As I mentioned in the offshore report..(see below) the morning water temps this weekend were cold. However, it didn’t hinder the inshore cold water red fish bite. For those fishermen that have a feel for where the red fish are staging and know how to target them under these conditions the bite was solid. Captain Kevin Rose of Miss Judy Charters had the cold water red fish bite dialed in for sure! For bait, Captain Kevin was using live shrimp which he purchased from Captain Judy’s Bait house and assorted fluke style soft plastics. When using live bait you have to give them time to eat. When pitching artificial you got to pitch them in quietly and retrieve them slowly! Red fish are very sensitive to un-natural splashes and loud deck noises. The bottom line is any sort of noise made good or bad is going to travel longer. Just don’t do it! So therefore it might be the holidays but dancing on the deck is not going to attract a fish. Basically it is going to run them off!

Offshore
This week had been a wet cold and in the early mornings I have had frost covering the deck of my boat....I guess it is winter time for sure. However, it’s not so bad once the old sun comes up. Yesterday morning around 7 am we had water temp in the creek that was 51.5 degrees. As I made way to where the sound meets the ocean the temp was about the same, which was darn cold. Once I got about 5 miles offshore ...it was around 53 degrees and when I got to 100 feet it was 64 degrees....I love our area, you leave the dock dressed in several layers and by the time you get to the snapper banks you are in shorts. Now I might add, I still have my rubber boats on.

The bite at the artificial reefs located in less than 50 feet of water has been very interesting. If you got fiddlers on your hook and you are anchored over any sort of structure you are going to get one heck of a bite. We caught black drum, flounder, sheepshead, and assorted sized of red fish. Some of the black drum and sheepshead were quite large meaning in the over ten pound range!

The Savannah Snapper Banks certainly did not let the fishermen down this past weekend. The bottom fishing was great. While using squid, small pieces of fresh fillet fish, and ballyhoo sliced like loaf of bread the bite was simply amazing! When using assorted bait such as this, this is where a fishermen knows for sure that a fish has a taste, because switching bottom bait combos works! We caught monster sea bass, foot ball size vermilion, giant trigger fish, white bone porgy, and assorted sizes of small fishes from ruby red lips to sand perch. The bottom line, when you dropped your baited hook is not if you were going to get a bite, but what fish was going to get your bait first. I will admit that the morning bite was slow, but as the day progressed the bite got better and bigger.

The Gulf Stream didn’t let those fishermen down either. On the VHF radio I heard plenty of fish catching chatter! It wasn’t just talk I could heard it in the fishermen’s voice...the guys were catching some nice fish! Where bottom fishing in 185 to 225 feet of water fishermen caught 5 pound plus vermilion snapper also known as b-liners, freight training pulling gag grouper, red porgy, and trigger fish. If they happened to be prepared to do a little trolling the Wahoo Yahoo bite and the black fin tuna bite was great.

The bottom line to this Savannah Snapper Banks and Gulf Stream report is that the seas were flat calm, which enable us fishermen to move with ease to find the fish! And that is just what we all did! It’s time to go fishing! Thanks for reading! Happy Holidays! Captain Judy






Captain Judy Helmey
www.missjudycharters.com
912 897 4921