i guess this is the right place to post this. so i dont know if yall saw my other post in the freshwater section but i i want to try my hand at freshwater fishing. this is closest lake to james island that i see on google maps. i will have a 4ft jon boat by this summer so i want to fishing that area over summer break. what bites their in the summer? i have read different reports sayiing nice bass fishing and some saying terrible overrun with panfish, one thing they have in common is saying things about big gators! so what is the best method for fishing that area in the summer? i want to catch largemouth and cats but im not below crapie fishing as a beginner. i would like to be able to camp out their alos to learn the trade for a few days. does anyone know a spot where i can pull the jon boat up on a preferably sand bank and pitch a tent, and not really have to watch for gators? when fishing that is their swamps, do you fish in the swamps? i heard fishing lily pads is good but do i fish around lily pads for and with? also do the cats hide deep in the summer or are they on structure? what can i troll with and for? i like to live bait fish but i can throw some artificials just dont prefer it. what are the methods for live bait fishing and what live bait do you fish with? and what are the good styles and names of artys? cranks or topwaters or spinners chatterbaits or frogs or bucktails or flies or lizards or worms or soft plastics? thanks
There is no greater fan of fly fishing than the mud minnow.
There’s surprisingly nice fish in GCR. There’s also surprisingly large gators, if there was some place to camp you wouldn’t want to do it…they’d never find your body, just the drag marks where a dinosaur took you kicking and screaming into the water.
As for what to use, for bass keep it simple…some type of topwater (Pop-R, Spook, buzzbait, or frog), soft plastic (worm or lizard), a couple of spinnerbaits, and a couple of Rattletraps. A frog like a Zoom Horny Toad or a floating hollow body frog can be fished over thick vegetation.
Minnows, jigs, or beetlespins for crappie, crickets or beetlespins for bream.
Whatever you want to use for cats.
It slows down in the heat of summer, but they can still be caught, with better luck early and late.
theres no shortage of shoreline weeds and plenty of lily pads here and there in the reservoir too. ive had luck with the beetle spin for panfish and i usually work the edge of the weeds with soft plastics for bass. yes the reservoir is loaded with gators and most of them i see are 8-10 feet long but im sure theres plenty bigger. only boat i can get ahold of to take there is a rental canoe but ive never had trouble with gators following too close either. i plan on trying it more this spring since a friend is probably comming down for bass fishing so ill let you know how it goes.
Not being from this area and not even there yet, I’m wondering about bass boat use in this reservoir and in the surrounding waters. Does anyone have info on this?
You can absolutely dump the bass rig in GCR. Just need to be careful running. Its one of those bodies of water that looks fishy everywhere. Good grass to flip and frog, laydowns to bounce crankbaits off of. Pretty much something for everyone.
Looks good probably not tons of people there like some lakes. Im gonna try it this summer for sure. I just want to make sure I can put my 20 foot champion in there and be within the rules.
Me and a couple of buddies are headed down there tomorrow so hopefully I’ll have some good info to bring back and pass on. This will be my first time on GCR but I’ve heard some good “dock talk” that has me curious. We’ll find out tomorrow if it’s credible or not.
For the record, the reservoir is around 1000 acres so dropping a bass boat in there shouldn’t be an issue. My boat is 20’ 3" long so again, I’ll have some solid INTEL for you later this week. To be continued…
In the future, where every stranger poses a potential threat, knowing the predator mindset is the only safe haven.
Humbling…that’s the best way to describe our day on GCR. Water temps were 69-72 depending on where you were and we ran it from the impassable train tracks down to the d@m. Every square inch of that lake looks fishy. We started out in the shallows looking for beds and spawners. This turned out to be more difficult than expected. I figured a bed in that tanic (sp) water would stand out like a sore thumb but given the silty nature of the bottom, it made it tough. That said, we did see a few beds, most were empty, but we did see a couple that had smaller bucks on them but no big females. We did find one shallow area where three big (6+ pounds) were cruising a flat, but they spooked the minute a shadow hit them. We saw a lot of this throughout the day, spooky fish. That leads me to believe this lake gets a lot more pressure than some are assuming. I’ve never seen such spooky fish in all my life, especially during the spawn. That said, we managed to catch three fish (no biggens) on a shallow running crankbait and one of my buddies had a 3lb buck come unbuttoned. Like I said, we fished it from one end to the other. We fished everything from floating hyacinths to lilly pads, grass to wood, boat docks to sea walls, calm shallow flats to windy points. I’ve seen pictures of some big fish that live there but they had no problem evading us yesterday.
I hope whoever goes there has much better luck than we did. Granted, the place is beautiful. Any book on bass fishing that has ever been written could’ve had all of its pictures taken on GCR. It looks like a bass fisherman’s dream. Tons of wildlife too. We saw a couple of bald eagles and quite a few gators. The biggest gator we saw was easily double digits in lengths.
As far as the landing, it’s more than ample for launching a 20’ bass boat. There are two lanes at the ramp. One side is much wider than the other but the wider side is plenty of ramp for a big bass rig.
In the future, where every stranger poses a potential threat, knowing the predator mindse
Archer, one reason those fish are spooky is the already noted large dinosaurs that prowl that place.
There are some big fish in that place.
Best bream and numbers bass fishing day I ever had coincidentally was there. We were fishing some deeper grass catching nothing, a boat came by pulling a skier, and bream and bass started feeding just under the surface on little minnows or freshwater shrimp that were startled. Every time a boat came by the same thing happened, so when the boat traffic would die down I’d crank the outboard and run in a circle. They weren’t breaking the surface, if you weren’t right there paying attention you’d never know.
Sometimes it’s the littlest things that make a difference.