Posts by Capt. Bert Deener
Artificials For Inshore Action
I remember my first hot seatrout bite like it was yesterday. My father and I pulled my small jonboat within casting range of an oyster-shell point in a creek slicing through Saint Simons Island at the beginning of flood tide. As the water began easing its way up the point, seatrout swarmed from the deeper…
Read MoreWinter Skinny-Water Redfish
Greg has guided full time in the Golden Isles area for the last 13 years, with much of his time during the last several years spent on a poling platform in pursuit of red- fish. When not on the water on a guide trip, he spends time in his shop producing some of the finest…
Read MoreBeachfront Seatrout
I had meticulously calculated tides, checked sunrise times, and pored over my fishing log trying to choose a time that would maximize our chance of catching the seatrout bite just right to have a triple-digit day. The unknown variable was wind, but I had even rearranged my schedule to allow four days where the tide…
Read MoreFloat-Trip Dreams Of The Withlacoochee River
As a kid growing up in western Maryland, one of my favorite summer events was floating the Potomac River in a canoe with my dad, camping on islands in the river, and catching smallmouth bass, red- breast sunfish, and rock bass. When I moved to south Georgia over a decade ago, I figured my days…
Read MoreEvans County PFA – A Good Ol’ Fishin’ Hole
While the Fort Stewart ponds get much of the fanfare in the Savannah area, the Evans County Public Fishing Area (PFA) operated by the Wildlife Resources Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources quietly produces great catches of bass, bluegill, shellcrackers, and catfish. The almost 400-acre area is located in Daisy, adjacent to the…
Read MoreThe Okefenokee Experience
Largemouth bass, crappie, bluegill, shellcrackers, and channel catfish… all species that you can forget about catching on a fishing trip to the “land of the trembling earth,” the Okefenokee Swamp. The mystical black water of the swamp harbors excellent gamefish populations, but they are of the chain pickerel, bowfin, flier, warmouth, and bullhead catfish variety.…
Read MoreSeptember Inshore Fishing Magic In Christmas Creek
As the greenish-silver tarpon broke the surface and submerged only 10 feet from the boat, I yelled out of instinct “Tarpon. Tarpon! TARPON!” “This ought to last about 2.6 seconds if he bites,” I quipped, as I plunked my seatrout offering, a Saltwater Assassin four-inch Sea Shad suspended under a Cajun Thunder float, in front…
Read MoreFloating-Worm Finesse For Altamaha River Bass
When the Okefenokee Bass Anglers in Waycross was a fledgling club in the late 1990s, there were only two anglers who were proficient with a spinning outfit. Some of the guys did not even own a spinning reel. During the summer months, when the majority of the bass were in the main run of the…
Read MoreSavannah River Largemouth
World-class bass fisheries such as Clarks Hill, Russell, and Hartwell steal most of the article headlines on the Savannah River, but the flowing part of the river boasts high-quality bass fishing also. The once-sinuous river has been straightened, but the oxbow lakes now provide slack-water bass opportunities. In April, those oxbows are the place to…
Read MoreSmall Lake Profile: Boatwright’s Pond
Boatright’s Pond, pond No. 12 in the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Small Georgia Lakes Open to Public Fishing guide, was little more to me than one of the 169 listings in the guide. It was just another place to wet a hook until I started talking about fishing with Neil Jones of Blackshear. Neil…
Read More