other fish are included in this permit. Please read information so that you will know!

https://hmspermits.noaa.gov/Default.asp

https://hmspermits.noaa.gov/initialapp.asp

December 16, 2011 Friday

Blue water fishing report

The crew of the NOFA

Just say the crew of NOFA. Tommy Williams went to the stream yesterday so you might get 2 reports this week

As reported in last week’s blue water fishing report the crew of NOFA along with Tommy Williams caught 1 Wahoo, 3 Mahi Mahi, 15 black fin tuna, and 3 king fish. Here’s the rest of the catching story.

After arriving early to stream in the am on Friday December 16, 2011 lines were set with cockpit fishermen being on high alert. The morning bite proved to be non-existence with the crew only hooking up and landing 1 tuna before 1:00 PM. However, when 1:00 PM rolled around the fish started breaking the surface and feeding like crazy. While pulling deep to shallow lures and rigged ballyhoo bites started to happening. According to the report barracuda must have been holding deep, because all they caught on the planer line was lots of toothy monsters. Normally the drone spoon being pulled 30 feet behind a #4 planer gets the attentions of some really nice fish from tuna to Wahoo. They even tried tipping the Drone spoon with belly strips, but all they caught was more toothy monsters.

As far as the baits that worked the best …. dark color Ilanders rigged with dink ballyhoo and different color cedar plugs made the blue water fish catching day a success!!

A jug and a large shark

A blue water story that needs to be told….it’s all about a milk jug and a very large shark….this story will be in next week’s fishing report!!

To know you have to go!

Normally during this time warmer water patterns are pushed every further offshore. Before departing on such a long run as this I suggest always checking the weather and getting a sea surface chart read out from http://sstcharts.com/

Providing
FREE On-Line Sea Surface Temperature Charts
Since 1999

Freshies Report

Location, bait, fish…

Attachment 210271

Photo from my new fishing friend, Corey

Location is everything when it comes to catching fish….

Attachment 210272

Photo from my new fishing friend, Corey

Attachment 210273

Bait is another thing that you need when trying to catch fish…very good bait when targeting brown trout. This is what I call dime size bait!!

Photo from my new fishing friend, Corey

So therefore if you have the location and the right baits this is what you just might catch if your positioning is correct!!! This is a nice brown trout, which Corey my new fishing friend caught in the location and with the bait shown in the pictures above.

Those fishermen that want to “GO FISH LAKE LANIER”

Bill Vanderford is “Lake Lanier’s 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 Judy’s Believe it Or Not”

New Year’s Eve at the Grand Oglethorpe Hotel

Attachment 210274

Photo by Jerry Helmey

Yes this is me sitting on the stern of Daddy’s wooden boat “Miss Jerry.” My mother most likely was taking the picture, because daddy would have never thought of putting the hotel in the background. As you can see it pretty much looks the same way today as it sits on beautiful Wilmington River. However, unfortunately it’s no longer known as the Grand Oglethorpe Hotel! However, for me it will never be anything else!

New Years Eve at the grand Oglethorpe Hotel

My father used to go to their New Year Eve Party every year. And to get the story started I must state my grandmother lived and worked at the hotel. So therefore he could drop me off and then walk right into the main lobby of the hotel and right into the famous Emerald Room. This was the hotel’s ballroom, which was definitely unbelievable to a 7 year old. I really don’t know where to start in regards to this story, because there is so much to write.

Firstly, let get this part of the story out of the way. My grandmother on my mother’s side worked at the hotel in linen services. I guess that’s what it’s called. She worked down under the hotel taking care of making sure all the linens were washed and pressed properly. Yes, I said, “Pressed properly!” The linens were ironed back then for the hotel beds. And each bed had to be made up a certain way, but to this day I never understood why. All I know I couldn’t help do this part. However, I could fluff the pillows, which was always my job. My grandmothers’ room looked like a hotel room. It didn’t have a kitchen, because all meals were picked up at the hotel’s kitchen. I can’t remember whether I liked the food or not. However, what I do remember is individual pats of butter, small helpings of all type of jellies, and everything on a separate covered plate. All plates, coffee cups, and tea glasses set on what my grandmother called a “dolly.” We basically had the time of our lives picking up the food, coming back to the room, and eating off of a tray. It was great!

