Southeast Georgia Fishing Reports With Capt. Bert Deener – May 9, 2025

The warmouth bite in the Okefenokee Swamp is good. Capt. Bert Deener caught this 14-oz. warmouth on a white Dura-Spin while fishing the west side on Monday.

There were some great reports this week, but now the off and on rains have set in for several days. The different sections of rivers will rise and fall differently and some will muddy up. Guess right and it will be a lot of fun, as the temperatures are in the peak feeding zone for most species. Watch the thunderstorms—they’re nothing to mess with.

Altamaha River: Miles Zachary finished in the top 5 in a bass tournament out of Carters Bight this past weekend on the river. He caught his fish on a new line of buzzbaits called BDD Buzzbaits made with Gamakatsu hooks and Due South Custom Plastics.

Satilla River: The annual Satilla Riverkeeper Fishing Tournament is in the books and was a big success. Seth Carter fished the tournament hard this week and ended up catching more than 1,000 fish during the week. Most of them were on Satilla Spins from his kayak. He even had two stripers—one ate a Satilla Spin and one a bass-sized spinnerbait. He won the three-redbreast aggregate category with fish that measured 10.50, 10.25 and 10.25 inches. For all the details, check out Satilla Riverkeeper on Facebook.

I had Scott and Tracy Anderson from Utah in the boat with me on Friday evening trying to add a couple of species to his lifetime catch list, and he was successful. We fished the upper river for a few hours and caught seven fish on Satilla Spins. He added stumpknocker to his list with a 7-incher that ate a coachdog 1/8-oz. version. He also added redbreast right at the last minute (literally) on a warmouth craw Satilla Spin. Most of his fish were bluegill, and he had one that was over 10 inches. The river was still a little stained, but it was getting perfect just in time for this week’s rains. The water in the upper river is tough for motorboats but perfect for floating. The middle and lower river sections are still fishable in motorboats, but expect to drag.

Okefenokee Swamp: Scott and Tracy Anderson fished with me a half-day on Saturday on the west side until we got run off by a thunderstorm. We had a great trip trying to add to Scott’s fish species list. We tried for about an hour to get a warmouth or flier to bite, but they didn’t cooperate. It took about 15 seconds of trolling a crawfish-brass blade Dura-Spin to add a 4-lb. bowfin to his list, and that ended up being the biggest one we caught. He caught several others trolling Dura-Spins before we switched to casting for pickerel. He hooked and lost three of them and never added them to his list, but he did manage a Florida gar. It ate a 3-inch chartreuse-pearl Keitech swimbait fished on a 1/0 swimbait hook and fished around lily pads. Scott caught a total of 21 fish during the trip—most were bowfin. After adding four species from his two-day fishing exploits, he ended up with a total of 96 fish on his lifetime species list.

Tommy Tapley fished the east side early this week and did well on warmouth and catfish. He tried crickets but didn’t catch them and then caught several dozen hand-sized warmouth (kept about 30) when he switched to jigs. Chartreuse was the best early, then electric chicken came on strong once the sun got up a little. He pinned his plastics on Zombie Eye jig heads. He caught the catfish on shrimp on the bottom but didn’t fish for them long. A couple of folks from south Florida fished the east side this week. They caught some nice bowfin and pickerel on streamers and fly rods, and warmouth and fliers on baby blue topwater flies.

I fished the east side Thursday morning from 10 until noon and pitched around a bunch of places for warmouth. They were biting, and I caught and released a total of 26 fish (2 pickerel, one bowfin, one flier and the rest warmouth). All of them bit a 1/16-oz. popsicle-colored Warmouth Whacker Jig. Other anglers fishing that day said that they caught warmouth, as well. All of them I talked with were pitching jigs for their fish. The water level on the west side was 4.26 feet on the gage at the park boat basin. The most recent water level on the Folkston side was 120.56 feet.

Local Ponds: The biggest bass I heard of being caught this week was an 8-pounder from a Waycross area pond.

Joshua Barber fished a Waycross area pond Thursday afternoon and caught five bass up to 3 1/2 pounds. They ate a topwater frog. He also fooled a half-dozen bluegill with Satilla Spins.

Chuck Dean fished a Brunswick area pond with his wife on Sunday and caught a dozen channel catfish with shrimp fished on the bottom. The bass are postspawn right now and are feeding up hard until the summer heat sets in. Most of the bass reports I got this week were caught by topwaters, wacky worms and swimbaits in area ponds. Expect the bluegill to start bedding hard this month.

Saltwater (Georgia Coast): Whiting reports were the most consistent I heard of this week. Trout and reds were hit and miss. One good trout report was from Scott Smith who fished the Jekyll area. They had 11 keepers up to 18 1/2 inches, and all of them ate live shrimp under floats.

Seth Carter and friends fished the Brunswick area this week for big reds and caught them on artificials. One evening he fooled some big ones with Gulp! Shrimp rigged on Zombie Eye jig heads. The next morning they caught five keeper reds then got run off by a bad thunderstorm after just an hour of fishing.

A charter captain reported lots of mixed bags this week. The pattern for his trips was about the same each day. Redfishing (a high percentage of oversized fish) was consistent on the mud flats in the main Intracoastal Waterway. Floating shrimp under Harper Super Striker Floats for trout around high water and reds at low water produced the majority of their fish. Several places they caught reds and flounder on Gulp and Four-Seven plastics rigged on Zombie Eye jig heads. They had to move around a lot to find cooperative fish.

On Monday, Matthew Hendley had several oversized reds, including two tagged redfish.

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 8 were:
Clyo on the Savannah River – 6.0 feet and falling
Abbeville on the Ocmulgee – 4.8 feet and rising
Doctortown on the Altamaha – 7.5 feet and falling
Waycross on the Satilla – 8.6 feet and falling
Atkinson on the Satilla – 5.3 feet and rising
Statenville on the Alapaha – 4.5 feet and falling
Macclenny on the St Marys – 2.6 feet and rising
Fargo on the Suwannee – 2.6 feet and falling

Full Moon is May 12th.

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].