Southeast Georgia Fishing Reports With Capt. Bert Deener – May 23, 2025

Chuck Dean caught this 1-lb. bluegill on a Whopper Plopper in the St. Marys River on Saturday.

It got hot in the afternoons this past week, but the water temperature most places in freshwater is in the upper 70s to around 80. That’s in the range where the fish usually put on the feed bag. There were lots of good reports this week, and you have lots of options for the holiday weekend. Be safe on this busy weekend!

Alapaha River: Hunner Taylor and a friend fished the river and caught well over 100 fish. They kept 56 of them—mostly redbreast and bluegill. They caught them on Satilla Spins and Betts Spins.

Satilla River: Dale Anderson and Daniel Gullion fished a bush-hook tournament last Saturday on the lower river and won with just over 275 pounds of flatheads (10-fish limit). They also won big fish with a 37-pounder. That was the duo’s best 10-fish limit ever. They also caught a tagged catfish during the night. The river is currently high. You may catch some catfish on some backwaters, but it’s better to find other water this weekend.

St. Marys River: Chuck Dean fished the middle river on Saturday. He didn’t catch many, but he made up for it with quality. He had a 1-lb. bluegill that smacked a Whopper Plopper he was flinging for bass. The fat, purple-cheeked beast measured almost 11 inches. Curtis Hazel took his new jonboat out to the middle river this week. He caught a few redbreast, crappie and bluegill on Satilla Spins (darker colors were best). The second Bream Reapers Bream Tournament of the year will be held this Saturday out of Temple Landing. Check them out on Facebook for more information.

Okefenokee Swamp: The warmouth, pickerel and bowfin bites are still strong on the east side. I had Jamie Pearson on the boat Saturday. He was the high bidder for the trip I donated for the Satilla Riverkeeper fundraiser this spring. He enjoyed fishing the east side. He had been there several times on tours but had not fished it. He pitched popsicle Warmouth Whacker Jigs and white-pink Super Sallies and caught warmouth, pickerel and bowfin. He even had a big gar that pulled off right at the side of the boat. After a couple hours of pitching jigs, we trolled and cast Dura-Spins for pickerel and bowfin and caught them on lemon-lime and firetiger – chartreuse blade best. He had a total of 32 fish during the morning trip.

On Monday, Greg and Rose from Houston, Texas fished with me in the middle of the day. They caught several warmouth by pitching popsicle Warmouth Whacker Jigs and white-pink Super Sallies first thing. Rose caught her first bowfin and warmouth ever. We trolled and cast Dura-Spins for bowfin and pickerel and caught a bunch of smaller bowfin trolling, but Rose slammed a 7-lb., 1-oz. monster while casting and retrieving a firetiger-chartreuse blade model. We caught a couple on a crawfish-brass blade, but the firetiger color was by far the best that day! They caught a total of 29 fish during their half-day trip.

Buck Johnson fished the east side on Tuesday and caught a bunch of smaller warmouth and eight keepers in the first few hours by pitching a pink-chartreuse tail curly tailed grub rigged on a Zombie Eye Jighead. He fished another area and started catching bigger fish. By 11 a.m., he counted and had 24 keepers. He dropped a jig under a limb and a pickerel cut him off, so he grabbed his other pole and pitched under another limb with the same results. He decided to cut his losses and get in before the extreme heat, so he ended the day with 24 warmouth.

Curtis Hazel fished the east side on Tuesday and caught two bowfin and a 15-inch chain pickerel on Satilla Spins.

On Wednesday, an angler caught a big pickerel in the canal on a Rat-L-Trap. Matthew Gobbi caught his first bowfin ever on Wednesday while fishing out of the east side. The most recent water level on the Folkston side was 120.64 feet.

Local Ponds: Joshua Barber fished a local pond on Wednesday and caught a half-dozen bass up to 4 pounds. He fooled them with Speed Worms and swimbaits. He got the bite from a monster that he was trying for, but it wrapped him around lily pads and pulled off. He duped it into biting with a topwater frog.

Buck Johnson fished a Waycross area pond for a little over an hour Wednesday afternoon and started by pitching a fly with a bream buster. The bream would swat at it but would not take it. He switched to the same pink/chartreuse curly tail and Zombie Eye Jighead he used in the Swamp earlier in the week, and they started eating it. He ended up catching a couple of bream and four bass up to 18 inches on the small rig.

Everglades (South Florida): Jeff Rawlins and friends fished the Everglades canals this week and caught well over 600 fish in three days of fishing. They had mostly cichlids, but they caught a few peacock bass each day (they had seven peacocks on their best day). They threw Satilla Spins (crawfish and black/chartreuse worked best), Specktacular Jigs (chartreuse grapefruit was best after he ran out of popsicle), Flashy Jigheads with a curly tail grub, and Beetle Spins for their fish. On Monday, they caught all of their fish on Specktacular Jigs.

Saltwater (Georgia Coast): Seth Carter and friends fished the St. Marys jetties on Sunday and caught some doormat flounder.

They looked for redfish on Monday and found two schools. They caught three fish out of one school and blew out the second school after breaking off a fish. They scraped up a half-dozen trout with live shrimp under Super Striker Floats before ending the day. On Tuesday, he moved to another area, but it didn’t pan out as calculated. They only had a half-dozen trout and a couple flounder. Wednesday was a good bite with 15 good trout, 10 flounder and a couple reds coming over the side of the boat. Thursday was tougher with the water warming up and tides getting bigger around the new moon. They had 10 trout and a few sheepshead.

After your next trip to the Georgia coast, drop off your fish carcasses in the freezer at the Waycross Fisheries Office at 108 Darling Avenue. The Coastal Resources Division collects most inshore saltwater species so that they can determine age and growth for each species. All the supplies and information cards are in the freezer. Filet your fish then drop off the carcasses in the freezer.

Wat-a-melon Bait and Tackle in Brunswick is open Friday through Tuesday each week (closed Wednesday and Thursday). They have plenty of lively shrimp and also have live worms and crickets for freshwater. For the latest information and their hours, contact them at 912.223.1379.

River gages on May 22 were:
Clyo on the Savannah River – 12.6 feet and falling
Abbeville on the Ocmulgee – 8.7 feet and falling
Doctortown on the Altamaha – 10.0 feet and falling
Waycross on the Satilla – 10.9 feet and falling
Atkinson on the Satilla – 11.3 feet and cresting
Statenville on the Alapaha – 3.5 feet and rising
Macclenny on the St. Marys – 2.8 feet and falling
Fargo on the Suwannee – 5.0 feet and falling

New Moon is May 26.

To monitor all the Georgia river levels, visit the USGS website (waterdata.usgs.gov/ga/nwis/rt). For the latest marine forecast, check out www.weather.gov/jax/.

Capt. Bert Deener guides fishing trips in the Okefenokee Swamp and other southeast Georgia systems and makes a variety of both fresh and saltwater fishing lures. Check his lures out at Bert’s Jigs and Things on Facebook. For a copy of his latest catalog, you can download it from his website at bertsjigsandthings.com or email him at [email protected].