At the age of seven I wasn’t allowed to roam around much, but when I was I made tracks. I found out quick that from the linens services you could get almost anywhere. It was an adventure from the word go. Once everyone met me my travels broadened. I could run to the kitchen grab a piece of toast; butter it up with an actual paint brush, and get back to my mission. Before I go any further I have to tell you about this toaster. It reminded my of a merry go around. The white bread was put on the track and as it went up the burners inside toasted one side and as it came down the other side of the toast was cooked. It really never stopped. As the toast came around it was taken off, buttered, cut in half, and put on a saucer. After a while I would just run up, pick out my piece of toast, paint it with butter and off I would go. Life was good especially while eating on the run!

I’ll never forget the day I found the ballroom, which was called the Emerald Room. It had dark green velvet curtains that seemed to go forever from the ceiling to the floor. It was a big room and on this particular day there were men with white hats chipping away at large hunks of ice. There was certainly a lot going on. The tables were being set along with colorful party hats, horns, and swing around noisemakers. Not only that, streamers of all colors was being draped from one end to another. Balloons were being tied everywhere; it was festive for sure! Being a child my main goal was trying to get one of those noisemakers. Sure enough a nice gentlemen also dressed in white fixed me right up. I now had a hat, horn, and noisemaker. However, I was instructed not to blow the horn or swing the noisemaker in the hotel. I am sure glad he told me that, because my plan was to parade through the Governor’s Lounge and see how much attention I could get.

Photo by Jerry Helmey

This is me once again trying to either hold up or just plain shoot at some one. I have always been fascinated with guns. In this case “cap guns.” I have to tell you while I am writing this I can smell the smoke that a cap gun made when fired. It’s funny what you remember. As a child, during my cap gun phase I fired off roll after roll. I shot at everything from the trees to the ground. As you can see in this picture I was dressed for cowboy success! The furniture in this room came from the Oglethorpe’s Hotel Governor’s Lounge.

Since I mentioned it I might as well tell you about the Governor’s lounge. This room was situated on the ground level floor of the hotel. It had lots of windows so you could see outside while sitting down. They should have called it the Lounging room instead, because there were chair and sofas all over the room. Heck, I could jump from one to another without even touching the floor. As a child I didn’t understand what all the sitting was about. However, this room was sure was used a lot. It was always packed full of people drinking and smoking big cigars. As far as watching, this was the easiest room to get to. You could just walk in from outside, shoot right behind the sofas, and never be seen. I ought to know, I made a lot of strategic moves in this place working my way through all the furniture.

Apparently the day that I received the party favors it must have been New Years Eve. I remembered daddy had dropped me off earlier that morning and said he wouldn’t see me till tomorrow. Believe me, there was no crying here. Don’t get me wrong I love my father, but just thinking about running around the hotel was pretty darn exciting. After all I had to make the best out of what I was handed. My daddy used to say just like bre’r rabbit did “Please don’t throw me in briar patch!” Well in this case, I was like that old rabbit; I wanted to stay at the hotel.

Since I couldn’t really do much with my party favors I decided to take them back to my grandmother for safekeeping. As soon as I dropped my goods off I headed back to the Emerald Room, because I wanted to see what those big block of ice looked like now. To my amazement they had carved two ice swans, which pretty much had me mesmerized. If I had known the word “unbelievable” I probably would have used it.

The next day my father picked me up. When we got into the car on the seat was a party hat, horn, and a swinging noisemaker. I acted surprised when he handed them to me and also when he told me about the swans that were made from ice. As I listened to him talk about things that I already knew I was happy to know that he had not missed out on anything either!

Happy New Year to all my friends wishing you all a great 2012!

Thanks for reading!

Captain Judy

Captain Judy Helmey
missjudycharters.com
912 897 4921